After talking to someone else at work using Rogers, their VPN shit the bed one night they forgot to stop the torrents, they got a similar letter.

At this point our ISPs should just automatically put us all on rotating non-logged VPNs as part of our packages we already get the modem as part of the service, just integrate it there (not sure if I'm being serious or silly)

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", 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.

Next time tell them you're training AI

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

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 will hurt everyone depending on shared containers.

Routing traffic through another computer will certainly fix things for you.

Don't actually do that. They will take that as admission of guilt.

As long as this does not log nor allow tracing packets etc. yes.

You mean letters without "Rechtsbehelfsbelehrung" which is information on legal remedies. If that information on legal remedies isn't on a letter, then yes a fictive person could always ignore such a fictive letter.
I am not a lawyer!

You mean the "default" DNS entry is gone for these sites but you can use simply another DNS.

It does when another computer is a temporary session on a virtual machine..

I have a stack of unpaid parking tickets from private companies that begs to differ

Tell them the AI escaped confinement but that's fine because you never told it to do that.

Used to be that way but last time I checked using DNS over TLS or HTTPS didn't grant access to blocked sites during football matches.

Aren't those Nazi businesses?

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???

I sure hope we het the chance to collectively sue these sports companies for damages at some point. Nobody should have to wait for a football match to end to access health services they're paying for.

Or just ignore it. If you actually read it, it never says anything about you being in trouble at that moment, but it's intentionally worded to invoke that fear.

Toss it in the bin, and use a VPN or Usenet.

From what I've heard from my German friends the network owner, so the one paying the isp bill, is responsible for whatever happens on the network. If someone broke in onto your network and downloaded illegal stuff, you are still liable for the fines as you should have protected your network sufficiently. Maybe you can get away with it if you are able to present hard evidence your sufficiently protected network was broken in to.

It's the same with speed cam tickets. If you prove in court someone else was driving your car, you won't have to pay the fine. If you are unable to, you are liable.

Imo it goes against the law. There's this thing called "innocent until proven guilty", so the burden of proof lies with the authorities, not with you. But sadly it's not always the case. This did cause a lot of legal fights though, and to my knowledge this caused the German police to flash cars from the front now, so the driver would be visible in the photo in most situations.

Telepathy, of course

In Belgium, just next to it, I know someone who was doing tons of torrenting and sharing with friends and family back in 2005-2010 time and got prosecuted for his piracy (like 5 years after he was doing it) and had to pay huge fines as a young adult from what he did as a teenager. He definitely wasn't using a VPN and probably port forwarding and openly sharing back in those days. It definitely happens. (Not Germany but neighbors)

Just get and use a VPN with a client kill switch. Paying 50-100€ per year is much cheaper than 10k in fines down the line, and don't share it with anyone outside of your household.

In Germany, they don't have to prove guilt, you have to prove innocence or else you get fined. If you don't voluntarily pay the fine and they have to go to court, the fine doubles. The system is rigged for the corporations. That's why they've done this in Germany for a long time. The expansions to other countries are experimental.

Don’t actually do that. They will take that as admission of guilt.

Germany does not have "innocent until proven guilty". It has "guilty until someone else is proven guilty". They will always find someone who has to pay compensation. There is no "we don't know who did it because of an anonymizer service", they will just make the anonymizer service pay instead.

Except when law says they don't have to. Right now the law is that registered service providers can't be fined on behalf of their customers, and there isn't a law saying they have to be able to identify the customers. So VPNs get by.

all the cases in Germany

That's literally what they do. But they're required by law to be able to trace an IP address, so it doesn't help you. The copyright company asks for who was using this IP address at this time, and the ISP has to tell them.

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.

As they should, it ruins it for everyone.

No, they block all of Cloudflare's IP addresses. This is punishment for Cloudflare not being able to take down any website globally within 15 minutes that the Spanish government says to take down.

Usually the informal letter only asks for half the amount you will have to pay when you lose in court

And you will lose because Germany is totalitarian

That's only in Germany though

It's literally exactly what they do for piracy

No, it's exactly the same way Germany treats the threats this post is about. They send a warning, you ignore it. Then they sue you, you ignore it, they get a default ruling and subtract money from your bank account.

Hetzner will ban you if they get one of these letters, even if you aren't in Germany

also note "Sentences 1 and 2 shall not apply if the Service Provider intentionally cooperates with a user of its service in order to commit unlawful acts."

TMG is obsolete anyway, replaced by DDG and you have to register as a service provider.

The ISP keeps the record for 6 months, if the party claiming rights wants to prosecute they have that 6 months to go to a court in the users jurisdiction and ask the judge to grant this info (users name and address). If granted then the info will be retained for a year. Without the judges order all the rights holder has is an IP address that will have another person attached to it after a time

I'd rather VPN to some EU country east of Berlin if I were you.

Slovakia has some copyright laws but they're not that strictly enforced. Also no c&d letter equivalent has arrived to my physical inbox for what I've done on the Internet.

Yes and the point of VPNs is that they don't do this

Hasn't banned me for 4 years straight

How's that an admission of guilt? The AI did it. We have legal precedent now with the various confinement cases.

If the Nazis are collecting, and you pony up...

well but he seeded a lot

I received a notification for downloading something I didn't download - I'm not even interested in it. Went to court, court said it was my IP and I had to pay. 1500€ for something I didn't download. In Germany you have to prove innocence, which is impossible if all you can say is "It wasn't me."

Crazy. They should do that with russian fake news infastucture instead of entertainment content. But the Spanish government is one of the best right now in the EU so I would rather live with a neoliberal quant focusing on football while enjoying progressive left - green reform.
Thanks for the details/correction.