Music industry rebuffed across Europe on file-sharing identifications
'Disproportionate'
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
A German court has refused to order ISPs to hand over user details to the music industry. The incident is not the first in Germany, and follows the opinion of a European Court of Justice Advocate-General backing the stance.
A court in Offenburg, Germany refused to order ISPs to identify subscribers when asked to by music industry groups who suspected specified accounts were being used for copyright-infringing file-sharing, according to German news service Heise Online.
The court said that ordering the handover of details would be "disproportionate", and that the music industry had not adequately explained how the alleged actions of subscribers amounted to the "criminally relevant damage" needed to force the identification of users.
The ruling follows the publication two weeks ago of an Advocate-General's opinion prepared for the European Court of Justice (ECJ) which said that countries whose law restricted the handing over of identifying data to criminal cases only were compliant with EU Directives.
Advocate-General Juliane Kokott produced advice for the ECJ on a Spanish case in which a copyright holders' group wanted ISP Telefonica to hand over subscriber details to it.
Kokott said that details did not have to be handed over in civil cases such as Telefonica's, and that they only had to be handed over in criminal cases. The ECJ does not have to follow an Advocate-General's advice, but does so in over three-quarters of cases.
Another German authority had made a similar decision earlier this year, according to Heise Online. The chief prosecutor's office in Celle refused to offer a handover because it said that substantial damage had not been shown, and that it doubted that music industry representatives would use the evidence to bring a criminal case.
If European authorities begin to refuse to order the hand over of subscriber details in civil cases it will severely hamper the music industry's attempts to take civil action against file sharers.
In most European countries, including the UK, copyright infringement is only a criminal offence when conducted on a commercial scale. Most individual file-sharing would be unlikely to count as a criminal offence.
The ECJ's Kokott said that EU Directives allowed for countries to have laws refusing to hand over data except in criminal cases. It was on one such law that Telefonica relied in its case.
"In the first instance the court ordered Telefonica to communicate the requested information," said Kokott's opinion, in an unofficial translation from the Spanish produced by OUT-LAW.COM. "However, Telefonica opposed the order, alleging that in no situation could it hand over the details given that under article 12 of the [Spanish] IT services and E-commerce legislation, this data could only be handed over in a criminal investigation or where it was required for reasons of public safety or national security. Only in these cases could a service provider be obliged to hand over the data that by law it is obliged to keep."
The Spanish court in that case asked the ECJ to rule on whether or not it should order Telefonica to hand over the details in a civil case, or whether giving details would breach data protection and privacy laws.
Kokott said that she backed Telefonica's view that ISPs are obliged to hand over details only in criminal cases, and not in civil cases.
Copyright © 2007, OUT-LAW.com
OUT-LAW.COM is part of international law firm Pinsent Masons.
COMMENTS
@Keith T
I understand what you're saying however most of it only applies to the minority of extremely successful artists. Many smaller artists struggle to get by, let alone earn enough to retire in luxury after a few years. Through one sided distribution deals and royalty agreements it is the big record labels represented by the RIAA that usually end up with most of the money
Entertainment vs science
No sane person that considers themselves any part of the science of computing will approve of the US entertainment industry trying to tell them what they can and can't do with a particular sequence of 1's and 0's.
Excessive Royalties Actually Reduce Amount of Artistic Works
The fundamental claim of the RIAA is that all this royalty money is required to encourage artists to produce more creative work.
However, most audio recording artists retire from creative work after only a few successful years.
The retire on the exorbitant royalties of their work. (They may continue to perform, but merely preform what they have already created. And while there are some exceptions, these exceptions are motivated to create by something other than money: perfecting their art, communicating with people, or fame.)
This contrasts with successful painters, sculptors, and broadcasters, who generally continue creative work their whole lives.
It is an example of what economists call the "backwards bending supply curve of labour".
1. In general, pay workers more per unit of work and they initially they work longer.
2. Once workers have most of the material possessions they really want, they start to purchase leisure time: Workers use their increased rate of pay to reduce the duration of their work they do.
In other words, exorbitant royalties cause most audio recording artists to retire from creative work after just a few years.
(This is starting to apply to the medical profession in many countries. Pay your physicians and surgeons enough, and you will see them start to spend more time on holiday.)
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Cloud based data management
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
