German court nixes dumb lower court conviction of an old lady for internet piracy.
As we described in the Nov. 2012 post Internet Connection more dangerous than gun simple ownership of an internet connection is no laughing matter in Germany.
Now, an appeals court has let the old lady off the hook. The conviction based exclusively on the dynamic IP address allegedly assigned to her was overturned.
An important fact we learned is the error margin in reports of the IP address. It is approximately 5 to 8 percent. Our resident software designer reacted with surprise: I knew there were errors but would have guessed at 1, maybe 2 percent.
On the face of it, the new decision is great, but the plaintiff can appeal, and the crucial part of the verdict was that the old lady had no router, no end user device and - get that - is handicapped.
This makes the decision so narrow that the simple fact of having a connection and a computer in the house continues to make you liable if someone shows up with an IP address supposedly assigned to you at the time of an illegal download.
The K-landnews folks are "legally challenged", in our simplistic view of the world, a margin of error of 5% or more would always be reasonable doubt.
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