[pp.int.general] Companies that trap and sue P2P users in Germany

[Maxime Rouquet]

On 03/09/2012 10:49 PM, Markus Drenger wrote:
> in a court case those companies problably win, by providing "evidence"
> recorded by their secret p2p-observer software.

With IP address and time, one may identify the owner of an Internet
access, but this does not constitute an evidence. Apart from "false
positive" problems, you have absolutely no certainty whether the user of
the line at that time was the owner... or somebody else.

In France, courts reject claims about copyright infringement with no
other pieces of evidence (like confessions, police investigation, etc.)

HADOPI law was a consequence of that : first they tried to get rid of
the judges by giving to the HADOPI the power to disconnect citizens
without a fair trial. When the Constitutional Council censored this
first version, they focused on a "failure to secure" infringement.

Funny point is that detecting an IP address is no evidence that the
owner of the related Internet access did not secure his connection.
Presumption of innocence asking for the complainant to bring such
evidence, HADOPI is in the same dead end than the previous laws.

Has a German court ever ruled a case based on such recordings ?