C&D letters ‘lucrative business’ in Germany
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- You know all those Cease & Desist letters various lawyers routinely fire out to alleged transgressors of various products / services?
Their ostensible purpose is to stop people from doing naughty things.
But according to Germany’s Gulli, that isn’t it at all, particularly when it comes to file sharers.
Rather, the C&D letters are cash cows.
Boiled down, some 150 rightsholders are “hunting filesharers,” he says.
And it’s a lucrative business.
“Here in germany we have a registered society called Verein gegen den Abmahnwahn eV”, Gulli’s Firebird77 tells p2pnet, going on:
“They support filesharers who’ve received cease and desist letters. There´s also the Initiative Abmahnwahn-Dreipage, a homepage which is managed by Steffen Heintsch who assists filesharers and offers them a lot of information on the topic.
“One of our board-users (princess15114) is also a user of his page and Gulli.”
For about two-and-a-half years she’s been collecting data on C&D letters — type, who sent them, monetary demands, and so on, says Firebird77, continuing:
“The stats have now been analysed and they show one thing clearly: it’s a lucrative business, which is only possible because of an obsolete concept. Copyright. And there’s only one purpose. To make quick money.”
According to the data, about 453,000 Cease & Desist letters were sent to filesharers in 2009. If every one of the recipients paid, “rightsholders and so on would have received 290 Million Euros !”
And that’s more than $429,740,823 CAD.
In 2008 approximately 250,000 C&D letters were sent. But by last year, the figure had swelled to about 453,000.
So who’s trying to milk the cash cow?
- Grain’s & partners – revenue: 31,930,000 euros
- Denecke of Haxthausen revenue: 20,240,000 euros
- U + C lawyers – revenue: 15,250,000 euros
- Graf of Westphalia – revenue: 8,700,000 euros
- Sound branch – revenue: 3,070,000 euros
Gulli also shows the 2009 balance sheet for the infamous DigiProtect, to wit, 161,100 warnings potentially worth 79,190,000 euros!
Firebird77 points out 2.729 datasets collected in 2009 were used.
If you want to do your own analysis, princess15114’s stats are below.
And as Firebird77 says, everyone owes her a vote of thanks.
| Monat | Deutschland | Österreich |
| Jahresbilanz 2009 pdf | ||
| Dezember | Abmahnwahn 2009 pdf | |
| November | Abmahnwahn 2009 pdf | |
| Oktober | Abmahnwahn 2009 pdf | |
| September | Abmahnwahn 2009 pdf | |
| August | Abmahnwahn 2009 pdf | |
| Juli | Abmahnwahn 2009 pdf | |
| Halbjahresbilanz 2009 pdf | ||
| Juni | Abmahnwahn 2009 pdf | |
| Mai | Abmahnwahn 2009 pdf | |
| April | Abmahnwahn 2009 pdf | |
| März | Abmahnwahn 2009 pdf | |
| Februar | Abmahnwahn 2009 pdf | |
| Januar | Abmahnwahn 2009 pdf | |
| Dezember | Abmahnwahn 2008 pdf | |
| November | Abmahnwahn 2008 pdf | |
| Oktober | Abmahnwahn 2008 pdf | Abmahnwahn 2008 pdf |
| September | Abmahnwahn 2008 pdf | Abmahnwahn 2008 pdf |
| August | Abmahnwahn 2008 pdf | |
| Juli | Abmahnwahn 2008 pdf | |
| Juni | Abmahnwahn 2008 pdf | |
| Mai | Abmahnwahn 2008 pdf | |
| April | Abmahnwahn 2008 pdf | |
| März | Abmahnwahn 2008 pdf | |
| 09.12.2008 | Organigramm zur Abmahnung | |
..… and identi.ca
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Gulli – Abmahn-Jahresstatistik 2009 – Gesamtumsatz 290 Mio., January 8, 2010
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January 8th, 2010 at 4:13 pm
People have lost the sense of their own pride and let anyone walk on their feet like sheeps. It is time to wake up guys, take your guns and start hunting the corporates parasites before they enslave us all.
January 11th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
^^^
It looks like the “corporate” game is more complex than just entertainment kartels. They are working together with the bankers and now that the bankers now have all our treasures, they are in quest for total power.
Watch “The Money Masters”, “The Obama Deception” (Obushma?) and the two Zeitgeist films (take the last two with a grain of salt, though).