Germany's Copyright Clearing House now requires courts for website blocks

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Copyright-clearing-house-Committee-for-website-blocking-to-rely-on-judiciary-10490128.html

by nsdfg • 11 months ago

79 23 11 months ago

heise.de

ACCount373• 11 months ago

This shouldn't exist at all. But it probably beats it existing and being accountable to no one.

gruez8• 11 months ago

This shouldn't exist at all

If you think copyrights should exist at all, website blocks must exist as well, otherwise copyrights become unenforceable. Blocking straightforwardly copyright infringement sites (eg. a site that streams full episodes of TV shows) is a pretty logical consequence of a government enforcing its copyright laws.

ACCount373• 11 months ago

I'd rather copyright be unenforceable then.

"Hide piracy web sites from mainstream search engines" is the extent of what I'm willing to tolerate. Tools that allow for blocking of arbitrary websites entirely should not exist at all.

nadermx3• 11 months ago

Actually the berne convention gives you right to sue in the jurisdiction where your rights are being violated.

Given there is some sort of fair use in most jurisidictions, and its compeltly with in even europeans rights to save entire movies for personal use, the parent comment to you is right. Tools exist for them to enforce them by going after the domain registrar or hosting provider.

All site blocking does is trample on rights over "alleged" infrignment.

Rochus• 11 months ago

Instead the police no longer respond when citizens are physically robbed (e.g. https://www.blick.ch/schweiz/basel/erst-ab-einem-warenwert-v... or https://www.hbb-ev.de/meldungen/ladendiebstahl-im-einzelhand...). The government cares more for copyright trolls.

627467• 11 months ago

If it's worth protecting, copyright holders will find a way to enforce it without needing a police state to do it. The truth is IP loves the contemporary cheapness of information distribution but doesn't want to pay for "undesirable" distribution. Do your own enforcement or don't distribute

shazbotter• 11 months ago

Unlikely. I suspect this will be a rubber stamp mill just like FISA in the United States.

yorwba• 11 months ago

That comparison doesn't make sense. FISC can only be a rubber stamp because only the US government can bring a case before the court. Any rando can sue German ISPs for not fulfilling their DNS blocking duties under copyright law, but certainly not just any rando can get their DNS blocking request rubberstamped.

The policy change also doesn't create a new court. The CUII is a voluntary cooperation whose members exchange information about sites they think they're required to block and agree to all block them simultaneously. Because this structurally looks like an illegal cartel, there used to be a review step by the Federal Network Agency Bundesnetzagentur to make sure that no illegal cartel things were going on.

The Bundesnetzagentur felt that this wasn't really part of their core duties, especially considering that there was a perfectly fine court system ready to use, so they asked the CUII to find another way of not looking like an illegal cartel.

Now the CUII will wait for one of their ISP members to get sued, in regular civil court, and if the ISP is ordered to perform a block, the CUII will put it on their list and the other ISPs will follow suit without having to redo the legal proceedings for each of them.

This change might very well end up increasing the number sites that get blocked, not due to rubberstamping, but because losing a civil suit is less risky than accidentally doing illegal cartel stuff and incurring a correspondingly large fine.

Germany's Copyright Clearing House now requires courts for website blocks

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