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.

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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.”

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fseal said:

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.

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acurasd said:

I felt the same way when they went after napster for people using their software to transfer the software..

"someone" had to have that music on their computer... "someone" had to request that music.

All napster did was create a "P2P" connection.

I could send a illegal music file through Outlook... does that mean they will shutdown the whole microsoft office suite or sue bill gates.

I just think they didn't go after the two guys that stole the music becuase they didn't have any money.. maybe 23 dollars to their name. The only one that had money to their name was the company "napster." so why make a big stink over something if your not going to get "something" in return...

right?


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I think the people in the music industry are just afraid that people stealing all this music and they are loosing all the money from this. They are not going to be able to afford all this nice houses and cars. They might actually have to revert using their brains instead of talant.

Heavens forbid if they actually have to get a real job like the "walmart greeter" *lol*

sueing people is just a scare tactic....for the music industry

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whs said:

I think that decision is somewhat logical. If you park your car with the keys inside and it gets stolen, the insurance company need not pay either. It is tough times for the innocent and clueless, but if people want computers, they have to get used to the fact that these are no appliances.

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Win7User512 said:

whs said:

I think that decision is somewhat logical. If you park your car with the keys inside and it gets stolen, the insurance company need not pay either. It is tough times for the innocent and clueless, but if people want computers, they have to get used to the fact that these are no appliances.

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But you pay insurance to cover that. Having your vehicle stolen is not a crime. Only the act of stealing it is.

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