Arrington, get your staff into perspective or you’re losing it.

Also sadly, Duncan was somewhat right with his “pot luck” post. Although it is not as extreme as he has put it, luck is very important in the german system (but it also is in the US I’m afraid, since you never know what kind of jury you get in the end).

But there are ways to direct the luck your way. I bet (I did not check, but I doubt its otherwise) the Rapidshare lawsuit was filed in Hamburg (easy to file more or less anywhere since Rapidshare is not located in germany). Hamburg’s court that deceides copyright and similar cases has a track record of agreeing with the copyright owner. Does not matter how stupid their decission is in the end.

I’ll share what I want and with whome I want. If it’s been tossed onto the internet, where anyone has access to it, then in MY opinion, it’s mine to do with what I want.
Doesn’t matter what Country it’s from.

I’ll check back in a few days to see if there is any further explanation but otherwise I have lost a lot of respect for TechCrunch and Duncan in particular.

Duncan, I understand that this year its election year for you guys, but – on a topic like that – sorry but I really do not get the point why getting political here?

Its fair to say that I would expect a correction and your personal apologies.

1) the decision has yet to be issued. this is another TC article based on a press release
2) civil law v common law
3) another judge 30 miles away has ruled in exactly the opposite way on a very similar case. the legislature will have to sort this out.

so, the thing that is embarrassing is the headline on this post (and the lack of a correction)

Duncan, Schatzi, for somebody who worked for a political party (even if in Australia), you’re pretty ignorant. While “the Yanks” helped us to finally get a stable democratic *political* system (there was a democratic system before 1933), the German *legal* system has been continued after 1945 since only individual laws were problematic. It’s basis is similar to that of all of Germany’s neighbors.

Back to the Rapidshare topic: It’s a decision by a mid-level court (Rapidshare can still appeal), and the PR about the decision mostly comes from GEMA (music industry). This article (from Germany’s best computer mag) http://www.heis...r/meldung/96678 tells me that the actual outcome for Rapidshare users is not yet clear — case law or not.

BTW, why don’t we hear anything about the limitations to Internet “freedom” your own party is planning to impose in Australia?

So now all they’ll have to do is send tons of C&D letters to smaller file hosting companies, charge them a few thousand bucks and threaten them with much more expensive lawsuits – and you’ll see these services shut down left and right.

Sure, bigger companies like Rapidshare can defend themselves in court, but Joe Shmoe’s hosting will most likely just cave in. And there are quite a few of those …

This is the same strategy that the music industry used to wipe out all links to Allofmp3.com and Slysoft.com in the German web sphere. You didn’t need actual case law precedence for that, a single injunction was just fine.