No one may be disadvantaged or favoured because of his gender, ancestry, race, language, motherland, land of origin, faith/religion, religious or political "ideology".

Unfortunately, that's just a bunch of words on paper. Germany's actual record on discrimination and intolerance continues to be dismal.

http://www.spiegel.de/internat...

http://www.dw.de/european-body...

In many countries, private copying between friends is explicitly permissible; it's one of the reasons people pay taxes on blank media. It's reasonable to think that those activities might fall under "fair use", even in the US.