www.cdfreaks.com
German court: ISP's don't have to reveal music sharer's details
Posted by Seán Byrne on 28 January 2005 - 00:31 - Source: heise online

As some may already know, Germany has fairly tough legislation when it comes to protecting work from piracy, especially work that is copy protected. For example not only is it illegal to circumvent anti-piracy measures present on media, but it is also unlawful to even discuss how to circumvent protections also. However, once a user has their music present on their PC shared out on the Internet, tracing them is a different story.

Recently a high Court ruling overturned a lower court ruling for an ISP to reveal a customer's personal details to the music firm. The Court ruled that an Internet Service Provider is not obliged to reveal the name and address of a user illegally sharing out copyrighted music. The Court argued that an Internet provider only provides a connection to the Internet and is not obligated to monitor any traffic. Should the customer violate copyrights using their service, it is not the ISP that is violating copyright law. However ISPs are only required to disable access if they learn about illegal content being shared out.

While the Product Piracy Act gives the legal right to find out the origin and distribution channel of someone violating copyright, this applies to the manufacturing and dispersion of physical copies. However it currently is not clear if this also applies to copyrighted works on the Internet. GristyMcFisty used our news submit to let us know about the following news:

"An Internet access provider is not principally obligated to reveal the name and address of an Internet user who offers downloads of music files on the Internet, thus violating the copyrights or other rights of third parties", the Higher Regional Court's of Frankfurt wrote. In its ruling (PDF) handed down today, the Court overturned a lower court order to have the name of an Internet user who operated a music server via a German provider made known to a music firm (reference no.: 11 U 51/04).

In its comments on the ruling, the Court argued that a provider only supplies technical access to the Internet and does not generally have any obligation to inspect the data being sent through its network. Rather, providers are only obligated to block access when they learn of illegal content. Providers do not, however, have to provide information about their customers because the providers have not themselves violated copyrights or aided and abetted.

While there is a legal right to obtain information about the origin and distribution channel of the person violating copyright by making or disseminating copies, the provisions in the Product Piracy Act only concern the manufacture and dissemination of physical copies. It is not yet clear whether these provisions also apply for the dissemination of music or other works protected by copyright in the Internet.

At least the German ISPs would be happy to know for the time being that they are not required to monitor their customer's traffic. However it does affect the entertainment industries in that country pretty bad despite having strong legislation protecting copyright protection technology. While they can easily start filing lawsuits against those developing or discussing circumvention tools, they have little control of the content where the protection has been stripped off.