Comments on: German Government – Data Retention is for Terrorists, Not Copyright Infringers

By: German Book Publishers Want to Add Rapidshare to ISP Blacklist

German Book Publishers Want to Add Rapidshare to ISP Blacklist — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 01:38:41 +0000

[...] already. We have noted a similar case over a year ago where the copyright industry in Germany was turned down by the government to retain the information of all those who access copyrighted materials for the 6 month period for [...]

By: Spurge

Spurge — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Interest groups or companies should have no right to that data period.

By: mountain_rage

mountain_rage — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thats not even going far enough Spurge. Governments should have to go through a moderator for any talks with special interest groups.

By: Burd

Burd — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Even though this is in Germany there is an important comment to make here. Governments (at least those which claim to be “free”) should not be eavesdropping on their citizens. I know there’s the big argument about “terrorists” but the fact remains that the intelligence before 911 in the U.S. was there WITHOUT snooping on the citizens. It was merely ignored.

And this is true of other terrorist plots which have been uncovered throughout the world. We don’t need to trample on people’s rights to protect ourselves.There’s always the temptation to use such surveillance for other purposes. Those in charge presently in Germany might have this policy but who knows about those in the future?

In the U.S. in the 1950′s we had a very unfortunate situation concerning “protecting” us against “the commies.” Now it’s the same thing only insert “terrorists” for “commies.” It’s a darnn good thing that Senator Joe McCarthy didn’t have the Internet. How many more innocent people would have lost their livelihoods and careers?

Germany’s history offers an even more terrifying concept: Hitler with the Internet?

There is more than file sharing at stake here.

By: Christoph

Christoph — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“Germany’s history offers an even more terrifying concept: Hitler with the Internet?”

As a german I would be pleased that you don’t make such “comparison”.
you can’t compare Hitler to anything even “Osama” has never killed so many people.

What ever Im not a friend of this and Im realy against this 1984 BigBrother mentality but what can we do?

By: entropyman

entropyman — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

the thing that the RIAA CRIA IFPI etc. would not be happy with at all if they really thought about it is the fact that as “copyright holders” pretty much anyone would be able to request any data from anyone- namely in my case being an independent musician who distributes my music for free online with license clearly granted to use for non-commercial use only- I could get data on them delivered to me as they could be potentially “violating my copyrights” whereas no one else would be. Beyond this anyone that shares ANY personally copy written material (pictures you take on their camera blog entries etc.) would be able to gain access to ALL of their data…. no one has done it yet but if they have their way- it can be done.