German Court Says 'Accidental' File Sharing Isn't A Crime

from the accidentally-on-purpose dept

Fri, Jun 12th 2009 9:02am — Mike Masnick

Michael Scott alerts us to the news that a court in Germany has found that accidental file sharing is not a crime. In this case, it involved a guy using file sharing software, where he didn't realize that anything he downloaded was automatically shared. For that reason, he was found not guilty of sharing the same content. Of course, as the article notes, this isn't likely to be meaningful in other lawsuits in Germany for a variety of reasons, including the lack of precedential power of court rulings, and the fact that most copyright cases in Germany are civil, rather than criminal cases (this one was criminal, because of the nature of the content). Still, in an era when "accidental infringement" has become pretty much the norm, it's nice seeing a court realize the problems of charging someone for infringing by accident.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: accidental file sharing, crime, germany

16 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2009 @ 9:09am

The gun went off your honor, it was an accident. I didn't know it would go off.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Designerfx (profile), 12 Jun 2009 @ 9:31am

Re:
uh? that's not even a close comparison. Way to compare apples to volkswagons, here.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Chronno S. Trigger (profile), 12 Jun 2009 @ 9:54am

Question
Was this guy in a criminal case because he downloaded the "violent pornography" and the infringement was a secondary charge? Or was he in a criminal infringement case and the only reason it was criminal was because of the content of the infringing material?

Basically I'm asking if violent pornography is illegal in Germany (I could see some being illegal) or did some uptight asshole make it a criminal case because they were offended by legal porn.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
zellamayzao, 12 Jun 2009 @ 10:09am

Re: Re:
Its Volkswagen actually.

Sorry....big fan of them. Had to correct you
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Idaho Potato Commisioner, 12 Jun 2009 @ 10:12am

Re: Re: Re:
tool
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Chronno S. Trigger (profile), 12 Jun 2009 @ 10:17am

Re: Question
OK, never mind. I think I figured it out. This wasn't an "accidental infringement" case it was accidentally sharing an illegal file. If the file was illegal to download that it must be illegal to upload.

Well, in that case I think it falls under "Ignorance of the law is no excuse". So he didn't pay attention to the software, that's his own damn fault.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
zellamayzao, 12 Jun 2009 @ 10:34am

Re: Re: Question
I was thinking the same thing about being ignorant of the law. Well playing the stoopid card worked in his favor so congrats to him I guess.

I can hear him in court now,

"Ich weisse nicht, Ich weisse nicht"
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2009 @ 11:23am

Re: Re: Question
It's not ignorance of the law. Ignorance of the law would imply that he intentionally performed an action that was illegal, without knowing it was illegal.

The point here is that there was absolutely no intent to perform the act that he was charged with. He was cleared of the charge of "Distribution" because he had no intent to distribute the material, and didn't even know that it was being distributed from his computer.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2009 @ 12:28pm

Maybe they should arrest his computer?

Well, it couldn't be the software's fault, they would have safe harbor from that, wouldn't they?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Overcast (profile), 12 Jun 2009 @ 12:36pm

The gun went off your honor, it was an accident. I didn't know it would go off.

No - that's an ok analogy. If the charge was specifically "First Degree Murder" - then you would in fact be found innocent of that charge.

Of course; after that - it might end up being manslaughter, etc - but for the 'accused offense' of Murder in the First degree, it would not apply.

So yeah - a prosecutor could goof that up if the legal docs weren't in order somehow, I'm sure.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2009 @ 4:18pm

This one ties together nicely with Mike's "dog ate my homework" post.

It's nice to see the courts open up another flaming huge loophole that you could drive a truck through.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Errrr, 12 Jun 2009 @ 5:47pm

Re:
What ?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2009 @ 5:55pm

Re:
Wow - how lame is that
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2009 @ 9:08pm

Re: Re:
The court just created another exception for "infringers". This is the "dog ate my homework" excuse, a total lie but difficult to disprove. Did you really intend to share that file, or did you just not realize what that nasty, sneaky piece of software actually did?

It's another huge loophole.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
CleverName, 13 Jun 2009 @ 1:29pm

Re: Re: Re:
"It's another huge loophole"

In Germany maybe ...

But I still do not get the relationship to the other story about the corrupted files.

I didn't know that was in the shared folder
... is equal to
I'm going to turn in a corrupted file because I didn't do the assignement

Both are total lies ? Ok, I guess.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Jun 2009 @ 5:05am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
"SODDI" "dog ate my home work" "two black youths" - all excuses for why people aren't responsible for their own actions.
[ link to this | view in thread ]