Does anyone have experience with doing this in germany?
Thanks for any answers
I received a notification for downloading something I didn’t download - I’m not even interested in it. Went to court, court said it was my IP and I had to pay. 1500€ for something I didn’t download. In Germany you have to prove innocence, which is impossible if all you can say is “It wasn’t me.”
I’d rather VPN to some EU country east of Berlin if I were you.
Slovakia has some copyright laws but they’re not that strictly enforced. Also no c&d letter equivalent has arrived to my physical inbox for what I’ve done on the Internet.
In Germany, they don’t have to prove guilt, you have to prove innocence or else you get fined. If you don’t voluntarily pay the fine and they have to go to court, the fine doubles. The system is rigged for the corporations. That’s why they’ve done this in Germany for a long time. The expansions to other countries are experimental.
Nah unless they’re at the door with the cops, all threats are empty.
I had a roommate once that didn’t pay her rent before moving out. Sued her and she got several letters, including the invitation to the court date. She ignored them. Default ruling in my favour, they seized €900 from her bank account.
So yeah, some threats are quite real without the cops having to show up.
That is a very different case from piracy.
The point is that civil cases usually don’t involve the cops but can still have consequences.
I’ll add a clarification to my comment then, because I specifically meant the kinds of threats this post is about.
Thats not correct. Abmahnungen need to be actively dealt with. Ignoring them is not enough. While you do not necessarily need an attorney it is highly adviced to let someone write the letter for you.
Some random source for some infos: https://anwalts-atlas.de/was-passiert-wirklich-wenn-man-eine-abmahnung-ignorieren-sollte/
Sure but have you ever experienced those for piracy?
Personally? No. Since i am not dumb enough to torrent without at least some kind of protection.
But there are law firms that are specialized on this topic, like for example FROMMER-LEGAL.
When you search for then online, you will find many users who have received Abmahnungen.
Don’t even need to respond, just toss the letter. You will never hear from them again. But do use a VPN when torrenting from especially Germany.
was there any case where this didn’t happen
Not that I’m aware of.
Canadian here, I have received these letters in the past through my ISP, once for a dl I did (yeah I raw dogged it), and 1 or 2 from the kid that lives in my house. ISP says basically “We got this letter, we need to forward it to you, we have passed on no information to the sender. Please don’t get caught doing this again. Thank you”. Not sure what would happen if there were hundreds of files downloaded but my ISP is a pretty good one for doing the bare legal minimum to correct users.
Similar happened to me when I was on Starlink. Strongly worded letter to say don’t do it again or further action would be taken. I told my adult kid to smarten up and make sure to use a VPN when tormenting games (which he already knew). Haven’t had a letter since.
Is your ISP TekSavvy by any chance?
Ding ding ding!!!
I love TekSavvy, they’re the only ISP I’ve used that I haven’t had completely horrible experiences with. In fact, I’ve been with them for the last ~3 years and haven’t had a single complaint yet. My parents have been with them for even longer, probably around 10 years, and same deal. No issues.
I have set people up on their systems and their tech support actually listens to your question and answers it instead of taking the meandering each and every insignificant step. I switched to them about ~8 yrs ago and my only issues with them were actually with bell doing something to my connection cause it was in the way or something.
I feel like at this point even the ISPs are like “bruh just use a VPN this shit is annoying”
After talking to someone else at work using Rogers, their VPN shit the bed one night they forgot to stop the torrents, they got a similar letter.
At this point our ISPs should just automatically put us all on rotating non-logged VPNs as part of our packages we already get the modem as part of the service, just integrate it there (not sure if I’m being serious or silly)
That’s literally what they do. But they’re required by law to be able to trace an IP address, so it doesn’t help you. The copyright company asks for who was using this IP address at this time, and the ISP has to tell them.
The ISP keeps the record for 6 months, if the party claiming rights wants to prosecute they have that 6 months to go to a court in the users jurisdiction and ask the judge to grant this info (users name and address). If granted then the info will be retained for a year. Without the judges order all the rights holder has is an IP address that will have another person attached to it after a time
k thanks for ur help, tho why use a vpn when I can do that yk…
Because they can and will try to compile a case on you if they can track significant amounts of upload from you. They will silently do that for years before knocking on your door.
oh ur right
tho does this happen in other countries aswell?
I’m from the czech republic and trying to help a friend.
from what ik in Czechia no 1 cares unless u make money off of it or ur a big fish
Number 1 rule when doing things that could get you punished: Don’t be the lowest hanging fruit. VPN is not much trouble but will make you a much harder to pick target.
In several countries there are laws that let representatives of copyright holders just get from ISPs the contact information of their users on demand (I believe Germany and the UK are like that) whilst in some others there are other similars laws like the ones where the ISPs have to pass the letters from the representatives of the copyright holders to their customers (such as Canada?). In fact as far as I know these kinds of letters only exist in such countries and only since such laws were passed - without such laws it’s the traditional process where a Court Order is required for such things which is way more hassle in general and thus not worth it to go after non-commercial copyright violation.
Add a VPN on the user side and suddently to track the person associated to the IP address detected sharing a specific torrent requires a Court Order (for the VPN provider to disclose that).
Use a VPN exit point in a different country and now that Court Order has to be obtained from a court in a different country from that were the user can be sued.
If in a country with extreme pro-copyright legislation like that, good luck getting enough in damages from a Court for the Copyright violation of somebody sharing a torrent for non-commercial purposes to pay for the cost of simply getting the contact of that person from their IP.
The funny thing is that I personally use vps in Germany. Have nothing in my name
Aren’t those Nazi businesses?
what is a Nazi business? If you mean every business in Germany is required to support Israel or their business license will get revoked, then yes.
Where could one learn to rent a VPS in this manner?
Hetzner for hosting
Use either
https://github.com/XTLS/Xray-core if you want to go through government censorship (Russia, China)
https://getoutline.org/ if you want just to mess with your IP for basic anonymity
Hetzner will ban you if they get one of these letters, even if you aren’t in Germany
Hasn’t banned me for 4 years straight
I used to work the abuse department for an isp back at the turn of the century.
While we covered our arses by emailing customers “we have received a copyright notice blah blah don’t be naughty” email, the companies that filed the “complaint”? Got a big fat “fuck off and come back with an Australian court order”
We never released a single customer detail. Because privacy laws in Australia meant $50,000 per breach.
Meanwhile the AI bros are pirating every media they can get a hold on in total impunity…
But individuals get targeted by lawyers.
Next time tell them you’re training AI
Don’t actually do that. They will take that as admission of guilt.
Tell them the AI escaped confinement but that’s fine because you never told it to do that.
Don’t actually do that. They will take that as admission of guilt.
I wouldnt admit not having a wifi password in germany. Theres the “Störerhaftung”. If its your device you are responsible. Thats why germany has so few open public wifis.
But i never got a letter and looked up what to do? Probably tossing the letter into the trash is enough. Just be sure to seperate your waste properly so your neighbour doesnt sue you.
AFAIK Störerhaftung was abolished, see TMG § 8 (3).
Is the joke that German neighbors get angry over improperly separated waste / recycle?
Not sure what you mean by “joke”. This is no laughing matter.
I mean, i usually don’t watch in my neighbor bin so I would laugh at that…
But then how do you know if they put something in that doesn’t belong???
Yes, thats a Stackenblocken!
In Canada the max they can get from an individual is around 5k which means they don’t often pursue things.
They still send the emails though. At least here unless it’s registered mail I would just toss it.
An acquaintance from Germany received one or two of these letters. They didn’t react and there has never been more.
They told me the letters had big and official, scary looking paper work.
A non-reaction seemed to be enough to fend off these unrealistic accusations, they told me.
It’s been a few years since I heard this story.
“Don’t talk to someone who is a trained professional to handle these kinds of problems, instead talk directly to the party trying to get you into legal trouble” is the dumbest advice I can imagine.
I was in this situation once, when I was the legal contact for the internet used by me and my roommates. One of them apparently downloaded porn and I got the letter. I contacted a lawyer, paid a flat fee (meaning even if it had gone to court I wouldn’t’ve had to pay more), he wrote one letter, saying I don’t even know what a torrent is, and I never heard from them again. I felt much better having the lawyer handle it.
From what I’ve heard from my German friends the network owner, so the one paying the isp bill, is responsible for whatever happens on the network. If someone broke in onto your network and downloaded illegal stuff, you are still liable for the fines as you should have protected your network sufficiently. Maybe you can get away with it if you are able to present hard evidence your sufficiently protected network was broken in to.
It’s the same with speed cam tickets. If you prove in court someone else was driving your car, you won’t have to pay the fine. If you are unable to, you are liable.
Imo it goes against the law. There’s this thing called “innocent until proven guilty”, so the burden of proof lies with the authorities, not with you. But sadly it’s not always the case. This did cause a lot of legal fights though, and to my knowledge this caused the German police to flash cars from the front now, so the driver would be visible in the photo in most situations.
I’ve also received a letter about seeding a torrent when I was in Germany in early 2010s. I went to see a legal aid lawyer, who was almost free, and he already had a prewritten letter saying that basically I was sorry and that I should come back if I received another letter.
The first letter said that if I didn’t pay within a few days, they would start a very expensive legal procedure. About a month later, I received a reminder, so I went back to the lawyer. This time, his letter said that I wasn’t able to pay the amount and that I should come back if I received another letter.
I never received anything after that. So, based on my experience, I agree: it’s all bark and no bite.
In Belgium, just next to it, I know someone who was doing tons of torrenting and sharing with friends and family back in 2005-2010 time and got prosecuted for his piracy (like 5 years after he was doing it) and had to pay huge fines as a young adult from what he did as a teenager. He definitely wasn’t using a VPN and probably port forwarding and openly sharing back in those days. It definitely happens. (Not Germany but neighbors)
Just get and use a VPN with a client kill switch. Paying 50-100€ per year is much cheaper than 10k in fines down the line, and don’t share it with anyone outside of your household.
