PS. It doesn't matter you downloaded free software, every person you'll contact in the process of straightening this out will be equally clueless and abusive.
We had HADOPI, an organization announced as the Hammer of Thor for pirates. Not related but one of the elected members of our Assembly was talking about the OpenOffice Firewall.
Many discussions started on how this is legal and whatnot, an ISP also sent the IPs they were required to provides hardcopied on paper.
People started to create anti-HADPPI pages, after a chaotic discussion the law was changed from "you are a pirate" to "you did not secure your WiFi enough" (literally).
People started to use VPNs and forgot about the organization.
Then million of euros were poured into that idiotic organization (ah, we also have a tax on empty CDs and DVDs because they are used to copy pirated stuff...) and the first courts hit with the Hammer of Thor.
If I remember correctly, one person was convicted to 2000€.
It has now been quietly merged with another organization and I do not know if it still exists.
So much money spent on idiots doing idiotic work for idiotic results. Garbage in, garbage out.
Yeah, thank god my country is not among this group. We have better things to do than police imaginary american property.
I remember reading a news article years ago about some MPAA lobbyist who came here to do his thing. A journalist asked him point blank if intellectual property should be a priority in a country that can barely manage to provide basic infrastructure for its entire population. People are literally hungry and yet this guy is here talking about copyright bullshit. I wish I could find this article again...
https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/2019_Special_301_Report...
You can't just isolate yourself from them either without massive economic consequences. Even if you suffered through those consequences, they'll probably just force you to trade anyway just like they did with Japan once.
Given Trump focus on the internal affairs of the US, while the political climate was toxic at home, at least it let all others breath a little.
Now with Biden it will star all over again.. North-american companies, intelligence agencies, basically the status-quo interests being enforced all over..
At least now the government is caring about the environment and as while at home the policies are more left-leaning, i bet the will not be the same for foreign countries, and i expect things like copyright enforcement to gain more strength (basically all the traditional corporate and government bullies)
From the perspective of international political affairs its the resurgence of the good'ol "United Corporations of America" policy enforcement.
The only significant difference between him and Trump is aesthetic.
Strangely, the term "two party system" might lead one to assume there's a meaningful difference in real-world policy outcomes. Sadly, this is all too rare and, in practice, the differences are mostly in the claimed intentions and not the delivered results.
As an American, please accept my apology for all uninvited interference in the economic and political affairs of other nations.
No need for apologies. This is all super complex, gigantic, out of our hands mess that is hard to make it advance even a little. I know how it feels.
But its good to know that you care, and that's the reason why we should never fall for cheap generalizations.
The section on Switzerland is just about how annoyed the government is at their privacy protections.
For example, search the document for "right holder". It's full of this. Rights holders are concerned about this, rights holders are concerned about that... Why does some corporation's "concerns" matter at all? It's mind-boggling. This entire document is just an endless list of complaints from US corporations about countries that aren't playing by their rules. They want the US government to "fix" the other countries so they can turn a profit there.
My own country is an example. The government really likes to copy whatever it is developed countries are doing. Watching how other countries regulate stuff is a great way to predict what I might have to deal with in the future. We created our own GDPR after Europe did it. Telecommunications companies tried to lobby against net neutrality here citing the US as an "industry standard" example.
That particular business (Hollywood) happens to also be the propaganda arm for the current power, so naturally it's protected ham-fistedly by policy makers.
What that means nowadays is that those people would now need to talk to the police. That implies in bringing some very good evidence, because our criminal system isn't antagonistic, and also facing the criminal consequences of false allegations.
As a result, some foreign companies tried very hard to create a copyright predator industry shortly after the criminalization, but had to abandon it. There are still copyright protections, mildly enforced, but not that kind of thing.
The shady part is where they can just go to the ISP and request the personal customer information associated to an IP they believe is transferring the infringing content.
In Germany the law allows lawyers to ask and get this info from the ISP purely based on suspicion. This is the dirty secret related to how Germany enforces piracy laws. Getting internet access is predicated by accepting that this information will be passed on to private third parties (imagine getting internet access only if you agree to send your identity to Facebook if they want to check you are not violating FB rules by using a fake name).
Between this and the fact that a lawsuit is expensive and time consuming, they probably never pursue minor infringement in court if they get a counter from the user's lawyer.
Lawyers win either way, via the fines that they ask for (people are scared that this could escalate and just pay), or the fees to fight the fines (usually a letter highlighting the situation that personal information was obtained without a court order). So they have all the incentive to propagate the practice.
A court order is not supposed to be automated because it's exceedingly simple to make it output whatever you want while still claiming good faith.
Source: have been through many copyright claims and currently have a supreme court lawsuit pending.
This law is way too easy to abuse.
this should be considered a release into the public domain, an invitaion to use the file at no charge.
>>lawyers seeding copyrighted material on torrents to extract money<<
this should be some form of racketeering [trolling isnt strong enough lable]
If this is indeed a case of someone trolling the copyright trolls and not a mistake then good for them, I hope they win!