Does anyone have experience with doing this in germany?
Thanks for any answers
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.
They’re fishing with a very large net. I once got a letter saying I illegally downloaded a movie I never downloaded, so their accuracy is also pretty horrible.
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.
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.
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.
I feel like at this point even the ISPs are like “bruh just use a VPN this shit is annoying”
They may as well have said please use a VPN to save us the cost of a stamp next 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.
CGNAT maybe.
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 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???
Telepathy, of course
Yes, thats a Stackenblocken!
Not sure about the neighbors; we don’t watch each other fill the trash containers. I live in a rural area where every home has their own containers.
But the municipalities and the disposal companies do get angry and sometimes check the containers. If they are noticeably improperly separated they are not emptied, and that hurts everyone depending on shared containers.
“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.
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.
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.
One letter = what letter?
Second letter = Maybe consider a VPN & plead ignorance.
Given how often my mail goes missing this seems to be the better take.
Hell I can’t remember the last time I got a bill in the mail where the first notice came before the second notice lol
First letter I started using VPNs. I get so many spam lawyer letters that I can’t remember the last one I opened that wasn’t from my lawyer.
Lawyers use registered mail if they actually want to serve you. I also don’t accept registered mail unless I expect it.
Depends. Those are just letters. First and foremost meant to scare you and do something without thinking it through. You can decide to respond, or not respond, that’s up to you. Though it’s strongly recommended to contact a lawyer before signing any contract with them, admitting to wrongdoing or give them information about yourself. I’d probably try to avoid (5) without legal advise.
If you toss it in the bin, they’ll have to decide whether they have enough evidence and whether it’s worth the effort to actually sue you. Usually that letter was an invitation to settle out of court. At their terms and conditions, though.
And yes, they’re most certainly backed by the media companies. Otherwise they wouldn’t have any business messing with their intellectual property. And maybe the law firm only does letters, maybe they have some number of court cases to achieve each month, who knows? Maybe they already exhausted their more promising X court cases this month and you won’t hear from them again if you decide to just ignore them. Maybe you’re one of the “lucky” few who get sued.
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.
Thank God my country doesn’t pursue piracy at all (unless it’s related to live football matches)
Thank God idgaf about football matches
In Spain sites depending on something hosted by Cloudflare go down when there’s a football (soccer) match. I have no interest in that sport either, but it’s impossible to check even a doctor’s appointment during a football match without a VPN. Thousands of sites are affected.
That’s seriously fucked up. We had the same problem in Italy, but luckily Cloudflare fought back and I think that some companies sued the company that decides the blocks
This is terrible advice, please just get a VPN like IVPN or Mullvad and just keep the letter somewhere*. Anyone telling you to forego a legal professional when it comes to legal issues is leading you astray.
I have no idea what letter they sent and I have no understanding of the legal context, but I would just ignore the letter and starting using a VPN or another alternative.
From my totally uninformed non-lawyer knowledge: It’s more or less safe to ignore random letters from German lawyers until they are forwarded to you by a German court (usually in a yellow(?) envelope).
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.
Nah unless they’re at the door with the cops, all threats are empty.
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.
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.
