If the international movement of the Pirate Party wanted something to celebrate over today, consider the latest news out of Germany to be the news story to do it. Reports are surfacing (Google Translation) that during several municipal elections held across Germany, the Pirate Party have earned a sufficient number of votes to be on several city councils throughout Germany.

The victory followed up a strong campaign throughout Germany where users were encouraged to place Pirate Party posters and wave Pirate Party flags on the streets and (naturally) while on the water as well. We would visit the German Pirate Party website for more information, but the site seems to be either slow or timing out altogether as of this writing. Sweden was the first country to elect a Pirate Party member, now Germany has become the second country to have, through an election, elected members of the Pirate Party.

Currently, in many other parts of the world including numerous countries in Europe, the Pirate Party is trying to gain enough support to register their party so they can participate in elections as well. Membership in several countries can be attributed to the fact that the copyright industry has been pushing for a so-called “three strikes and your out” regime in spite of the fact that the European Parliament recognizes internet access as a fundamental right. Some countries have seen a push to use privacy invasive technology such as data retention to target alleged copyright infringement. Many responded by turning to the Pirate Party after politicians became more interested in listening to the copyright industry lobbyists instead of their own constituents.

Specific details on how successful the German Pirate Party has been in Germany hasn’t surfaced with the news yet, but there’s little doubt that things like the final percentage of the vote and exactly how many seats officially won will soon follow.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

The German Green Party has been discussing a “culture flatrate” for a while now. The idea is to present a third option to solve the problem of illegal file-sharing that protects the rights of the accused while ensuring copyright holders are properly compensated.

”In my view two positions don’t have a future,” said Helga Trüpel, Green MEP and vice-chair of the Committee for Culture and Media in the European Parliament, this past April while first introducing the proposal. “One is the ‘everything for free’ attitude towards creative works on the internet. It does not answer the questions of how to appropriately remunerate authors in the digital age and how a knowledge society based on creative content can reproduce itself. But I am equally opposed to the French model in which, without judicial due process through a new government agency, after two warnings users’ internet access will be suspended.”

The Green Party is now defending the plan with critics, some of whom call the plan a form of cultural socialism.

Malte Spitz, a board member of the party, said there are no “final numbers” on the monthly fee amount and that it would be “dependent on various factors.”

Internet connection speed is one of the factors being proposed, apparently since you have the potential to download or upload much more content I suppose.

“Needy” users, the economically disadvantaged, would pay no tariff at all.

The Green Party says the real purpose of a culture flat-rate is to “cure a collision of basic rights” between compensating artists and “respecting the right to informational self-determination and the privacy of telecommunications.”

The only real problem is that implementing a “culture flatrate” would require a change in German and European Union copyright laws.

It’s the reproduction right of downloading would be covered by the existing exception for non-commercial private copying.

It’s the “making available” right, i.e. uploading, that would require legislation since no exception exists. It would require changing German copyright law which, being ruled by European law, would require changing the EU Copyright Directive of 2001.

Moreover, I like the plan of taxing Internet connections in order to compensate copyright holders, but the amount is what concerns me. German Federal Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries mentioned an insane figure of 50 euros ($71.06 USD).

I don’t think people would be willing to pay more than $10 bucks a month, at least here in the US, and it’d have to go towards all copyright holders not just one particular industry.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

[Heise.de via P2PBlog]

There’s an international movement afoot to get ISPs to more closely monitor their networks and the traffic that flows through it. On the international stage, questions are being raised over ISP or DNS blacklists, ISP level surveillance and data retention. Since no human is perfect, does these new expansions in powers around the world also increase the potential for abuse as well?

The editorial in the National Post comments on the repeated themes on how legislation like warrantless wiretapping was pushed forward in the past. In Canada, it’s the repeated themes of how this is suppose to help save the children from online predators. In North America, there’s also that theme of how it’s suppose to somehow help fight terrorism. The editorial article comments on how such arguments are weak while defending the broadening of surveillance in Canada.

Meanwhile, the Ottawa Citizen echoed those sentiments and also notes how in any given gathering, there are those who are present for less than ideal reasons. Not only this, but also puts forth the question, since when do judges block a police investigation on a regular basis and prevents them from getting a warrant in the first place? The editorial suggests that apologists for the surveillance legislation has yet to provide such evidence and concludes that given another Conservative member had issues with the Google van taking pictures around neighbourhoods for their Street View project (they were definitely questioned in committee over privacy concerns) and given that the Safety Minister is pushing for surveillance legislation that would diminish privacy much more severely than any fleet of vans with 360 degree cameras ever could, the party that argues for small government is sending mixed messages to the public.

There was another theme both editorials conveyed which has been an underlying issue ever since the legislation was tabled, the fact that the minister who tabled the legislation was the same minister who, in a different time, promised to not expand surveillance powers and have such surveillance laws forgo the need of a warrant. Was this part of the political deal when Canadians saw their election postponed to at least the Fall? Who knows. At the very least, though, a backtrack is a backtrack and for the months leading up to the tabling of the legislation, the Liberal party has continually pushed to have surveillance legislation tabled in the House of Commons (Just use Google to search through the Hansard for things like ‘modernization’, ‘2008′, ‘2009′ and ‘investigation techniques’) With support from both the Liberal party and the Conservative party, the legislation is pretty much guaranteed to pass save for another election.

But what of the fears that this opens the floodgates for abuse? The legislation does, indeed, call for the installation of surveillance technology on the ISPs in Canada. We’ve looked through Bill C-46 and Bill C-47 to find that out. While the editorials have pointed to evidence in Canada that police are actually prone to doing less than legal things (one pointed to unauthorized plate checking for one) However, we also know that, internationally speaking, when things like ISP level wiretapping occur, not only has it opened the floodgates for abuse in the legal and law enforcement sphere, but it also opened the floodgates for abuse in the commercial sphere as well.

We begin our look at the country that is geographically closest to Canada. The neighbours to the south. The United States where it has appeared that the debate on such things looks as though security trumps privacy, an ironic turn of events considering that famous quote from Benjamin Franklin that rings true today, which says “He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither”, actually comes from the United States in the first place. The NYTimes unearthed quite a lot recently about the Bush promoted AT&T wiretapping program recently. Among the evidence was commentary on how, probably millions of, Americans were wiretapped that went far beyond the legal restraints surrounding such activity. One of those Americans who was illegally wiretapped? Former president Bill Clinton. One can get the impression that the unauthorized wiretapping is starting to get out of control.

It is important to note the differences between the case in the United States. In Canada, the proposed legislation would grant eavesdropping to police without a warrant. In the United States, the eavesdropping permits a copy of the traffic flowing through ISPs like AT&T and connects that information directly to organizations such as the NSA. While an important difference, when it comes to privacy concerns for many, that is little more than a clerical difference rather than a significant difference. In the end, police obtained unfettered access to details of your activity online.

Of course, an increase in state powers have gained the interest of commercial entities as well. The most vivid also happening to be the most recent. Austria is a member of the European Union. In the European Union, there is a law that makes ISPs retain data of all of it’s users – also known as Data Retention. While there was a movement to stop the data retention directive, data retention ultimately became law. It appears that an organization of Austrian newspapers have been eyeing that data retention and have called upon the government to use data retention to enforce copyright. There was a stunning quote from the organization that seemed to cap off this attempt which says, “Privacy should not be used as a cover for rights abused.” Forget child abuse. Forget the terrorists. Forget identity thieves. The debate, judging by that development, has shifted to whether or not commercial entities should have access to that data retention for their commercial interests. The real question is, where do these surveillance demands end? What interests should be brought up to the level of access enjoyed by entities interested in, say, national security? As we’ve noticed, this kind of thing isn’t an isolated incident either in Europe.

Last year, in Germany, Deutsche Telekom was raided over spying allegations. In essence, the telecommunications company was worried that insiders were leaking information to reporters, so they monitored their employees – illegally. Since the Canadian case is about installing surveillance infrastructure, it’s important to note how installing such technology would open up potential abuse precisely like this. Legal or not, the potential is there.

Recently, Germany passed legislation that would bring in mandatory censorship legislation. While not wiretapping or surveillance, it does force ISPs to grant new powers over the internet – in this case, blocking a whole list of websites. Isn’t it interesting that just three months earlier, German book publishers wanted to add Rapidshare to that blacklist?

Even further back into January of this year, there were things that happened that forced the German government to say that data retention is for terrorists, not copyright infringers. In response, the IFPI said that it would be contradictory for the government to not hand over all the information over to them for copyright legal pursuits.

What about free speech? A government mandated blacklist in many countries is said to stop child pornography. Australians know all too well how web censorship like that can go too far after the ACMA blacklist leak showed perfectly legal sites on them. While the governing body denied the authenticity of the leaked list, there have been suggestions that the blacklist did come from an ISP in the first place and some of those sites have been added on there because of commercial reasons. Over in Britain, a similar incident happened where British ISPs blocked Wikipedia.

Going further, these aren’t the only cases where new surveillance or censorship measures were attempted to be used for reasons beyond what the legislation was promoted to be stopping in the first place. Already, the copyright industry, along with a few other companies, have tried multiple times to use surveillance or censorship for commercial gains or interests. Legal websites have been put on national blacklists in the past in other countries. The question many Canadians should be asking over top of other questions that have already been raised is where would these intrusions on internet users rights end? Is this legislation in Canada merely an update or modernization and that would be the end of it or would further demands be raised if the currently proposed legislation is passed? All this given multiple international examples.

It certainly, from this standpoint, that this surveillance legislation is not only bad for users privacy, but also the tip of the iceberg as well.

[Hat Tip: Michael Geist 1 and 2]

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The news could only serve to push the deeply divided debate further into the limelight Germany. News is surfacing that points out that the controversial web censorship legislation in Germany has been passed by the German parliament. Already, a member of the Social Democrats, Jörg Taussig, defected from his party on this controversial issue to become a Pirate Party member – thus also marking the first time the Pirate Party managed to get a member into the German parliament in the first place.

Already, there have been protests on this very issue. An e-petition has been made to stop such legislation and gotten over 134,000 signatures.

The Pirate Party is against web censorship and made their opposition to web censorship a part of their election platform during the European elections. The German Pirate Party posted about the protests (Google Translation). They have a slogan about the censorship proposal saying, roughly translated to English, “Erase the Bocks Instead – Stop Web Censorship!”

The German Pirate Party argues that child pornography must be stopped, not hidden behind a bunch of stop signs. The argument appears to be based off of the fact that government mandated censorship can be circumvented through proxies. The currently proposed censorship legislation would put up stop signs if anyone were to access a banned website.

One thing is for certain, the way things are going in Germany, this issue is only going to get more people involved.
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The German Pirate Party has a new reason to celebrate. Not only do they have a member, soon to be two members, in the European parliament, but now they have a member in the German Bundestag (German Parliament). The Pirate Party website posted about this development on their blog.

We welcome the fact that more can see that the fight for free communication in an open society is the way forward, and not censorship, blocking and monitoring,” says Rick Falk Vinge, party leader for the Swedish Piratpartiet via Google translation, “It is particularly gratifying to an existing MP sees this.”

Both the Finnish and German pirates have reacted very strongly against that child pornography is used as a battering ram to impose censorship and silence political opponents,” says Falk Vinge. “It is shameful, unscrupulous and cynical to use such a horrible event as an excuse for introducing mass surveillance and [censorship].”

Already, protesters marched in the streets of Germany over proposed censorship laws. This happened along side a petition that has over 130,000 signatures denouncing the proposed laws.

The posting on the Pirate Party blog also pointed out that legitimate sites have been put on similar censorship lists in other countries. They point to the Finnish transparency website which was put on the blacklist as one example.

A few months ago, questions were raised over the fact that Australia’s ACMA blacklist contained legal websites. ACMA responded by not only refuting the authenticity of the list, but also threatening to fine anyone who links to banned websites including URLs found on Wikileaks $11,000 per day.

Last year, British censors were blasted for putting Wikipedia on the blacklist.

Clearly, what this latest development shows is just how contentious the German proposed censorship law really is. If it’s enough to cause at least one MP to dump his political allegiance in favour of another political party because of this issue, you know it’s one hot topic.
Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Many countries including the United States have denounced the ideas of censorship in China. When countries like Iran and China use internet censorship, they often get heavily criticized for even thinking about doing that. Yet, how often do these criticisms come from the same countries regarding the censorship practises in Australia or, in this case, Germany? What makes Australia’s and Germany’s internet censorship tactics so much more acceptable since even the Chinese government has said that it’s blacklists are used to fight pornography online. Of course, many know that such blacklists have, more often then not, been used to block legal content – an issue that raises serious questions about free speech.

What’s also at stake is a very real threat the censorship tactics could be used to target file-sharers. Germany has become the first country to have to deal with the copyright industry trying to use the mandatory blacklists to block file-sharing websites. Whether or not there will be a third attempt to include file-sharing sites like Rapidshare into the blacklist is unclear at this point. However, a post on netzpolitik certainly highlights heavy resistance toward the legislation. As of this writing, a petition to stop the DNS blacklist has gotten more than 134,000 signatures. Coupled with the online petition, there have already been public demonstrations on this issue.

Two months ago, German book publishers wanted to use mandatory blacklists to block Rapidshare. Early last year, the German government had to tell rights holders that data retention is for fighting terrorism, not copyright infringement.

In spite of the history of the German filters and data retention, the German government still insists that the filters will be used merely to block child pornography. Even then, some people don’t buy this given that a simple use of a proxy can be used to bypass the filters in the first place. So the real question is, who is this really intended for and who is this really intended to serve?

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

One of the akiles-heel’s of the copyright industry’s legal war on file-sharing has always been getting a sufficient amount of evidence to prosecute alleged copyright infringers. In Canada, for instance, when the RIAAs Canadian arm known as the CRIA filed lawsuits against file-sharers, an IP address wasn’t sufficient evidence. A similar thing with regards to lack of evidence has reportedly happened in Germany recently.

Firebird77 of Gulli wrote in recently to inform us of this development (Google translated). If the Google translation from German to English seems a bit confusing, he was kind enough to give us a brief summary for us.

Essentially, this is what had happened. A German file-sharer received a cease and desist order from the German law firm Schutt & Waetke on behalf of CDV-Entertainment, a copyright holder of video games. After several reminders, the lawyer handed the case over to Infoscore. After Infoscore issued a few final final demands, the case was then handed over to another law firm known as Haas & Partners. That law firm sent an additional warning letter before they demanded a court to issue a default summons. Firebird77 tells us that this particular part of the development is new in Germany. Several users then contradicted the order for a default summons, but the contradictions lost.

At this point, the alleged copyright infringer was issued an enforcement order. That was when the alleged copyright infringer issued a contradiction. So, the court ordered Haas & Partners to substantiate their claims. After receiving this order from the court, the lawyers on the case withdrew their claim to the surprise of some who are watching this case.

It’s unclear whether or not this could be a new strategy for file-sharers in Germany, but if these events play out in future cases, the copyright industry in Germany could have a brand new obstacle in their path to try and stop alleged copyright infringers in Germany. Still, the likelihood of these events from repeating every time could also be very slim. In any event, it seems to be a new victory for file-sharers and a surprising blow for the copyright industry.

Special thanks to Firebird77 for passing this along!

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Shortly after it became known that Rapidshare divulged personal information to rights holder, Rapidshare has since gone to the public to assure users that their IP addresses are safe and that they only track the volume of traffic going through their servers. It’s been argued, though, that Rapidshare hasn’t been entirely clear on the details of why they divulged the IP address outside of the fact that they are following German laws. So, Gulli decided to speak to a German lawyer on what all this means for users who use sites like Rapidshare.

It turns out, according to an expert opinion on IT law, that such a use of the German law in question, Paragraph 101 of the German Copyright Act could put some legal risk to downloaders as well. All of this hinges on if a file hoster resides in Germany. If the transfer starts somewhere in Germany, the German law applies. While Rapidshare does operate outside of German, many of their servers still resides inside the borders of Germany.

As many who have observed the copyright debates would likely note, what the letter of the law and what is actually enforced almost always tends to be two completely different things. Looking back on actual cases against alleged copyright infringers, one can easily note that, 1) An overwhelming majority of users who are actually legally pursued are uploaders, not downloaders and 2) Unless its a huge server bust, those who get prosecuted are almost always uploading newly released or even pre-released mainstream material (when was the last time you heard someone getting sued for uploading a movie made before 1995?) Of course, original leakers aren’t typically charged, usually just those who are the first to upload the work onto a more public internet medium (sometimes private BitTorrent sites like EliteTorrents, but more often public blogs, public BitTorrent sites and, in this case, filehosters for instance)

It’s also worth pointing out that Rapidshare isn’t one of a rare kind of service. As we’ve already once noted, there’s plenty of other file hosters to go around.

(Special thanks to Firebird77 of Gulli.com for the translation. Thanks!)

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

An editor from Gulli.de has written in to offer a personal translation from German to English an exclusive report into how Rapidshare gave personal information to rights holders details about an uploader. First, a quick overview of what has been happening in this particular case.

Back in March, Gulli highlighted (Google translation) a new development that could set a new precedent for file-hosting services like Rapidshare. At the time, not much was known, but a person who uploaded a pre-release album – Metallica’s ‘Death Magnetic’ album to be precise was subject to a home search by prosecutors. There was high suspicion that it was because he uploaded the album, but it wasn’t entirely clear how the upload was connected to him. Still, there was reason to believe that Rapidshare divulged the information to rights holders given that they have already been under pressure from rights holders.

Later on that month, more details were discussed and more theories were presented. The question was, has Rapidshare, for the first time, handed over the IP address to a third party through a copyright infringement complaint? There were discussions surrounding local copyright laws and whether this case involved a civil complaint or a criminal complaint. There appears to be discussion on the time frame between when the upload was discovered and when the persons house was raided. Unfortunately, one could only discuss theories on what happened because Rapidshare and rights holders remained tight-lipped on the situation. However, there was an interesting conclusion that the attractiveness of a file-hosting could greatly diminish if the website was found to be handing over personal information (namely IP addresses) to third parties via a copyright infringement complaint – bad news for a prominent file-hoster.

Now, Gulli has received confirmation on a number of things regarding this case. Here’s a rough translation provided by FireBird77, though he says that the translation might not be error free:

The order of the judge, to raid the house, was soon after that posted in a forum, where it got into the hands of my colleague MSX. At a first view, it seemed like an ordinary judge decision, only with the detail, that it was ordered against an Uploader of Rapidshare. There could have been thousand options, how they got the IP-Address of the person. The scanned decision was transmitted to me by my colleague, so that I had the chance to take a closer look at it. There the difference then pointed out, how the public prosecutor got the IP-Address of the uploader. An e-mail, which was forwarded to us soon after that and that was sent from the Support of Rapidshare, confirmed our suspicion. The civil law based information claim had to be used to get the IP-Address. This information claim went real on 01.09.2008 an gives rights holders the ability, to bypass the public prosecutors, an get to the address of suspected copyright infringers. A list of IP-Addresses can be brought to a judge, if he signs the civil law based information claim, the providers have to tell the names an addresses to the given IP-addresses. But since the introduction of the law, it was only used for P2P-Users and Providers. Now it obviously seems, that it can also be used for something else.

As you can see in the second break, the lawyer contacted the German providers 1&1, the Deutsche Telekom AG aswell as Rapidshare AG through the § 101 UrhG. This paragraph represents the civil law based information claim. As it follows, the district court Bielefeld signed the order. The Uploader was accused of uploading music-tracks which the Major labels are the rightsholders. The uploader is concretely accused of uploading the TOP 100 Music-Charts. The value of claim for an MP3 is about 10.000 Euro in Germany at the moment. 100 Tracks, 10.000 Euros. Finishes at 1.000.000 Euro value of claim. If the uploader would get sued and loses in the first instance, he has costs of about 40.000 to bury.

It seems like the German content-industry found the ultimate weapon against copyright infringers, with the civil law based information claim. The only factor that is still not absolutely clear is, when this claim can be used. The most probable assumption is the location of the servers.

At the moment there are a lot of discussions, if the place of the servers is the reason why § 101 UrhG was applicable. A RS-Support mail says, that this is not the main reason. The problem is, that the explanation is pretty strange. If German law is applicable, then they have to hand out the information, the support mail tells. A user in the gulli:board posted this mail and wrote the thought, that only links from German sites are the reason. The problem is: The cease & desist letter contains the forums, from which the rightsholders got the link. And those forums are not in Germany. We also thought, that the German language could be the reason. But this would be crazy. Changing the sites language from German to English would solute the problem. We´re still waiting for an answer from the lawyer. Until that, the place were the servers are (and Rapidshare has a lot of their servers in Germany) seems the most practicable point. We will work on.

So essentially, rights holders in Germany have found a way to exploit the local copyright laws to get Rapidshare to divulge an IP address – sufficient information for rights holders to get other personal information to get prosecutors to investigate. It appears as though that a link was posted to the content on a non-German based website, but since the servers of Rapidshare are located in Germany, that hardly matters and the prime suspicion on why German laws were used against this individual.

Shortly afterwards, a representative from Rapidshare issued a press release to confirm that the law applied in this case because the servers were located but the server location had nothing to do with it. It appears, though, that not all the information in this case is perfectly clear, so this story seems to be ongoing.

You can read a Google translation of the original report here. All information in this case has been provided by Gulli – a German file-sharing site. Thanks for the translation!

Update: The editor corrected me, saying that the server location had nothing to do with the case and that the German laws applied to all filehosters. Exactly when does the law apply is not clear and Gullli is working with lawyers to figure this fact out.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

A report from German news site Heise.de (German) says that book publishers in Germany are demanding that the famous one-click hosting site Rapidshare be put on the national blacklist. An essential part of the report was translated by p2p-blog which features this:

“I don’t see any other way than access controls to get to platforms like these that are based in foreign countries,” said Boersenverein chief counsel Christian Sprang according to heise.de. ISPs should charge their customers for the costs of instituting these block lists. Sprang also called one-click-hosters like Rapidshare part of the “Internet mafia”, and complained that ISPs would finance these services with ad buys on their sites.

The report also reminds us that the copyright industry attempted to add file-sharing websites to a blacklist 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 investigation purposes.

Clearly, this is a case where the fears are realized over the potential abuse of the new internet filters in Germany. In this case, it was barely a day before the copyright industry wanted to utilize the new found power for their bottom line. It leads one to wonder how many other incumbent industries are currently lobbying the government to be able to use the blacklists for their own financial interests.