[pp.int.general] urgent: data retention and downloading

[Helmut Pozimski]

Am Samstag, 17. Mai 2008 20:09:54 schrieb Reinier Bakels:
> I have found that in Germany the retained data may only be used (§ 113b
> German Telecommunication Act): 1. zur Verfolgung von Straftaten,
>
> 2. zur Abwehr von erheblichen Gefahren für die öffentliche Sicherheit oder
>
> 3. zur Erfüllung der gesetzlichen Aufgaben der Verfassungsschutzbehörden
> des Bundes und
>
> der Länder, des Bundesnachrichtendienstes und des Militärischen
> Abschirmdienstes
>
> Short translation:
>
> 1. for criminal prosecution
>
> 2. to prevent severe public security risks (presumably terrorism)
>
> 3. for intelligence agencies
>
> So rights owners have no access to such data either in Germany (like in The
> Netherlands), except indirectly if they report an infringement to criminal
> prosecution authorities. Apparently, the directive makes no provision for
> the use of retained data, except that it must be regulated by law.
>
> ANY MEMBER STATE CONSIDERING TO ALLOW ACCESS BY RIGHTS OWNERS
> ORGANISATIONS?
Yes, Germany. I know that that must sound strange since you reasoned exactly 
the opposite from the laws. It's really a difficult topic and I believe even 
most of our law experts in germany have different 
opinions about it. Recently a law has been passed in germany that forced 
internet service providers to give data to rights owners in civil lawsuits. 
It still requires a decision made by a judge but still, the access is there. 
That caused a lot of confusion because giving out data collected according to 
the data retention law would just be illegal. Our constitutional court 
restricted the access to this data even more than the law. 

Well, what data do they want to give the rights owners then? There are a few 
providers (Deutsche Telekom is one of them) which do not collect data 
according to the data retention law. (They won't be forced to do this until 
2009) Instead they collect the whole data for a week or so "to keep their 
infrastructure safe". And this data of course might be accessed by rights 
owners organizations to sue file sharers. 

The other point is that providers aren't allowed to give rights owners the 
data collected according to the data retention laws, but they are allowed to 
give them their stock data (which means names and addresses of their 
customers). Now some of the music industry lawyers claim that they just want 
stock data and there won't be a problem. Of course, to answer the 
question "Who was only at that time with this IP-Address?", you need to 
access connection data collected under the data retention law. So I seriously 
doubt that they will get through with this. 

Anyway, if data retention isn't ruled illegal by our constitutional court 
soon, I seriously doubt the politicians are going keep their promise not to 
allow rights owners to access this data directly.

Regards
Helmut 


-- 
Bitte beachte, dass dem Gesetz zur Vorratsdatenspeicherung zufolge
jeder elektronische Kontakt mit mir sechs Monate lang gespeichert wird.
Please note that according to the German law on data retention,
information on every electronic information exchange with me is retained
for a period of six months.

http://piratenpartei.de/navigation/politik/ueberwachung/vorratsdatenspeicherung
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