The German courts have spoken and saved mankind from the tyranny of fully copyrighted smut that requires payment when freely posted to the Internet for free use by people who are free to then do stuff to it in the privacy of their own love dens.
This will go down in history ….. it won’t go down in history. It is ridiculous, but you know, free speech, the Internet, keep Germans happy, and all that.
As we told you, a Euro law firm sent a bazillion letters to German watchers of the free smut video site, Redtube, and told them that they needed to pony up $344 for the pleasure of self-pleasuring themselves. But, it was all a giant misunderstanding, and German productivity can be lowered again to give the rest of the world time to catch up. So, Germans can watch free streaming porn and it is not illegal and it means freedom for streaming video lovers everywhere. It’s not just about porn. Of course, it isn’t.
The German court in the district of Cologne which had originally given the offending and offensive U+C law firm in Germany the right to send out the letters decided that it got it wrong. Granted, a lot of other German lawyers and streaming video proponents jumped in, complained and explained it all to the kindly judge who may not have used Redtube, ever, or even done a selfie.
The Cologne court granted RedTube an injunction to stop U+C from harassing the law abiding porn watchers of Germany. But, the law in Germany is a mess because it doesn’t clarify the issue in any manner that will stop something similar happening in the future, also, of course, now we know that U+C used Gladii 1.1.3 to pick up offending users’ IP addresses even though it is only meant to trap file sharers. That also took care of the fact that Redtube was not involved in the process, as many had assumed originally.
Nope, this was case of a particular copyright holder in Switzerland, hence the $344 per clip charge. So, someone in Switzerland got mad that their smutty clips were being seen on Redtube and were trapped by software that assumed when they were being seen on Redtube they were, in fact, a part of a fraudulent pirate network, and they captured their IP addresses and went ahead and found out where they lived and sent them letters to cease and desist etc. etc.
Redtube actually put out a statement that said:
It is deplorable that our users were targeted in such an underhanded and malicious manner. Copyright protection is a critical issue and we are overjoyed that German citizens can once again surf the internet without threat of legal penalty. This ruling is a victory not just for RedTube users, but for anyone who accesses a streaming website. It sends a clear message that the exploitation of personal information and the violation of privacy for financial gain will not be tolerated.
This story hasn’t ended here because U+C is suing the German prosecutors for hurting their feelings and saying they posted a false affidavit in their first pass at this crap. Also, people are getting malware emails now purporting to be from U+C so, that should be fun, too.
But the important thing here is that Germans can watch free porn. Isn’t that what we all want. Frohe Weihnachten!
