Germany Says No to Three-Strikes-and-You’re-Out Model

February 3, 2009 by Yonah
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues

In recent post we reported about the three strikes policy spreading like some sort of a disease in some European countries (France, Ireland and Italy, for example). It’s so good to know, however, that not every other country shares their perspective.

German IT news service heise.de informs that following a recent meeting the German Department of Justice and major ISPs a joint opinion was reached: the three strikes policy violates German privacy and telecommunications laws.

We can easily guess how German record industry must be feeling right now (feeling empathetic?!).

Thanks to the German blog Spreeblick who tried to find out more about the whole issue and managed to get a response from Germany’s Secretary of Justice Brigitte Zypries, here we have on official statement on the matter:

“I don’t think that (Three Strikes) is a fitting model for Germany or even Europe. Preventing someone from accessing the Internet seems like a completely unreasonable punishment to me. It would be highly problematic due to both constitutional and political aspects. I’m sure that once the first disconnects are going to happen in France, we will be hearing the outcry all the way to Berlin.”

Way to go, Germany!

Tags: copyright infringement, file-sharing, Germany, ISPs, legal, p2p, three strikes policy