They aren't? That's great news! Do you have a link to an article reporting about that judgement, by chance?

can we let this abomination of a thread die already, please? CD Projekt have already publicly declared they won't continue the practice due to customer protests. what more do you want? give it a rest.

I'm not going to say that this was influential in CDPs decision to abandon their tactics, but if you look at the date ... ;-P

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Gericht-Filesharing-Abmahnung-ist-eine-voellig-unbrauchbare-anwaltliche-Dienstleistung-1413290.html

Can we please do as I say from now on? I only took part in the discussion to end it. I mean, sure, in some way that means I contribute to reviving it, but of course mine will be the last post here and noone will react to it, right? /trollbait off :P

On a more serious note, you are quite right that everything has been said already and I appreciate CD Projekt Red listening to their customers. But I'd really be interested in this German judgement against this type of procedings that SimonG wrote about. Thank you!

EDIT:

Ah, ninja's already. Thanks for the quick reply! :)

As you seem to have professional law experience and me not, would you like to explain the difference between the two things so somebody without legal training can understand it? :)

Simple. A civil suit doesn't result in the offender having a criminal record (or adding to it) if found guilty.

Well, first of all, there are matters of proofing the claim. In a civil court you only have to make something "plausible", then the other side has to bring up proof that makes this "unplausible". This was, until the above linked judgement, one of the biggest flaws of the way things were handled in Germany.

In a criminal proceeding, you have to be proven guilty. No "pirate" in the sense of what we talk about here can ever be proven guilty, because you simply can't prove what person was sitting in front of that PC. The criminal codes that were made in Germany that cover piracy were made with copyright infringement (Produktpiraterie) in mind. Not kids downloading games. Therefore those criminal codes, while basically fiting on those cases, weren't meant for them. (Otherwise I would have said "piracy isn't a crime", but technically in Germany, for the moment, it is.)

And then we have the problem of the punishment. If those crimes were to be punished under juvenile law, the punishment would have to be tailored on the perpetrator to avoid him commiting crimes in the future. Hint: A fine of several hundred euros isn't going to cut it.

Even if you take proper criminal law, the punishment has to reflect the severity of the crime. This "criminal offense" would, if even brought to court, only cause a monetary punishment. And that again is tailored around what a person can actually pay. (e.g. Hartz 4 it's 5€ - 10€ a day/Tagessatz). The punishment therefore won't be "pay xyz€" but pay 15 time that what you earn a day. Therefore most pirates would be better of by a criminal punishment than by a "civil punishment"

Civil proceedings should only cover damages, but those proceedings in cases like this use a whole different tactic (schadensbewehrte Unterlassungsklage). They don't want damages, the want a "Ersatzpunishment". Which, not only in my opinion, is not only immoral but alos borderlining unconstitutional.

It is usually agreed among judges and legal professionals in general that "anti-social behaviour" should be decriminalized, because of several social and practical problems I'm not going to explain here (try google).

I could go on and on, but I think you can get the point.

Well, I've never been visited by the PC Game Police yet; although after Bethesda released "The Elder Scrolls V:Skyrim" I wrote them and told them that since they released it with "STEAM" that I would never purchase that game until it was offered on GOG without any DRM.

Their response was to remove\block me from accessing any or all of their sites such as: Bethesda's home page, all the NEXUS sites that have grown up around them offering free Mods to many of their games. If they wrote me an email I never received it as I gave them one that I haven't used for years.

(Did I just say this online and out loud?............maybe I just burped.................oops!)

Thanks to you and also Kabuto for the explanation. I get the difference. It depends strongly on the definition of the word crime which seems not to be used in civil court cases. I am fine with it and will then use another word or phrase, maybe just "defending your rights".

I also see that the fines are much to high. It's said, some lawyers live from this, which is surely not the purpose of it. I have nothing against adjusting the fines to earnings per day. However to have a deterrent effect the average fine should be much higher than the normal price of a game. As for the statement that you can never can prove pirates guilty - I think that you always in any case have to settle with somewhat below 100% sureness. Especially if looking at what a appropriate fine would be, it is in my opinion justifiable to hold IP connection owners accountable for everything that happens with their connection, especially if it happens several times. So maybe the first time you just warn people, the next time you start cashing reasonably. This should increase the probability to only catch real pirates who do real damage to a sufficiently high ratio. I would be fine with this. I see this as the best compromise between all legimitate interests. If you don't do it, you force the industry to go all OnLive like. That's how I see it.