Ignorance isn’t Bliss: Rights Holders Threatening Lawsuits against Refugees in Germany | c’t Magazin
▻http://m.heise.de/ct/artikel/Ignorance-isn-t-Bliss-Rights-Holders-Threatening-Lawsuits-against-Refugees-i
A neighbour has opened his wifi network to Mohamad, so that the Syrian refugee can stay in touch with family and friends back at home. Mohamad did use that network access to download movies. His software of choice was based on the BitTorrent protocol. BitTorrent downloads files, immediately sharing them with other BitTorrent users.
In February, the neighbour received a cease and desist letter: It demanded payment of Euro 815 for an alleged copyright infringement. Apparently, Mohamad had downloaded the US-made comedy-drama “Paper Towns”. The letter threatened Mohamad’s neighbour with further legal action, since he was the subscriber of the internet acess point used. The choice given was to pay Euro 815 Euro or face a lawsuit.
...
German copyright law for refugees and helpers
By Joerg Heidrich.
Anyone seeking refuge and using the internet in Germany should heed the following basic guidelines. If you are giving refugees access to your own internet connection, you should inform them about this aspect of German law.
German copyright law prohibits the sharing of works without express permission by the rightsholder. If you download files (movies, TV shows, music, software or ebooks) over file-sharing networks such as BitTorrent, you automatically also share them. The internet connection that is used can be discovered by rightsholders by the associated IP address which enables them to serve cease and desist letters to its owner. Even this initial notification carries heavy fees.
Programs that look like streaming clients but which use BitTorrent in the background pose an especially big danger. They distribute parts of the stream to other users. A popular app of this ilk is Popcorn Time which is available on PCs and Android smartphones. Other examples are apps like Vuze and the browser plugin WebTorrent.
Common sense goes a long way. Especially when it comes to movies, a long time will pass in Germany between a flick opening in the cinemas and it being available on the net. It is very unlikely that a well known movie should be legally available as a download a few months after it opened in cinemas – and it’s even more unlikely that it would be available free of charge.
A special aspect of German law is that the operator of a wifi network is legally responsible for illegal actions that are perpetrated by the users of the network. This applies to strangers as well as members of the same family. To retain a minimum of protection against lawsuits, the operator should at least inform his guests about the risks inherent in using file-sharing networks – providing them with this article is a good start. Signing an informal statement that explains the dangers of using the wifi network together with the guest would probably indemnify the wifi operator. But they would have to name the perpetrator of the copyright infringement which would open up the person in question to claims from rights holders.