German Prosecutors Won't Help RIAA Counterpart 199
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A German court decision ruled that the European counterpart to the RIAA cannot invoke criminal proceedings over petty file sharing incidents. The goal was to to find out from ISPs the identity of alleged file-sharing subscribers; the requests have been refused as the judge saw the the proceedings as not in the 'public interest', and little or no economic damage was shown to have been caused to the record companies. Offering a few copyright-protected music tracks via a P2P network client was 'a petty offense,' the court declared. Within days, German prosecutors have now indicated that they will no longer permit the use of 'criminal proceedings' to procure subscriber information."
Re:History reversed (Score:1, Interesting)
http://justicefornone.com/article.php?story=20050
If a Country Really Wanted to Rip the Music Indust (Score:5, Interesting)
And once it went out of copyright there, it would be cut free out into the world.
Talk about something to really scare the record companies.
Germany, eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:An old english expression (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:If only... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is great (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is great (Score:3, Interesting)
Once one has an IP address, one can identify the state and the region of the state in which the user of the IP address is located. There are websites that are freely available to the public that provide this information. So the RIAA could easily bring the suit in the right location.
But that's not the way the RIAA lawyers work. They do things in the sneakiest and most unfair method that they can get away with.
Judge Garcia, in the New Mexico case, realized this about them right away, when he said in so many words "whoa...cowboy...why on earth is this being done ex parte when it would be pretty easy to give the defendants prior notice, and the federal rules require you to give them prior notice?"