Many are aware of US-based rights holders trying to apply US laws in other countries. Now there is word that P2P lawsuits in Germany are unconstitutional.
Between the new version of Vuse, the Canadian DMCA, and a new p2p study being released, it may be easy to have missed the report from p2p-blog that covered what happened in the German court system just a little while ago while all the other big news was happening.
Janko Roettgers, the writer of P2P-blog notes that P2P lawsuits have been ruled unconstitutional because an ISP technically can’t give out customer information as it has done in the past because it’s private information. Interestingly enough, this was one of the main types of arguments used in the Canadian discovery case back in the beginning of 2004. It appears this flaw in the file-sharing lawsuits have resurfaced in Germany now. It should prove to be a major blow to the anti-filesharing movement, particularly Logistep which is an anti-p2p company operating in Germany.
If things play out in Germany similarly to that of Canada, chances are, there’ll be a major push to revise copyright laws to make it legal to force ISPs to give up customer information – something that took the major copyright industry over 4 years so far just to get legislation tabled a second time having the first one die on the order paper.
Further reading from the original English report:
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. There is no common law in Germany, so this decision won’t immediately affect other pending file sharing lawsuits, but it’s quite possible that other defendants will get inspired by this decision to also try their luck in court, and that sooner or later we’ll see one of those cases in front of the German Supreme Court.
digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/tech_news/German_Courts_P2P_Lawsuits_Unconstitutional’;
Related Posts
- Germany: P2P lawsuits cost taxpayers millions
- German Lawyer Speaks About Risks of Using One-Click File Hosters
- German Report – Copyright Industry Retreats Lawsuit Against Filesharer
- Harvard Prof Calls RIAA Lawsuits “Unconstitutional Abuse of Law”
- German Government – Data Retention is for Terrorists, Not Copyright Infringers
Loading ...
