This week, the senior adviser to the European Court of justice informed the Court to rule against the responsibility of Germany to open wi-fi hotspots. Although the case is not over yet, most of the media reports as "no responsibility to open wi-fi." The case is much, much bigger than
The Court European Court of justice is the highest court of the European Union. - a European Supreme Court, if you will - and about six months before each final ruling, an advocate general - a senior adviser to the Court - and suggests an appropriate angle . an approach to a decision, the Court mainly - but not always - follows the advice of the Advocate General
This is why the wireless open case in question is important, and much greater than reported:
in most. Europe, it has long been established that the IP address does not identify an individual, and thus, a subscriber to an internet connection can not be civilly liable for offenses of monopoly copyright occurring on the connection. Germany circumvented this by subscribers explicitly responsible for activity on non-secure connections, the so-called Störerhaftung .
This led to a predictable explosion of so-called speculative invoicing in Germany - where the offices of shady lawyers who claim to represent the exclusive owners of the man sent threatening letters for identities subscribers IP addresses they find in swarms torrent. For some reason, the German ISP help law firms providing the subscriber identities. In most of the civilized world, this practice died and was declared fraudulent ago about ten years, but he lives in Germany, according to a German Supreme Court, making Germany lagging in Europe IT usage patterns by five to ten years.
However, Tobias McFadden, an activist of the German Pirate Party, decided to challenge this doctrine against the EU directives - especially mere conduit principle in the directive e- trade, the immunity of a messenger ISP. McFadden argued that his company, providing open wi-fi for customers, should be under the complete and total shield that responsibility as an Internet service provider. The Advocate General agreed with this, within the narrow framework of a company offering wi-fi for customers. However, there is no indication is not also applicable nonprofit providing such an open wi-fi for customers - and in the final stage, ordinary households do the same for the neighbors. Although it will probably need another test case for the Court, it is not a step further.
This is important because of open wireless defense .
In Denmark, the Supreme Court ruled in the opposite direction of Germany, that simply subscribing to an IP address was not enough to make someone legally responsible (according to EU directive). To establish guilt and liability, copyright law industry thugs suddenly needed to get physical computers used for infringement, instead of just waving an IP address to the court. The head of the fight against piracy Danish group (APG) was commenting on the case:
"I will not directly say that we can not afford it, but it could be that expensive could mean we can not pursue such questions, "said Johan Schlüter. "We can not accept that we have become completely castrated ..."
Yet they were, and have remained so. Completely castrated, that is. The last thing you heard anything about the firm Schlüter, he was indicted for defrauding holders fifteen million US.
The Danish APG, as the law firm of Schlüter, had used the same kind of speculative invoicing that Germany is still sending threatening letters to the Danish people en masse requiring an insane amount and offering to settle for half if it was paid within ten days. Essentially, he was racketeering through and through. After the open wireless defense was established in the above case - the meaning people could point to an open wireless access point and claim that no technical evidence existed that identified himself as As part - Danish racketeering activity just stopped virtually overnight. They knew they could not win in court, and everyone also knew they could not win in court. The game was a little more.
In other words, media reports have completely missed the significance of this case. This does not mean that the few monopoly infringements of copyright that take place on the wi-fi access points unprotected can not be prosecuted, as was claimed in the tech media. Instead, because of the way the connection with the speculative invoicing and open wireless defense, it means that not home European private copying can be continued with the speculative invoicing in the future, and which is a little larger.
it may take another case or two, but it seems that the racket of the German copyright industry comes to a quick end and very welcome similar. These liability laws meant that the computer models in Germany has fallen behind the rest of Europe by five to ten years.
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