My girlfriend got an Abmahnung from Frommer Legal yesterday. Unfortunately her name is on the internet account and she is very law abiding and worried by it. I’m Canadian and the most I’ve ever gotten has been a threatening letter from an ISP in Canada. Obviously, I didn’t know torrenting was so persecuted in Germany or else I would have been more vigilant with a VPN. Anyway , the Abmahnung is representing Warner Brothers and wants me to pay 1000€ for seeding 2 episodes of an HBO show. I contacted one of the many defense firms that specialize against these lawsuits but their fee is 30% of what I save of the “fine”. So the combined minimum(fine and lawyer fee) I could possibly pay with them is 300€. My girlfriend has proof that she wasn’t home that day (a hostel booking from Berlin) but even so the whole thing (Frommel and the defense firms) seems like the epitome of lawful evil to me and I’d rather not support it. They are both just lawyers preying on people foolish enough to not use VPNs with scare tactics. We are planning to move in 6 months anyway (elsewhere in Germany). I did read that these firms generally do (or at least sometimes) sue you in court if you ignore the warnings. I read a couple anecdotes from people that got sued just before 3 years ran out after the first Abmahnung. Can they even sue us if they don’t have our new address? What should I do? Suck it up and pay the defense firm or ignore it?
Strongly recommend contacting WBS-Legal. Cologne based firm that deals and has dealt a lot with this stuff.
Here’s a direct link to that part of their services. https://www.wbs.legal/urheberrecht/abmahnung-filesharing/
Edit: If they were among the ones you already contacted, I apologize for the suggestion. But really, engaging with the lawfirm directly is likely not going to go well for you, if you’re trying to mount any form or sort of defense.
Get a lawyer and let them handle it. Usually your lawyer will just send them a letter saying you have no idea what torrents are and that other people have the wifi code and that’s that. It rarely goes to court. Your lawyer’s fee is something you’ll have to live with.
i had two incidents several years apart. got wbs law for about 500 euro (which was just shy of the first sum waldorf frommer asked for) and they replied to all letters for me, telling them basically to fuck off.
as soon as wbs law responded for me they tried to get me to pay with two additional cases. they were covered since they were before the time i engaged my lawyers. i suspect that they would try that either way though since its a money grab scheme anyways.
they keep trying to scare you into paying, but eventually they get less annoying.
in the second case (ca. 2015, the statute of limitations were about to run out) they try to get around the lawyers (which they are bound to communicate with instead of me personally) by suing me in front of the hamburg altona court (amtsgericht, notoriously pro intellectual property) which sent me a letter that looked very serious. forwarded it, never heard from them again. (its not actually a lawsuit but a letter from the court inquiring about the case which then decides if the claims are valid i guess).
dont pay, dont engage directly with them. they try to get you to sign a “unterlassungerklärung” that is worded in a way that traps you legally. also the deadline in the letter they send is very short on purpose (friday before te weekend e,g,).
but not engaging gives them the possibility to get more money via inkasso. since they sadly have a legal standing in germany with their intellectual property claims its not wise to ignore.
i havent heard of a IP court case in germany that was won by the studios or IP lawyers and got public since 2010. although one case where an underaged kid downloaded some movies got decided in their favor, and some old lady that didnt even have a computer got ruled against too, but those are really weird cases and the judges were on coke i guess.)
good luck & pm if you or your girlfriend have questions)
Since a move is tracked by the „Bürgeramt“ they will find you since this is a jurisdical topic.
About ten years ago, a friend got such letter about 700€ and they argued that the wifi was public (hotspot mode) and they did not know who did that.
Besides, those are the reasons why torrents are nearly dead in Germany as far as i know.
they’re not dead. They’re concentrated in very paranoid private trackers
I just use Transmission in docker and VPN with killswitch. Done.
But Bürgeramt is not allowed to share that information with third parties. It will only do so if they try to push criminal charges. Which they supposedly already did to obtain her name in the first place. If that case is closed (and it will most likely be closed at some point), then they are out of luck.
Would an ISP be able to tell if a WiFi has a password? I feel like either that or the connected devices might cause issues for them
You might be able to get logs of the MACs of connected devices from the router.
But the real issue is whether the court even gives a shit. Stuff like this doesn’t have a jury trial, it just gets rubber-stamped by some old, conservative judge.
Germany hates technology.
Germany is a conservative, backward shithole, so good luck.
1000 EUR is steep though, maybe see if you can negotiate it down to 100-200 and just pay it? Or just ignore it and see if they actually go to court.
It’s an awful situation though. I had O2 there destroy my credit score after I closed my account (which could only be done via fax - lol Germany) and left the country, but they were still trying to settle the final month’s payment of ~20 EUR for over a year.
Being outside of your home is no credible defense, think of scheduled torrenting. Perhaps you could get away with it if multiple people use it with some logs.
So their deal is, to dissuade torrenting with high fines, but of course not everyone can get sued by it, because the court capacity is too low to go after everyone. Which is the reason legislation allows this scamming. Not to forget both lawyer firms get their money like the dirty leeches they are. On the macro scale it is a cartel. A mutual agreement between legislation, IP holders, courts and the two lawyer firms and the government raking in some taxes off that. The only loser is you and the fine has no relationship to the actual damage caused and attempts to cap it at a tenth of that failed.
You will likely need to suck it up and learn the lesson to stronger protect your access and make sure all bindings, killswitches are active while torrenting through a VPN, I like Mullvad.
Otherwise they will sue, if you don’t agree.
Okay, thanks for the info
Just an FYI on Mullvad’s VPN service. They recently disallowed port forwarding starting 1/7/23. While not used be everyone, port forwarding is an essential service for torrenting if you want to be a connectable seeder. Or if you host a service you need to access outside of your local network, like a plex server or NAS or website.
If you know you want port forwarding I’d look for another VPN provider like Proton.
Ah shame, that was obvious it would be closed at some point.
The game of whack-a-mole is ramping up as corporations are getting more and more invested in internet based media.
I don’t blame them for wanting to not get in on that fight.
If you Google it, there are apparently legal firms advertising help for Abmahnungen by that specific firm. It says that the first consultation will be free. I guess it can’t hurt to check with them.
Did you receive a cease and desist letter?
If so, by signing it you would admit to doing what they claim.
But if you change the letter from “I will never do it again” to “I will never do it and never did it”, you admitted to nothing.
In most cases, those firms don’t want to go to court. They mostly prey on the scared people that pay without a fight.
This is not a legal advice!Yeah, I’m not going to sign the letter. I’m not that foolish :P I was just trying to figure out the likelihood of them actually following up in court. It seems like people around here think they will eventually.
They will if you don’t reply to their message.
You are obligated to respond.
You either contact a lawyer or you reply with a modificated version of there message.
