Big Music allofmp3 victory
p2pnet.net News:- The news site of the German Institut für Urheber- und Medienrecht provides three decisions on file-sharing. No commentary, just a short round-up:
Apparently, a Hamburg Court has prohibited the distribution of the P2P TV software CyberSky TV. Again.
The software reaches download rates of 400-600 kBit per second so television broadcasts can be swapped in realtime.
Pay channel Premiere feared its programs would be decoded on a PC and disseminated over the internet using the software and claimed copyright law doesn’t allow the distribution of software that makes the free distribution of its programs over the internet possible.
The court followed Premiere’s reasoning. Background on the case in this earlier post on the related temporary injunction. Link [German]
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The German music industry was victorious in a lawsuit against the Russian allofmp3 site, which offers unlicensed music downloads for 2 eurocents per MByte. A Court in Munich has now prohibited allofmp3 from making copyrighted data publicly available within Germany.
In the same press release that brought this news, the music industry also stated said it’s going to take action against sites that support allofmp3, or similar sites, with advertisement or links (see next point). Link [German]
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On June 14, a Berlin Court confirmed an earlier injunction and decided internet portals that provide links to pay sites with downloads of illegal MP3 music files, may be subject to cease and desist orders.
The court considered the portal in question could only claim relief under the Telecommunications law for liability from damages, not for the cease and desist order.
A Hamburg court that excluded liability for external links could also not be a base for the claimed relief. This decision was also restricted to liability flowing from damages. Link [German]
Rik Lambers – CoCo
[Lambers is a former researcher at the Institute for Information Law, Amsterdam, who's now in transition to a new full time job in the field of IP/Internet law. He's also an associate member of the European INDICARE project, which researches consumer issues related to DRM.]
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July 10th, 2005 at 6:21 am
This makes no sense…unless I’m missing something. Who gives a flying fig what a German court says about a RUSSIAN company, whose activity is not prohibited by the RUSSIAN authorities. Can’t that company go tell them to just take a long walk off a short pier? Does it mean the German authorities have the ability to prohibit access to funds of german customers to the russian company, essentially reducing the freedom german consumers should expect when purchasing something from the internet? Is that possible? I can’t see it as a particularly popular decision with German voters..just in case some german legislators who want to get elected again needs votes from voters who feel their rights are being stripped away at the behest of a slimy bunch of coporate music scum.
July 10th, 2005 at 8:46 pm
This is stupid. They can’t get to Allofmp3 so now Big Music is getting German sites that link to Allofmp3. What a childish thing to do.
What is the next step? Attacking sites that provide P2P information?
Jon beware!
July 11th, 2005 at 5:44 am
They can (try to, anyway) stop them from doing business in Germany… at least from a legal storefront. NO way to stop them over the net though.
That being said, I’m not aware of Russian legal systems, etc, but I know many countries look to similar economies when deciding unknown questions, and precidents often get quoted across the civilized world in “new areas” of law.
So, the dominoes start to fall… they get faster as they do.
July 11th, 2005 at 5:46 am
Yep. Remember CSS? They did the same, didn’t they? Information has become power, and power has become something to deny people.
I am just waiting for Google and Yahoo! to get dragged into court for linking to things like this.
Wouldn’t it be sweet to see someone with serious $$$ beat the snot out of an idiotic law? (Not that I think the allofmp3 company is without blame here….)