Archive notice: This article was originally published on July 16, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Two men who were charged with trading pirated copie stood trial. In May of last year, police had seized copies of more than 100 computer games and 56 feature films as well as 40 burned music CDs from the two accused. Among the pirated copies, an investigator from GVU – Gesellschaft zur Verfolgung von Urheberrechtsverletzungen e.V. – also found films that were not yet on the market at the time of the download. Although no sale could be provenn against the perpetrators, unlawful downloads could. The judge slapped 100 hours of community service on the main defendent. His accomplice received a fine of 500 euros.
“The illegal downloading of films and games is just as much theft as taking a bar of chocolate from the shop. The sanctions imposed in Halle are intended to strengthen awareness of this. They represent a lesson to the perpetrators”, Jan Scharringhausen, Head of the Legal Department of GVU, comments on the decision. “The outcome of the proceedings confirms the courts’ tendency also to punish copying from illegal sources such as P2P networks”, Scharringhausen continues.
As early as May 2004, the Cottbus Local Court sentenced another defendant who had downloaded several hundred music tracks from the Internet to a fine. At the time, the accused claimed that he had not known the source copies were illegal. In contrast, the judges referred to extensive media reporting about unlawful offerings on online file-sharing networks. Therefore, the court argued, the perpetrator must have been aware of this circumstance.
