Proposed German Law Says Employers Can't Review Applicants On Facebook... But Googling Them Is Fine

from the and-when-Google-leads-to-Facebook? dept

Ah, the bizarre laws politicians think up. There has been plenty of concern these days about your "online permanent record," and it's no secret that plenty of prospective employers check out applicants' online presence in reviewing their candidacy for jobs. However, a newly proposed law in Germany will apparently bar employers from checking out non-career focused social networking sites as part of reviewing a candidate, but they can still search on Google. The details:

Although the new law will reportedly prevent potential bosses from checking out a candidate's Facebook page, it will allow them to look at sites that are expressly intended to help people sell themselves to future employers, such as the business-oriented social networking site LinkedIn. Information about the candidate that is generally available on the Internet is also fair game. In other words, employers are allowed to google potential hires. Companies may not be allowed to use information if it is too old or if the candidate has no control over it, however.

This sounds like politicians overreacting to a specific complaint ("oh my! companies will look at my drunken antics on Facebook!") and coming up with a law that makes no sense at all.

Filed Under: employment, germany, privacy, social networks
Companies: facebook, google

German Photographer Plans To Add Back In Buildings That Opt-Out Of Google Street View

from the proving-the-ridiculousness-of-the-situation dept

We've never quite understood the general fears about Google Street View's photographs, since they're photographs of public places. However, many still seem somewhat freaked out by it all, and especially in Europe, they've continually put new rules and restrictions on Google's Street View operation. Apparently, in Germany, people can specifically request that Google remove images of certain buildings. Of course, this is silly, and to prove that point, a German photographer is going to go photograph all of those buildings that have been excluded, then upload them to Google's Picasa image hosting service, link them up to their GPS coordinates, and then "re-connect" them with Google Maps.

He's basically doing a good job of pointing out how incredibly silly it is to say that you can't photograph something that's in public view. Anyone can photograph it, and with today's technology, those photographs will likely end up online. Pretending that opting out of Google's Street View protects any sort of privacy is folly, so congrats to Jens Best, for coming up with a simple and effective way of showing that.

Filed Under: buildings, germany, jens best, photography, privacy, street view
Companies: google

German Anti-Piracy Group Issues Takedown Over Video It Had No Rights To

from the copyright-as-censorship dept

Reader Drizzt sent over a whole stack of links about an ongoing story in Germany concerning an anti-piracy group in Germany -- Gesellschaft zur Verfolgung von Urheberrechtsverletzungen (GVU) -- who apparently issued some takedown notices on some videos that (a) it had no rights to and (b) which the filmmakers had put up under Creative Commons licenses (that link is the Google translation of the original German). I was going through all of the links to piece it together, but it looks like TorrentFreak has done an excellent job summarizing the situation. Basically, GVU contracted out to a technology "partner," called OpSec Security, and that company screwed up. GVU and OpEc are apologizing for the situation. One of the filmmakers, Mario Sixtus, sent GVU a cease-and-desist for falsely claiming rights over his film, noting that this was nothing less than "digital vandalism," and direct interference of his publication rights. Sixtus also noted that if GVU had found a Hollywood film on his hard drive, would a simple "oops, our bad" have been accepted in response, as GVU and OpSec seem to believe is fine in this situation?

Filed Under: copyright, creative common, germany, takedown
Companies: gvu

Yet Another Study Shows How Copyright Can Hinder The Spread Of Knowledge

from the but-of-course dept

A bunch of you have sent over the article from Spiegel about new research (the latest in a very long line) again pointing out that copyright gets in the way of a thriving writing industry (that's the Google translate version of the original German report). The research compared the book markets in the UK (with a strong copyright law) and Germany (with either weak or non-existent copyright), and found much more writing going on in Germany and (more importantly) much more innovation in the bookselling market. In the UK, where copyright limited printings, books were expensive and only owned by the wealthy and elite. In Germany, where copyright was weak or didn't exist, certainly there was a fair amount of copying of other books, but it resulted in widespread innovation in the book market, including segmenting the market into hardcovers (for the wealthy and the elite) and cheaper paperbacks for those less well off.

Not only that, but the sorts of works created again favor the lack of copyright. While writing in the UK tended to focus on what the wealthy and the elite wanted to ponder (literature, philosophy, language and history), written works in Germany focused on the practical and useful (chemistry, mechanics, mechanical engineering, optics and steel production).

And, despite what copyright defenders will tell you, this system appears to have worked out much better for the authors as well. That's because the rampant competition from other printers meant that printers were in dire need of new and unique material. That meant that the actual writers had the upper hand in negotiations with printers, who always wanted to "break" new publications and get them out to innovate and be ahead of what other printers were doing. The article notes that authors were able to earn quite a lot of money by working with various printers without copyright. As copyright law changed in Germany, and became more widely adhered to, many authors were actually upset as the prices of books rose, and their market and earnings diminished.

Filed Under: copyright, germany, history, uk

RapidShare Once Again Vindicated By Court

from the find-another-devil dept

Over the last few months, we've watched as the entertainment industry has started to turn its legal guns on digital locker sites, like Rapidshare, as being "the new front" for unauthorized distribution of works. They've even been able to get US politicians to condemn Rapidshare as being one of the "most notorious" sites out there. There's just one eensy weensy problem: courts around the globe keep finding what Rapidshare does to be perfectly legal. RapidShare is just a digital locker, has no index or search engine, and is pretty active in trying to stop infringement on its site. In May, a US court rejected a request for an injunction against Rapidshare, which followed a German appeals court basically saying the same thing. Now there's been another ruling in Germany that, once again, says that Rapidshare is legal, and notes that it "takes all reasonable measures to prevent movies from being distributed."

To some extent, I find this amusing. The entertainment industry has kept suing anyone doing anything they don't like, rather than spending any real effort adapting. So each new generation of tools used for file sharing responds to the legal rulings, trying to make sure they don't run afoul of what got the previous generation. Sooner or later, that meant that these sites would pass all the legal checkboxes -- even if they can still be used for unauthorized infringement. So where does that leave the entertainment industry? They could have spent all this time perfecting new business models and adapting -- and done so in a way that embraced what people were doing. Instead, they've bullied their way around, pissed off tons of people, and helped define exactly how one can build a system that isn't guilty of contributory infringement, that will still be used for unauthorized file sharing.

Filed Under: copyright, digitial lockers, germany
Companies: rapidshare

German Newspaper Publishers Want Copyright On Headlines And Full Control Over Content

from the this-ought-to-be-fun dept

Back in November, we had noted with concern that Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel was signalling her willingness to approve special new copyright laws that would give new monopolies to newspapers, massively increasing their ability to control any part of their works online. It looks like that process is moving forward. Glyn Moody points us to an analysis of the current proposal that would massively expand copyright monopolies specifically to protect some legacy business models, but with no concern at all for encouraging actual creativity. The proposal would create new rights for scientific publishing, photographs, public performances and more. Where it gets scary is when they talk about giving newspapers the right to control their headlines. Think of this as the "anti-Google News" clause:

It looks as if publishers might really be lobbying for obtaining a new exclusive right conferring the power to monopolise speech e.g. by assigning a right to re-use a particular wording in the headline of a news article anywhere else without the permission of the rights holder. According to the drafts circulating in the internet, permission shall be obtainably exclusively by closing an agreement with a new collecting society which will be founded after the drafts have matured into law. Depending on the particulars, new levies might come up for each and every user of a PC, at least if the computer is used in a company for commercial purposes.

Well, obtaining monopoly protection for sentences and even parts of sentences in a natural language appears to be some kind of very strong meat. This would mean that publishers can control the wording of news messages. This comes crucially close to private control on the dissemination of facts.

Even more incredible? Some are arguing that these proposals don't go nearly far enough:

Mr Castendyk concludes that even if the envisaged auxiliary copyright protection for newspaper language enters into law, the resulting additional revenue streams probably would be insufficient to rescue the publishing companies. He then goes a step further and postulates that publishing companies enjoy a quasi-constitutional guantee due to their role in the society insofar the state has the obligation to maintain the conditions for their existence forever. As I'm not a constitutional lawyer I won't comment this here but, with all due respect, I would not be very much surprised if such sentence turns out to be lobbyist speech. Utilising the leveraging effect of this postulated quasi-constitutional guarantee, Castendyk demands to amend cartel law in order to enable a global 'pooling' of all exclusive rights of all newspaper publishers in Germany in order to block any attempt to defect from the paywall cartell by single competitor as discussed above.

Yes, the recommendation is to not just grant every newspaper publisher copyright on small snippets of words and headlines, but to then also force them all into a cartel that will put up paywalls, with no ability to get around the paywall. Talk about killing the news...

Filed Under: copyright, germany, newspapers, publishers

As Google Hands Over Collected WiFi Data In Germany, France And Spain, Ireland Tells Google To Destroy It

from the mixed-messages dept

We recently covered how the data that Google collected via its Street View WiFi efforts was caught in this weird legal limbo, between privacy laws, data retention laws and rules about destroying evidence. However, it looks like that's getting settled... but in very different ways in different countries. Somehow, Google has worked out a way to hand over the data in Germany, France and Spain... but over in Ireland, Google has been ordered to destroy the data. Not quite sure how this squares with the privacy laws in Germany, France and Spain... but hopefully we'll find out that the data collected by this system was mostly meaningless and we can get over the hype surrounding this whole thing.

Filed Under: data collection, data retention, europe, france, germany, ireland, privacy, spain, wifi
Companies: google

German Court Effectively Opens The Floodgates By Saying Software Patents Are Legal

from the uh-oh... dept

You may remember that, about six years ago, there was a push in Europe to have the EU Parliament legalize software patents. After a huge uproar among folks who understand just how damaging towards innovation software patents can be, the EU Parliament voted against the idea by a huge margin. Except... software patents are still finding their way into Europe. Last year, we wrote about how the UK was now recognizing software patents by saying that it's not a pure software patent if it makes a "technical contribution," whatever that means.

Perhaps even more alarming is the news, found via Glyn Moody that a German court has effectively allowed a wide range of software patents. Previously, you could have very limited software patents only if they involved using "controllable forces of nature" to create a desired effect. Software usually did not qualify:

By contrast, the new ruling of that court on the document generation program now sets the bar extremely low. It now basically says that a computer is a technical device per se and software that "takes into account" the characteristics of that computer is patentable. To give some examples, if you make sure you don't allocate infinite amounts of memory (since every computer has limits in that respect), that might be enough. Or you ensure that you don't use too much bandwidth over a network.

So, as we sit and wait in the US for a ruling on Bilski, hoping (but doubting) that it will greatly curtail software patents, Germany is going in the opposite direction.

Filed Under: europe, germany, patents, software patents

Hollywood Gets Injunction Against Pirate Bay Bandwidth Provider?

from the what-is-that,-fourth-party-liability? dept

Looks like Hollywood is really reaching at this point. Apparently, they've been able to go to court in Germany and get an injunction against the bandwidth provider for The Pirate Bay by claiming that since The Pirate Bay has been found guilty of copyright inducement, the broadband provider is also responsible. Yes, if you're playing along with the home game, we're now talking about fourth party liability. The bandwidth provider isn't infringing on anyone's copyright. The Pirate Bay isn't infringing on anyone's copyright. It's some users of The Pirate Bay who are. So now we're going further back. Where do we go from there? Fifth party liability? Will backbone providers have to get involved next? Where does it stop?

Filed Under: bandwidth, copyright, fourth party liability, germany, third party liability
Companies: the pirate bay

German Court Says You Must Secure Your WiFi Or You May Get Fined

from the open-wifi-is-illegal? dept

Miranda Neubauer was the first of a few of you to send in the news of a bizarre German court ruling that makes it effectively illegal to offer open WiFi. Seriously:

Germany's top criminal court ruled Wednesday that Internet users need to secure their private wireless connections by password to prevent unauthorized people from using their Web access to illegally download data.

Internet users can be fined up to euro100 ($126) if a third party takes advantage of their unprotected WLAN connection to illegally download music or other files, the Karlsruhe-based court said in its verdict.

"Private users are obligated to check whether their wireless connection is adequately secured to the danger of unauthorized third parties abusing it to commit copyright violation," the court said.

This is backwards in so many ways. First, open WiFi is quite useful, and requiring a password can be a huge pain, limiting all sorts of individuals and organizations who have perfectly good reasons for offering free and open WiFi. Second, fining the WiFi hotspot owner for actions of users of the service is highly troubling from a third party liability standpoint. The operator of the WiFi hotspot should not be responsible for the actions of users, and it's troubling that the German court would find otherwise. This is an unfortunate ruling no matter how you look at it.

Filed Under: copyright, germany, passwords, security, third party liability, wifi, wireless