A German software developer is alleging that a company hired by rights holders to hunt down file sharers actually helped to seed the file he eventually got sued for, according to a report from heise.de.

Hannover-based software developer Daniel Finger got sued for downloading and distributing a pornographic video via Emule. However, Finger not only maintains that he got duped into downloading the movie through misleading file names, he also thinks he actually received the movie from the very people that later helped to bring charges against him – a practice that would be very close to entrapment, and in this case quite possibly illegal itself.

The crux of the case is that Finger used a modded no upload Emule client, meaning the client was only able to download dta, but not contribute anything to the network. That kind of behavior is frowned upon in P2P communities, but it’s also been regarded to be an effective shield against potential lawsuits. Don’t upload any data, and no one will know what kind of files you’re downloading. No one except the people you’re downloading from, that is.

Of course it’s debatable whether rights holders can use their own works as baits to catch file sharers. Some might call this entrapment, while others would probably argue that rights holders can distribute their works however they chose to, and still insist on the exclusive right of distribution. Read more »

Germany’s Pirate Party continues to attract support and attention in the weeks leading up to the country’s federal election. Representatives of the party were elected to participate in two city councils in North Rhine-Westphalia. The Pirates also did reasonably well in Saxony’s state election, where 1.9 percent of the votes were cast for the party.

Roughly 2000 people voted for the Pirate Party in this Sunday’s city council election in Muenster, a town known for its large student population. That’s about 1.6 percent of the vote – enough to seat one party member in Muenster’s city council. The pirates also won 1.7 percent of the vote in Aachen, which is the home of a well-known technical university. This means there will be a Pirate Party politician in Aachen’s city council as well.

Possibly even more remarkable is the result of Saxony’s state election, where 34,620 people, or 1.9 percent of the participating electorate, voted for the Pirate Party. That’s far from the 5 percent needed to enter the state’s parliament, and unfortunately only about a third of the number of votes cast for the neo-fascist NPD party – but it’s impressive nonetheless.

Saxony’s Pirate Party did particularly well in urban areas like Dresden, where it was able to get 3.43 percent of the votes. The Pirates were apparently a little bit overwhelmed with these results themselves: The party’s web server has been returning error messages ever since word about the results got out late Sunday.

German file sharers received countless settlement notices for allegedly sharing copyrighted material in recent years, thanks to companies like Digiprotect and Logistep. However, it looks like P2P users, and others wrongfully accused of file sharing, may have a new ally: Saxony’s Consumer Advocates (Verbraucherzentrale) recently announced a new legal aid program to help recipients of settlement notices. The organization’s press release quotes spokesperson Beate Scharf:

“You should take the deadlines of these notices seriously, but never sign any settlement without prior review.”

Many recipients of these settlement letters have never even shared any files, according to the consumer advocacy group, but merely registered the Internet account used for the alleged infringement. German courts have disagreed in the past on how to handle these and similar types of liabilities, but most recipients just agree to pre-settlement offers that cost them hundreds or even thousands of dollars instead of pursuing their case in court. Read more »

Germany’s Undersecretary of Culture Bernd Neumann wants to adopt a three strikes policy against file sharing similar to the one recently enacted in France. “We can’t say that this is out of the question,” Neumann told the audience of a media policy event of the German Christian-Democratic Union (CDU), according to heise.de.

The CDU is currently the majority partner in a coalition government with the Social Democrats (SPD). Germany’s Secretary of Justice Brigitte Zypries, who is an SPD member herself, had previously voiced strong objections against three strikes, calling the idea to boot suspected file sharers off the Internet after three cases of infringement “a completely unreasonable punishment.” Neumann did however get strong support for his position from Germany’s music industry, and he vowed to get Zypries to talk to the major labels about their position.

Three strikes isn’t the only Internet-related issue that’s currently keeping Germany’s politicians busy. The country is also in the midst of a heated debate of how to fight child pornography online. Germany’s conservative Secretary of Family has proposed a country-wide Internet censorship that would have to implemented by ISPs on the DNS level.

Internet activists and civil liberties advocates are outraged about this idea. They have started a very successful online petition drive against it, which has currently more than 100,000 co-signers. One of the concerns that activists have is that child porn will only be the first of many unwanted forms of content to be blocked. They have certainly reason to be concerned: The music industry has already proposed to put file sharing sites like the Pirate Bay and Mininova on these block lists as well. Read more »