German Prosecutors Flooded with P2P Cases Let Room to Small Pirates

Looks like German prosecutors had their share of efforts trying to bring down lightweight pirates and will focus exclusively on commercial grade offenders in the future. This week they announced the interruption of smaller scale broadband and P2P copyright offenders prosecution. Similar to the situation in U.S, the record industry relies greatly on the use of threats involving lawsuits just to determine alleged file sharers to accept pre-trial settlements; in Germany, however, where P2P trading is even more clearly illegal, prosecutors seem to be absolutely overwhelmed by the number of suits they are dealing with.

Consequently, they decided to only consider cases if the damage is exceeds $4,500 (which means, with some calculations - by one attorney's- , German file sharers will be allowed 2,999 pirated music files on their computers without risking penalties). Still, some exceptions, as expected, are kept: users found sharing movies that are still in theaters will suffer legal consequences.