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One doesn't know how stressful and infuriating these copyright notices are until one lived in a country with internet hijacked by copyright predators. From the
by durnygbur 5y ago
One doesn't know how stressful and infuriating these copyright notices are until one lived in a country with internet hijacked by copyright predators. From the moment of receiving such notice there is only stress, misinformation, and verbal abuse. Thanks Americans.
PS. It doesn't matter you downloaded free software, every person you'll contact in the process of straightening this out will be equally clueless and abusive.
- newsclues 5y agoI live in Canada and laugh when I get copyright emails for torrents.
- NullPrefix 5y agoIs suing for moral damage out of the question?
- max_hammer 5y agoIn Germany, thier is a whole army of lawyers seeding copyrighted material on torrents to extract money
- ComodoHacker 5y agoHas any other lawyer tried to sue them?
- durnygbur 5y agoBoth copyright predator and counter copyright predator industries are huge in Germany. These two together will absorb any volume of money you'll throw at them.
- andi999 5y agoIt is legal as far as I understand.
- ComodoHacker 5y agoHow is it legal? Do they get permissions from copyright owners?
- buran77 5y agoYes, they represent large content owner conglomerates and have the permission to go after pirates. The shady part is where they can just go to the ISP and request the personal customer information associated to an IP they believe is transferring the infringing content. In Germany the law allows lawyers to ask and get this info from the ISP purely based on suspicion. This is the dirty secret related to how Germany enforces piracy laws. Getting internet access is predicated by accepting that this information will be passed on to private third parties (imagine getting internet access only if you agree to send your identity to Facebook if they want to check you are not violating FB rules by using a fake name). Between this and the fact that a lawsuit is expensive and time consuming, they probably never pursue minor infringement in court if they get a counter from the user's lawyer.
- lgierth 5y agoThey do need a court order, see my other comment
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- elliekelly 5y agoHow does it not violate legal ethics requirements?
- indymike 5y agoAllowing lawyers to create their own cases is a dark, dark pattern.
- andreareina 5y agoIsn't that what got the Prenda Law partners in hot water?
- indymike 5y agoYes.
- buran77 5y agoEven worse, they are given free access (no warrant) to ISP information about the individuals they presume to be infringing so they can tie an identity to an IP linked to infringing material. Lawyers win either way, via the fines that they ask for (people are scared that this could escalate and just pay), or the fees to fight the fines (usually a letter highlighting the situation that personal information was obtained without a court order). So they have all the incentive to propagate the practice.
- lgierth 5y agoThey do need a court order, see my other comment
- buran77 5y agoThere are ISPs who provide that information based on agreements with the law firms (what you called the automated process - quite literally there's no meaningful human intervention at any point which goes against every principle). Those cases will be dropped as soon as they receive a counter letter from a lawyer because it's the kind of thing that's supposed to stay in the shadow. A court order is not supposed to be automated because it's exceedingly simple to make it output whatever you want while still claiming good faith.
- arximboldi 5y agoYes! I find it so ironic, in a country that prides itself for it's stance for "privacy", that random predatory lawyers can just get from ISP's the personal details behind any IP address on the basis of potential IP infringement. It is really infuriating...
- lgierth 5y agoThey need to go and get a court order, and with that they request the personal data from the respective ISP. The whole process is pretty steamlined and partly automated though. Source: have been through many copyright claims and currently have a supreme court lawsuit pending.
- durnygbur 5y agoMany claims by copyright predators go through the courts in Munich and Koeln which seem to rubberstamp every case. Cunts from Waldorf Frommer being among the most notorius. If only the healthcare, local administration and other services in Germany were working so seamlessly...
- lgierth 5y agoYep, Waldorf Frommer, and District Court Koeln, fond memories :)
- marcus_holmes 5y agoMy GF got one, and spent a few days worried sick about it. She researched the correct response (iirc it was "don't admit liability and ask for proof that it was her that actually pirated the content" - basically exploiting the flaw that you are not your IP address and they don't know how many other people could have used that IP address). Haven't heard back from them. This law is way too easy to abuse.
- rolph 5y ago>> lawyers seeding copyrighted material on torrents<< this should be considered a release into the public domain, an invitaion to use the file at no charge. >>lawyers seeding copyrighted material on torrents to extract money<< this should be some form of racketeering [trolling isnt strong enough lable]
- durnygbur 5y agoThe copyright predators Waldorf Frommer [1] and their representatives are, or at least were, using services of ipoque GmbH [2] to impersonate peers in BitTorrent networks and collect IP addresses. Then the subscribers' personal data are obtained from ISPs with the court order by the court in Munich. Finally Waldorf Frommer attempts to extort money from individuals on the list. Lawyers from Waldorf Frommer and professionals from ipoque GmbH are participating in racketeering of residents in Germany on behalf of Twentieth Century Fox. [1] https://www.waldorf-frommer.de/team/ https://www.waldorf-frommer.de/team/ [2] https://www.ipoque.com/ https://www.ipoque.com/
- matheusmoreira 5y ago> a country with internet hijacked by copyright predators Yeah, thank god my country is not among this group. We have better things to do than police imaginary american property. I remember reading a news article years ago about some MPAA lobbyist who came here to do his thing. A journalist asked him point blank if intellectual property should be a priority in a country that can barely manage to provide basic infrastructure for its entire population. People are literally hungry and yet this guy is here talking about copyright bullshit. I wish I could find this article again...
- durnygbur 5y agoThis is an awful symptom of American cultural colonialism. They feed with one hand while slapping in the face with the other. Choke with your sitcoms and superheroes.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoYeah. And if you don't at least look like you're cooperating, the USA will put you in a literal naughty list of bad countries and develop "action plans" for dealing with it. https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/2019_Special_301_Report.pdf https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/2019_Special_301_Report... You can't just isolate yourself from them either without massive economic consequences. Even if you suffered through those consequences, they'll probably just force you to trade anyway just like they did with Japan once.
- oscargrouch 5y agoThat's why Biden while being a relief to north-americans(and i completely agree) its worse for the rest of the world at least from the perspective of enforcing north-american policies and legislation worldwide (read big-co, intelligence agencies). Given Trump focus on the internal affairs of the US, while the political climate was toxic at home, at least it let all others breath a little. Now with Biden it will star all over again.. North-american companies, intelligence agencies, basically the status-quo interests being enforced all over.. At least now the government is caring about the environment and as while at home the policies are more left-leaning, i bet the will not be the same for foreign countries, and i expect things like copyright enforcement to gain more strength (basically all the traditional corporate and government bullies) From the perspective of international political affairs its the resurgence of the good'ol "United Corporations of America" policy enforcement.
- marcosdumay 5y agoAt the 90's, under heavy US lobbying, my country made copyright infringement a crime. What that means nowadays is that those people would now need to talk to the police. That implies in bringing some very good evidence, because our criminal system isn't antagonistic, and also facing the criminal consequences of false allegations. As a result, some foreign companies tried very hard to create a copyright predator industry shortly after the criminalization, but had to abandon it. There are still copyright protections, mildly enforced, but not that kind of thing.
- BrandoElFollito 5y agoThis is the case with France, but as usual in France there is the law and then the reality. We had HADOPI, an organization announced as the Hammer of Thor for pirates. Not related but one of the elected members of our Assembly was talking about the OpenOffice Firewall. Many discussions started on how this is legal and whatnot, an ISP also sent the IPs they were required to provides hardcopied on paper. People started to create anti-HADPPI pages, after a chaotic discussion the law was changed from "you are a pirate" to "you did not secure your WiFi enough" (literally). People started to use VPNs and forgot about the organization. Then million of euros were poured into that idiotic organization (ah, we also have a tax on empty CDs and DVDs because they are used to copy pirated stuff...) and the first courts hit with the Hammer of Thor. If I remember correctly, one person was convicted to 2000€. It has now been quietly merged with another organization and I do not know if it still exists. So much money spent on idiots doing idiotic work for idiotic results. Garbage in, garbage out.
- bsd44 5y agoI used to work for an ISP and had to deal with copyright notices (99% DMCA) a lot. This caused me so much anxiety and rage because DMCA is an American law not British, but the management decided to "just take the website down, it's easier than having to go back and forth arguing with the copyright trolls". The amount of legitimate websites we had to take offline was incredibly huge, because the decision was to never question a copyright notice - just do it. So if someone wanted to take someone out they would just send us a DMCA notice and we would do it no questions asked. From all those years and hundreds of cases I would say maybe one or two website owners had the means to fight back. If this is indeed a case of someone trolling the copyright trolls and not a mistake then good for them, I hope they win!
- b0tzzzzzzman 5y agoYou can thank America once they finally manage to push changes to section 230.. It will be so much better then.