The German top court has ruled this week that Internet users must password-protect their Wi-Fi, or face a fine if someone accesses their connection and then downloads music or movies illegally.
Those with unsecured connections face up to a 100 euro fine if “a third party takes advantage” and is then caught doing so.
“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,” reads the court decision.
With that being said, the court did say the users were not responsible for the illegal content downloaded by those accessing their unsecured connections.
Additionally, the court said users would only be expected to add a password when they first set up their router, and not need to constantly update to the latest protections as they become available.
The ruling followed a lawsuit filed by a musician who sued an individual user for illegally downloading his music. The user proved he was away on vacation when the music was downloaded, but did admit he had unsecured Wi-Fi.
Result for: illegal content
The civil trial against Mininova, brought forward by the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, has been postponed one month today.
The outcome of the case will determine whether the torrent indexing site will have to “actively filter” torrents from its index daily. If BREIN is triumphant, Mininova will be forced to remove all .torrent files that lead to unauthorized content such as pirated movies, music or TV shows.
“The reason for this postponement is solely due to personal circumstances of our attorney and has explicitly nothing to do with the content of the case,” says Mininova’s staff.
Additionally, Mininova President Erik Dubbelboer notes:
“The case wont say much about the legality of torrent sites, but it will give more insight into what measures BitTorrent indexers and similar services have to take in order to make sure that they don’t link to illegal content. In particular, it deals with the question of whether or not website owners have to actively filter content. In other words, is a notice and takedown policy sufficient or not.”
Result for: illegal content
The infamous BitTorrent tracker, The Pirate Bay, is continuing to grow at a rapid rate. The site announced that is has reached 22 million peers this week, an increase of 10 million peers since April this year. Earlier this year, the tracker had set itself a goal of reaching 20 million peers and recently smashed that figure in much less time than was expected.
The site currently is host to over 3 million registered members and is evidently used by multiple times that figure. The site has survived attempts to shut it down from all angles, but its users have never suffered any major inconveniences or outages from those efforts. The site ridicules legal threats and other notices from legal reps of content companies and publishes them for all to see, and has had no problem standing up government pressure.
The site maintains that it is, and always has been operating legally since it does not offer any illegal content whatsoever to its users.
