130 Filesharer Homes Raided in Germany

Flo writes "Today, 130 homes have been raided in Germany under the allegation of filesharing. Law enforcement agencies had been monitoring an eDonkey-Server for two months. 3500 identified users are being investigated. Searches took place when users shared more than 500 files. Partners of the music industry helped identifying copyrighted material, but monitoring of the servers was solely done by law enforcement."

Re:Easy to guess what's coming

[Who235]

From Wikipedia:

"There is a widely recognized codicil that any such deliberate invocation of Godwin's Law will be unsuccessful."

Better luck next time. . .

I'm not surprised about this happening in Germany.

[Rahga]

Tired of blaming Disney and the US government for extending copyright protections? You had the wrong target anyway... the US and the rest of the world usually falls right behind Germany's lead in extending their terms to reach back until 1919 and the Treaty of Versailles. That milestone saw Germany lose Asprin and all sorts of intellectual property, and they've been fierce in protections ever since. International trade agreements means that everyone has to play by aproximately the same rules in this space, and decent copyright terms are now long dead.

English article

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1196 [slyck.com]

BBC Coverage

[Anonymous Coward]

Police act on German file-sharing

Police in Germany have charged 3,500 users of a file-sharing network in the biggest single action against the illegal distribution of music online.

BBC story here [bbc.co.uk]

Re:Not much sympathy

[shark72]

"First off, copyright infringement is neither stealing nor piracy."

I'll avoid the "stealing" issue here (lest we get into "stolen thunder," "theft of service," and other colorful but inaccurate phrases) but "piracy" is what's known as a homonym, or what some call a homophone. I think you're thinking of piracy in the sense of "piracy on the high seas" but it has a separate definition relating to unauthorized copying of copyrighted material (type "dict piracy" into the Firefox URL window if you don't believe me -- and amazingly enough, this definition goes back some 300 years). Slashdotters aren't confused by the fact that "bark" is both a tree covering and the sound a dog makes, but lots of Slashdotters are tripped up by "piracy" -- so you're not alone.

"How many homes were raided when they found out that the RIAA was illegally price fixing? How many people went to jail?"

The price-fixing settlement is not what you think it was. I believe you're of the understanding that it was record companies colluding to keep their prices in line with each other. The reality is that it was Universal (not the RIAA -- the RIAA is a trade group to which Universal belongs) that was caught attempting to set the price of their product at the retail level. Here's how it went down:

1. Best Buy and Wal-Mart started selling CDs as loss leaders (selling at sub-optimal margins, or even at a loss) to get consumers into their stores. They could do this because they didn't need the profit on the CDs to pay the rent.
2. A few dedicated CD chains (Tower Records, TWE and one store the name of which I forget) complained to the record companies. Unlike Wal-Mart and Best Buy, they didn't have a vast store of high-margin clothes and electronics. They simply could not match Best Buy and Wal-Mart's pricing on CDs.
3. Universal set up what's known as a MAP program with these retailers. It stands for "Minimum Advertised Price" and it's still prevalent in many industries. With a MAP program, a manufacturer helps pay for a retailer's ads (called co-op ads) with the stipulation that the advertised price not fall below a certain minimum. Of course, the retailer can still sell a product for whatever price works for them, but if they advertise a product from a vendor with whom they're on a MAP program, they have a price minimum.
4. Best Buy and Wal-Mart got wind of this, and complained to the government. The government then bitch-slapped Universal.
5. Best Buy and Wal-Mart had the last laugh. They still sell CDs for cheap. Tower Record subsequently filed for bankrupcy, and has been sold a few times since.
6. Lots of other industries -- including the computer industry -- still happily use MAP programs. For instance, this is why you rarely see the Bose SoundDock listed for less than retail. I could list dozens of other examples.

When Universal was running the MAP programs, it only affected you, the consumer, if you had bought CDs at Tower or TWE during that period.

The winners here are Best Buy and Wal-Mart. The losers are the dedicated music chains like Tower, and the indie record stores that must fight to stay in business in the wake of Best Buy and Wal-Mart, who don't need to worry about making a profit when they set their pricing on CDs. The price-fixing settlement was good news for you if you subscribe to the "What's good for Wal-Mart is good for America" theory, or if you're a fan of the homgenous music that the big box retailers sell. It was bad news for you if, like me, you're a fan of indie record stores. The lesson here is "don't piss off Wal-Mart or Best Buy."

Universal admitted no wrongdoing when they agreed to the settlement. Since I work in the computer peripherals industry, where we still use MAPs, I've got to agree with them here.

I wish I could tell you that the price-fixing settlement was what you thought it was; it would fit in with the whole "record companies are evil" thing. But you're off-base here.

Re:Why the police were involved...

[Zatic]

Copying for private use neither a criminal nor a civil offense in Germany, as long as the source is not an evidently illegal one (ie a movie before its released on DVD - or filesharing).

Copying from an illegal source is a civil offense. So law enforcement still isn't involved at all.
However, distributing copyrighted material is a criminal offense (up to 3 years in prison). And since one can't really download without uploading, law enforcement must investigate any complaint by the copyright holders.

What the attorny said was that "they expect to find all kinds of material, ranging from music to child pornography".

The server also wasn't run by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), but was monitored by them with a "custom developed software".
Also, the operation of an edonkey server is legal in Germany.

Re:Solved!

[Zatic]

Germanys law enforcmement agencies have in fact large departments dediceted to shut down child porn and the like. And I am sure they know quite well who the real criminals are. However, if they get a legal complaint from a copyright holder, they simply have to investigate.

Re:I'm not surprised about this happening in Germa

[Zatic]

Germany's copyright laws aren't that strict actually. It is still perfectly legal to copy a CD or MP3s from your neighbor or even a DVD you rented for private use. And you can make copys of these copys and share them with your family and friends and it's still legal. Of course the industry is constantly trying to change that. They managed to get an insanly stupid copyright act introduced, which makes it illegal to circumvent "effective technical copyright restriction". To this day, their is no clarifying judgment on what the heck is an effective restriction and what is not. After all, you could argue that as soon as the restriction is cracked, is isn't effective anymore.

In other news...

[rapiddescent]

EMI Group (a big record company) posted their results yesterday [emigroup.com]

Some highlights:

• Profit before tax increased 12.9% in one year

• Group digital sales increased to £112.1m from £46.9m. Momentum remained strong during the fourth quarter, with group digital sales more than doubling to £41.2m

• Group operating margin increased by almost a full percentage point to 12.0% from 11.2%. This improvement was driven by higher revenues, a greater proportion of revenues from digital, and the delivery of previously announced cost savings

• Underlying diluted earnings per share increased by 19.8% to 15.7p from 13.1p

So it doesn't exactly look like times are tough in the record industry in Europe at the moment. If the european authorities are worrying about margin erosion for european industry then there are plenty of other targets way ahead in the queue.

Re:This confirms it.

[professionalfurryele]

Erm, the police do choose what laws to enforce and what to ignore. Pretty much any crime on an ordinary citizen has zero chance of being solved. That would suggest to me that more resources should be devoted to that. If that means completely ignoring copyright infringement, instead of completely ignoring muggings, burglary, etc, then that is something I can live with.
Bottom line, the police only care about organised crime, crime involving rape or death (got to keep the proles happy somewhere) and crime that their politician overlords have dictated is important. And what is copyright infringement such a serious crime? Because our politicians are bought and paid for.

Re:firewall domestic/national peers?

[Rakshasa Taisab]

That is just an arbritary limit you decided upon. (Unless you weren't including the plural of friend in your argument, but since this is /. I'll just assume you have no comprehension of that concept)

So making a copy to a friend (1) in sharing, and making copy to a second friend (2) is also sharing, same for that other friend of yours (N + 1). Now, by this we can deduce that it is ok to make copies to infinitly many friends.

Re:Easy to guess what's coming

[shenanigans]

That's because Godwin's Law is a descriptive law, not a normative law.

It describes what happens when a thread goes on long enough, and says that eventually someone will compare the other side to Nazi germany. It never says that anything should happen, that would be a normative law.

You can't invoke Godwins law any more than you can invoke the law of gravity.

Re:Here come dem Nazis !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Die!

It's die!

P2P networks are obsolete.

[Spy der Mann]

The research i've been doing in P2P networks (due to my involvement in the okopipi project [okopipi.org]) has shocked me. In file sharing, we're living in the STONE AGE. Yes, even with bittorrent (which depends on centralized servers, and there's practically no privacy. And anonymous bittorrent like mutorrent is closed source, who knows if they got a backdoor in there).

EDonkey uses MD4 for hashing, it depends on central servers, and has no anonymity at all. And without mentioning queue # 4892 for a popular file.

Unfortunately for filesharers, file sharing networks based on modern P2P architectures is very scarse. The supernodes / ultrapeers approach is obsolete, easy to disrupt both denial of service and eavesdropping attacks.

The future of P2P is Overlay Networks [dynamicobjects.com].

From an architectural point of view, I would recommend the KAD p2p network, which bases its architecture on the relatively-new kadelmia [wikipedia.org] network (See Technical paper on Kadlemia [rice.edu], 2002).

Even then, Kadelmia could be improved because it's based on a Pastry network [microsoft.com] topology - compared to other topologies like De Bruijn Graphs [wolfram.com], proposed by a recent paper [psu.edu] in 2003.

And more research is being done dealing with load balancing [harvard.edu], anonymity [ucsb.edu], trust, reputation [umd.edu], etc.

As I said, current peer to peer networks are in the stone age. Someone needs to design a file sharing network based on the latest research, and publish it.

Re:Criminalization of society

[SlayerofGods]

The problem will only go away when those who make music embrace sharing as a way to popularize it. Those who like it, will pay. What will work better in the long run -- scaring people into paying? Or letting them choose to? If the industry doesn't realize the answer and tries to criminalize society instead, it's time for people to force them to. I really hope that initiatives like the Swedish "Pirate Party" are successful in working towards the decriminalization of non-commercial copying.

That's pretty naïve IMO. If itunes (for example) had two buttons 'Buy this music and help out the artist' and 'download for free' you honestly think people are going to buy it? People want stuff for free. The only reason people still do buy music/videos/games whatever is because a)they don't trust the network b) simply haven't heard of it or c) it's not easy to use (because it's fulled with junk or what not). If you remove the criminalization of those networks you've basically removed all 3 hurdles.

Re:I invoke my Triple-S Rule

[kimvette]

It means that with these suits, they get to tear consumers new wazoos!!