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A law firm in Germany is to begin publicly naming Internet users it believes have infringed copyright by sharing hardcore pornography without permission. A company insider says Urmann will start by targeting those users most likely to be embarrassed by such publicity, though officially its denying that claim.
Urmann mirrors the tactics of law firms in other countries by writing to alleged copyright offenders and asking for a settlement fee to avoid court action. In this case the fee is €650 euros (approx US$815.)
Whether the recipients have genuinely breached copyright isn’t clear. In similar situations in other countries, large numbers of the recipients deny the claims. That’s prompted suggestions that law firms are unlikely to proceed with legal action and are simply relying on a proportion of recipients being frightened enough to pay up.
Urmann now says that from 1 September it will begin publishing details of some of the people on its list of alleged offenders. This list could have as many as 150,000 people on it.
Some reports quoting an insider suggested that the firm would prioritize customers whose IP addresses corresponded to a church, police station or an embassy of a Middle East country: all workplaces where being publicly linked to hardcore porn would be a particular embarrassment.
The company has said this isn’t the case and it will instead prioritize those people accused of downloading the most content.
The legalities of such a tactic are unclear. Urmann believes it is legal because of a German court ruling that said law firms to publish the names of their clients’ opponents as a promotional tactics. However, that seems to be designed more for dealing with corporations (“Hire us because we took on Megacorp!”) and might not hold up for naming private individuals.
There’s also the question of what happens if the company falsely names somebody who hasn’t downloaded any material, which sounds like a recipe for a defamation suit.
In practical terms, Urmann may only be able to carry out its naming and shaming for a few people and hope that puts fear into the rest. Once it does publicly name somebody, they’ve got much less incentive to pay up rather than sit back and wait to be sued.
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