Does anyone have experience with doing this in germany?
Thanks for any answers
I received a notification for downloading something I didn’t download - I’m not even interested in it. Went to court, court said it was my IP and I had to pay. 1500€ for something I didn’t download. In Germany you have to prove innocence, which is impossible if all you can say is “It wasn’t me.”
“Don’t talk to someone who is a trained professional to handle these kinds of problems, instead talk directly to the party trying to get you into legal trouble” is the dumbest advice I can imagine.
I wouldnt admit not having a wifi password in germany. Theres the “Störerhaftung”. If its your device you are responsible. Thats why germany has so few open public wifis.
But i never got a letter and looked up what to do? Probably tossing the letter into the trash is enough. Just be sure to seperate your waste properly so your neighbour doesnt sue you.
AFAIK Störerhaftung was abolished, see TMG § 8 (3).
also note “Sentences 1 and 2 shall not apply if the Service Provider intentionally cooperates with a user of its service in order to commit unlawful acts.”
TMG is obsolete anyway, replaced by DDG and you have to register as a service provider.
Is the joke that German neighbors get angry over improperly separated waste / recycle?
Not sure what you mean by “joke”. This is no laughing matter.
I mean, i usually don’t watch in my neighbor bin so I would laugh at that…
But then how do you know if they put something in that doesn’t belong???
Telepathy, of course
Yes, thats a Stackenblocken!
As they should, it ruins it for everyone.
Not sure about the neighbors; we don’t watch each other fill the trash containers. I live in a rural area where every home has their own containers.
But the municipalities and the disposal companies do get angry and sometimes check the containers. If they are noticeably improperly separated they are not emptied, and that will hurt everyone depending on shared containers.
Meanwhile the AI bros are pirating every media they can get a hold on in total impunity…
But individuals get targeted by lawyers.
Next time tell them you’re training AI
Don’t actually do that. They will take that as admission of guilt.
Tell them the AI escaped confinement but that’s fine because you never told it to do that.
Don’t actually do that. They will take that as admission of guilt.
How’s that an admission of guilt? The AI did it. We have legal precedent now with the various confinement cases.
I used to work the abuse department for an isp back at the turn of the century.
While we covered our arses by emailing customers “we have received a copyright notice blah blah don’t be naughty”, the companies that filed the “complaint”? Got a big fat “fuck off and come back with an Australian court order”
We never released a single customer detail. Because privacy laws in Australia meant $50,000 per breach.
In Germany, they don’t have to prove guilt, you have to prove innocence or else you get fined. If you don’t voluntarily pay the fine and they have to go to court, the fine doubles. The system is rigged for the corporations. That’s why they’ve done this in Germany for a long time. The expansions to other countries are experimental.
I’ve also received a letter about seeding a torrent when I was in Germany in early 2010s. I went to see a legal aid lawyer, who was almost free, and he already had a prewritten letter saying that basically I was sorry and that I should come back if I received another letter.
The first letter said that if I didn’t pay within a few days, they would start a very expensive legal procedure. About a month later, I received a reminder, so I went back to the lawyer. This time, his letter said that I wasn’t able to pay the amount and that I should come back if I received another letter.
I never received anything after that. So, based on my experience, I agree: it’s all bark and no bite.
I was in this situation once, when I was the legal contact for the internet used by me and my roommates. One of them apparently downloaded porn and I got the letter. I contacted a lawyer, paid a flat fee (meaning even if it had gone to court I wouldn’t’ve had to pay more), he wrote one letter, saying I don’t even know what a torrent is, and I never heard from them again. I felt much better having the lawyer handle it.
This is terrible advice, please just get a VPN like IVPN or Mullvad and just keep the letter somewhere*. Anyone telling you to forego a legal professional when it comes to legal issues is leading you astray.
I have a stack of unpaid parking tickets from private companies that begs to differ
One letter = what letter?
Second letter = Maybe consider a VPN & plead ignorance.
First letter I started using VPNs. I get so many spam lawyer letters that I can’t remember the last one I opened that wasn’t from my lawyer.
Lawyers use registered mail if they actually want to serve you. I also don’t accept registered mail unless I expect it.
Given how often my mail goes missing this seems to be the better take.
Hell I can’t remember the last time I got a bill in the mail where the first notice came before the second notice lol
I’d rather VPN to some EU country east of Berlin if I were you.
Slovakia has some copyright laws but they’re not that strictly enforced. Also no c&d letter equivalent has arrived to my physical inbox for what I’ve done on the Internet.
Thank God my country doesn’t pursue piracy at all (unless it’s related to live football matches)
Thank God idgaf about football matches
In Spain sites depending on something hosted by Cloudflare go down when there’s a football (soccer) match. I have no interest in that sport either, but it’s impossible to check even a doctor’s appointment during a football match without a VPN. Thousands of sites are affected.
That’s seriously fucked up. We had the same problem in Italy, but luckily Cloudflare fought back and I think that some companies sued the company that decides the blocks
I sure hope we het the chance to collectively sue these sports companies for damages at some point. Nobody should have to wait for a football match to end to access health services they’re paying for.
You mean the “default” DNS entry is gone for these sites but you can use simply another DNS.
No, they block all of Cloudflare’s IP addresses. This is punishment for Cloudflare not being able to take down any website globally within 15 minutes that the Spanish government says to take down.
Used to be that way but last time I checked using DNS over TLS or HTTPS didn’t grant access to blocked sites during football matches.
You should just use a VPN in the first place and then none of this is a problem.
Routing traffic through another computer will certainly fix things for you.
As long as this does not log nor allow tracing packets etc. yes.
It does when another computer is a temporary session on a virtual machine…
Depends. Those are just letters. First and foremost meant to scare you and do something without thinking it through. You can decide to respond, or not respond, that’s up to you. Though it’s strongly recommended to contact a lawyer before signing any contract with them, admitting to wrongdoing or give them information about yourself. I’d probably try to avoid (5) without legal advise.
If you toss it in the bin, they’ll have to decide whether they have enough evidence and whether it’s worth the effort to actually sue you. Usually that letter was an invitation to settle out of court. At their terms and conditions, though.
And yes, they’re most certainly backed by the media companies. Otherwise they wouldn’t have any business messing with their intellectual property. And maybe the law firm only does letters, maybe they have some number of court cases to achieve each month, who knows? Maybe they already exhausted their more promising X court cases this month and you won’t hear from them again if you decide to just ignore them. Maybe you’re one of the “lucky” few who get sued.
In Belgium, just next to it, I know someone who was doing tons of torrenting and sharing with friends and family back in 2005-2010 time and got prosecuted for his piracy (like 5 years after he was doing it) and had to pay huge fines as a young adult from what he did as a teenager. He definitely wasn’t using a VPN and probably port forwarding and openly sharing back in those days. It definitely happens. (Not Germany but neighbors)
Just get and use a VPN with a client kill switch. Paying 50-100€ per year is much cheaper than 10k in fines down the line, and don’t share it with anyone outside of your household.
well but he seeded a lot
