Judge Says IP Address Doesn't Prove Anything in Piracy Case | Hacker News Reader

Judge Says IP Address Doesn't Prove Anything in Piracy Case

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In Germany you, as the owner of a internet access point, are liable for whatever some person does with this line.

It is called 'Störerhaftung'. That way it doesn't matter who exactly did illegal you download stuff. You are liable non the less.

Funny thing though - the moment you are an incorporated ISP you do not fall under this concept anymore.

That is by the way the reason free WiFi isn't that available in Germany.

Are german ISPs required to "pass the blame forward"? If not, whats stopping everyone registering themselves as an ISP?

The price and the requirements, I guess?

Its a hassle. Even larger non-profit organizations (Freifunk for example) which provide free open wifi route their traffic via VPN to a country without "Störerhaftung" (Sweden) to eliminate the risk of getting adhortatory letters.

Maybe everyone there should start doing that? Even an individual could provide free wifi but route it through a foreign VPN service.

For that matter, with a law that stupid I'm surprised the major ISPs there aren't making hay by offering a VPN service with your internet account and integrating it into their broadband routers.

Actually, Freifunk Rheinland did register as an ISP and built a sizeable backbone network. They provide internet access to many Freifunk communities without any risk of liability.

Didn't know this. Thanks for this bit of information here.

You have to implement Vorratsdatenspeicherung which is basically an API to query who had this IP at a given point in time in case of an investigation.

I thought they were going to change that, no?

http://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2016-05/wlan-hotspots-st...

https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http:...

That's a really stupid law and it's one of the reasons why Germany is so far behind when it comes to building great internet/tech startups.

I'm just curious: are you arguing from that it's a stupid law from a moral perspective or a pragmatic one? I might disagree with these policies philosophically, but I've never seen evidence that they were anything but ruthlessly efficient at achieving their desired ends.

From a pragmatic perspective, if the law has enough unintended and undesired consequences, it has failed.

I mean...if your desired end is to prevent free wifi availability nationwide (and the various benefits that provides, access to information and job listings and community and such), regardless of socio-economic strata, and to ensure that any security issue (weak passwords, out of date firmware, a zero day) makes an end user legally culpable, all to help protect a content industry predominantly located outside your nation, then sure, chalk that up as a success?

> to ensure that any security issue (weak passwords, out of date firmware, a zero day) makes an end user legally culpable

That might actually be a good idea.

Yes, let's make non tech savvy people liable for keeping track of zero day exploits. While it might make some people more aware, I think in large part it would just push people off of the internet.

Yeah so that my Grandma who had Comcast install her router should definitely be legally culpable when there is a firmware issue with the router, or when the installer sets up a weak password (or none at all). I think you are probably speaking from a tech support perspective where you have had to fix systems that haven't been patched for years and that caused issues. Well, most of the population would be screwed by laws like this thru no fault of their own.

> Grandma ... should definitely be ... culpable

Not downvoting just suggesting that the sarcasm might detract from comprehensibility for English learners. It detracts nothing from the point by just saying plainly that she should not be.

Some ISPs here in Germany don't even allow third party routers.

I would argue both.

In order to make copyright infringement marginally harder, you take away the utility of broadly available, free or low cost wifi.

An entire nation has to lose a utility or pay a "copyright tax"... For what benefit?

until wifi access is declared a right?

I would say its more of a lazy law than just plain stupid as lazy law writing is far worse at times

I mostly find it offensive that between the company selling access, and people giving access away for free, it's the latter that would be liable for what their users do.

There are moral and pragmatic reasons against liability, but they are not nearly as glaring as that inequality.

> That's a really stupid law and it's one of the reasons why Germany is so far behind when it comes to building great internet/tech startups.

Germany is doing pretty good actually. I visit German start-ups with great regularity and both the quantity and the quality leave very little to be desired.

Munich, Hamburg, Berlin all have a fair number of very interesting start-up companies quite a few of which I think will end up doing just fine in the longer term.

Fyi the phrase "leave very little to be desired" means the opposite of what you probably meant.

Why. If nearly everything they do is great, that phrase should capture exactly that - or am I wrong here?

Is free WiFi really a prerequisite of great tech startups?

I'd say their expensive/restrictive mobile infrastructure would be a bigger hindrance.

I don't think the point was the free Wifi. I believe the point is that a government capable of such a stupid law is capable of more stupid laws that tech companies don't care for.

> That's a really stupid law and it's one of the reasons why Germany is so far behind when it comes to building great internet/tech startups.

I am sorry, but I am just unable to join the dots. Could you articulate more?

> That's a really stupid law and it's one of the reasons why Germany is so far behind when it comes to building great internet/tech startups.

They're just taking security seriously.

I would posit it--cheekily--as

> They're just taking copyright law seriously. :-)

How is this different then a phone? Are you liable for the conversations others have on your phone?

If you permanently have your phone outside your front door, and a passerby uses your phone to commit/coordinate crimes, you may well be liable, yes.

So are the owners of pay phones liable?

No. They're exploited by common carriers, whose status gives them judicial exemptions.

I am trying to think of a criminal activity that you can conduct over the phone analogous to piracy (but can't come up with one).

It doesn't have to be analogous to piracy, for example: if I use your phone to discuss a bank robbery with my partners in crime, even without your knowledge, you could be charged with conspiracy.

Depending on local laws of course.

Same deal in New Zealand. Except the law to "3 strikes" so if you receive 3 infringement notices within a 9 month window you can expect to be "prosecuted".

So a hotel offering WiFi to guests is liable for everything that guest does? Ridiculous.

Hotels get around this by hiring ISPs to run the WiFi. Which means it's always overpriced and slow as crap.

Same here in France, the owner of the Wifi AP is liable in case of illegal downloads. However a large majority of ISP implemented a separate free Wifi that is independent of your connection. You have access to all the free wifi AP from this ISP if you don't opt-out.

I recently received one of these stupid letters. I asked everyone in our household if they knew anything about it. No one did so I threw it in the garbage. My wife asked if we should be worried, the wording was quite threatening, basically asking us to go to their website and "ATONE!". We have a large enough house with family and friends moving throughout it during the day. Most have the wifi password. Because thats what everyone asks for these days, after the initial greetings.

There is a whole industry of sending these letters to people, most people feel threatened and would rather pay the demanded compensation than have to fight it, even if they were never involved in said infringement.

  > There’s no guarantee that judges across the
  > country will use the same standard, though.

This sentence could be misleading if you are not familiar with precedent in the US court system. It's important to note that this is just a decision at the lowest level federal court. There is no guarantee that any judge, including another case in the same district court, will apply the same standard.

Don't federal judges tend to look sideways in the same and other circuits when types of cases they don't have experience with are presented to them?

While not binding I think it is positive development.

It's likely an unpublished (in the official reporter) decision, which often courts do not allow to even be cited as persuasive precedent.

"Hollywood hasn’t and definitely won’t stop making attempts to get money from pirates who download their films and that’s fine. They have a right to protect their property"

Do they? I'm not convinced. Why must we tolerate the behavior of corporations which has proven to be harmful to our society? Their litigious actions also do not improve our society or offer any benefits to the human race. I think a strong argument can be made that they do not actually have a right to dictate who sees their products or what they should pay for it.

Society is made out of individuals. You want to live in a society that doesn't screw individuals over, so that your own human rights wouldn't be violated. Property rights are pretty fundamental as human rights go. Intellectual property is a form of property. Therefore people(and companies) should have the right to protect it.

> Their litigious actions also do not improve our society or offer any benefits to the human race. I think a strong argument can be made that they do not actually have a right to dictate who sees their products or what they should pay for it.

Imagine saying the same thing about any other kind of property, and you'll realize that living in a world where people think like that would be horrifying.

Story-telling might be unique among intellectual property because it is often used as a platform to express ideas of value to the society.

If a film has some idea that absolutely should be shared with everyone, you can't ethically hold those ideas hostage, or offer '1st viewing' privileges to those with the time or money to see that film in theaters, for an example.

Since it would be impossible to determine what ideas are of value and to which persons they're of value to, I think the best answer is for hollywood to relax their efforts. People aren't going to stop going to movies or stop buying DVDs.

DAMN STRAIGHT! Attribution is not as easy everyone thinks!

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