The German government has adopted a 82 page draft law for copyright reform.
First English comments in the Register and the Times focus on the criminal law questions. "German downloaders face two years' prison" is the Register's headline.
If you read German, you might be interested in the complete coverage at netzpolitik.org.
Actually, the draft changes nothing in criminal sanctions for copyright violations. Some people advocated introducing a clause that would limit prosecution to serious cases. The draft does not take up that proposal, since it is law already under general criminal procedure standards. Minimal offences won't be prosecuted in all areas of criminal law.
That means that as far as German downloaders face criminal sanctions they face them already now, not as the Register article says from 2007 on.
One might also recall that the first copyright reform of September 2003 recognized an exception to the criminal sanctions against circumvention of DRM in Article 108 b for private use. As I wrote at the time:
"Article 108b penalizes acts of circumventing DRM technology.
However, that article has an exception for private use. That means: There is no protection for private use against DRM under Article 95b, but there is no criminal law protection against circumvention for the purpose of private use either.
The reasons for the draft law state about that point, on pages 68 to 69:
In Germany, public prosecutors are required to prosecute each offence they hear about (principle of legality). The draft authors think it would be against the principle of proportionality to have great numbers of home searches and indictments for private use motivated violations."
I think that other areas of this 82 page draft are much more interesting than the question of criminal sanctions. I am looking forward to discussing them in other posts.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at March 30, 2006 08:27 PM