This is a very important ruling as it means folks will no longer be able to be threatened by extortionists who make false claims against file-sharers
http://www.p2p-blog.com/index.php?itemid=696A German court has recently found that the evidence used in the country's tens of thousands of file sharing lawsuits is obtained in an unconstitutional way. The Frankenthal district court threw out a lawsuit against a defendant that was sued for sharing a video game on a file sharing network, according to heise.de.
The lawsuit was based on evidence obtained by the swiss Anti-piracy outlet Logistep, which provided rights holders with the IP address of the defendant. A law office working for the rights holder used the IP address to start a criminal complaint. Prosecutors requested the name of the defendant from a major German ISP and shared it with rights holders, who then started another civil lawsuit against the defendant - a controversial but common practice in Germany that has led to tens of thousands of lawsuits as well as completely overwhelmed prosecutors.
The court now found that the ISP wasn't allowed to give out the name of the defendant because file sharing doesn't count as a serious criminal offense. Handing over the name and address of the defendant violated his constitutional right to privacy.
Lets hope the Prosecutor is taken to court or sued themselves now for their criminal behaviour
