Germans face five years' jail for illegal downloads

by Bob Crabtree on 27 March 2006, 14:02

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Germans who illegally download films could be jailed for up to five years.

According to TimesOnLine, a new law agreed last week means that, from the beginning of next year, Germans can be jailed for two years for illegally downloading  films for private use and five years for commercial use.

The new law resulted from aggressive campaigning by the film industry in Germany, which TOL reports is the largest market in the EU and has one of the most computer-literate populations. Remarkably, it also says that,

Many Germans watch the latest Hollywood film at home before it has reached the cinemas; parents’ evenings sometimes end with a showing of an illegally copied film in the school gym.

Check out the TimesOnLine piece and let us hear your thoughts in the HEXUS.community.

HEXUS Forums :: 4 Comments

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Posted by joshwa - Mon 27 Mar 2006 11:34
Ok, I know this is German law - but how can they give people 2 years in prison, yet in the UK they've sentanced people to “Life” for Rape / Murder etc yet only kept people in prison for 18 months…

Does the Law system (internationally) not realise which is a worse crime?
Posted by Masterp1ece - Tue 28 Mar 2006 10:05
First i have to say that this law is :mad:
but is was only a matter of time - people earn less money, have to pay higher taxes and
rents. When i go with my girlfriend to the cinema i have to pay for loge 12 € each -.-.
And a dvd cost average 15 €.

I think this law is all up to the CDU, cause they are a “economic party”, and our industry doesn`t earn enough……..

I as a german have to say “our country really sux atm”
Posted by EvilWeevil - Tue 28 Mar 2006 12:58
Germans can be jailed…

I'm hoping this means that they won't, at least not all the time.

Imposing tight restrictions is not going to stop it from happening anyway, just like the occaisional suing from the MPAA isn't going to stop illegal downloads. It's not worth the hassle for the copyright owners or the judicial system - they would save time and money by just accepting that this is going to happen a bit and concentrate on the huge amounts of money they're making anyway.
Posted by Spud1 - Wed 29 Mar 2006 09:09
Well I totally agree with them imposing jail sentences, and I agree that this movie piracy is no different to walking into a shop and stealing a dvd, theft is theft. 2 years is a bit extreme though, a few months would be enough I would have thought?

We will find out how it works next year I guess, I think that once they catch a few people and throw them in jail it might help the situation - it is getting easier and easier for people to get caught these days now that lots of people are using P2P..it's so insecure and un-anonymous that if the feds are actively looking they will find people…

Still it's not really the end users that need catching is it, it's the groups, couriers, and silver bootleggers that need stopping, and I can't see that happening. Sure there were a few busts over the past 5 years, but only 2 really big groups got busted (FairLighT and Razor iirc, cant find the news articles to link to) . Cut off the supply to the p2p networks and piracy will plummet, that is where the governments _should_ be concentrating.