Ernest Miller pursues research and writing on cyberlaw, intellectual property, and First Amendment issues. Mr. Miller attended the U.S. Naval Academy before attending Yale Law School, where he was president and co-founder of the Law and Technology Society, and founded the technology law and policy news site LawMeme. He is a fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.
Ernest Miller's blog postings can also be found @ Copyfight LawMeme
Feel free to contact me about articles, websites and etc. you think I may find of interest. I'm also available for consulting work and speaking engagements. Email: ernest.miller 8T gmail.com
Constitutional Code has a great roundup of information on several decisions in German courts regarding the copyfight (German File-Sharing Round-Up: TV P2P & Advertisement). One version of P2P software cannot be distributed, it is illegal to link to allofMP3.com, and although internet portals are protected against damages for linking to sites that permit infringing, injunctions may still issue against them. Read the whole thing.
The interesting one is that about allofmp3.com, because the German music industry did not win that lawsuit yet, they just managed to get an "Einstweilige Verfügung", a preliminary injunction. It states that allofmp3.com is not allow to publicly distribute copyrighted material in Germany. Again, this is *not* a judgement yet. However, the music industry has started to send cease & desist letters to websites of all sizes that link to allofmp3.com. Each of these letters demands lawyer fees of nearly 3980 Euros (about $4850). Putting all discussion about the legality of allofmp3.com in Germany aside, sending out C&Ds with such fees based just on a preliminary statement is only another example for the media industry going completely overboard.
On a sidenote: The same court (Landgericht München I) recently ruled that a popular German IT magazine (heise.de) had to remove a link to SlySoft (maker of DVD backup software) from one of their news pages. Fun thing is, they were explicitly allowed to keep SlySoft's website address as plain text on the same news page (just not hyperlinked). I think this shows a deep understanding of the Internet by that particular court.
Ernest Miller pursues research and writing on cyberlaw, intellectual property, and First Amendment issues. Mr. Miller attended the U.S. Naval Academy before attending Yale Law School, where he was president and co-founder of the Law and Technology Society, and founded the technology law and policy news site LawMeme. He is a fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.
Ernest Miller's blog postings can also be found @
1. Michael on July 12, 2005 12:23 AM writes...
The interesting one is that about allofmp3.com, because the German music industry did not win that lawsuit yet, they just managed to get an "Einstweilige Verfügung", a preliminary injunction. It states that allofmp3.com is not allow to publicly distribute copyrighted material in Germany. Again, this is *not* a judgement yet. However, the music industry has started to send cease & desist letters to websites of all sizes that link to allofmp3.com. Each of these letters demands lawyer fees of nearly 3980 Euros (about $4850). Putting all discussion about the legality of allofmp3.com in Germany aside, sending out C&Ds with such fees based just on a preliminary statement is only another example for the media industry going completely overboard.
On a sidenote: The same court (Landgericht München I) recently ruled that a popular German IT magazine (heise.de) had to remove a link to SlySoft (maker of DVD backup software) from one of their news pages. Fun thing is, they were explicitly allowed to keep SlySoft's website address as plain text on the same news page (just not hyperlinked). I think this shows a deep understanding of the Internet by that particular court.
Permalink to Comment