Windows 7 - Germany: Wireless owner responsible for others download

Wireless owner responsible for someone else's download

Wireless internet subscribers who don’t properly secure their connection with a password can be held partly responsible if third parties use their account to illegally download music, a German court ruled late Wednesday.

The Federal Court in Karlsruhe ordered a wireless subscriber to pay legal costs after someone else used his connection to download the Sebastian Hämer song Sommer unseres Lebens (“The Summer of our Love) while he was on holiday.

However, the court rejected the record label's claim for compensation, meaning the verdict was only a partial victory for the music industry and other copyright holders, whose revenues are being hammered by illegal downloading over the internet.

The Music Industry Association also welcomed the verdict, with head Stefan Michalk saying: “No one can dodge responsibility with the commonly used defence that a third person abused their WLAN connection.”

There is sense in the legal system, however there is a tremendous amount of technical ignorance. The judge and jury are generally all pretty "Stupid" when it comes to things that get technical. Well most of us are in any technical area we are not already experts...

So unfortuantely technical or high concept cases like this very frequenly go very bad.