Book Publishers Prepare Massive Lawsuits against File Sharers

German Book Publishers follow in the footsteps of music industry and push for the ‘three strikes’ rule to be adopted

Perhaps other perspectives should be considered - just like Trent Reznor managed to make a point in music business, Paulo Coelho did that in book publishing business

Knowledge comes from experience, experience comes with mistakes, many of which have been made by others. This is saying that empirical learning doesn’t necessarily refer to your own errors. You should sometimes just pay attention not to repeat others’ wrongs. That, however, is something German book publishers don’t seem aware of as they are preparing to file lawsuits against thousands of file sharers accused of copyright infringement (they must’ve taken the music and film industry’s struggle as a victory) .

According to Spiegel.de, Alexander Skipis, head of the German book publishers' association, at the recent Leipzig book fair announced a suing campaign following the model of that orchestrated by the music industry.

No detailed information regarding the publishers' suing campaign has been revealed. Perhaps you can still remember when last year we reported that many German courts have dismissed p2p-related cases on the grounds that the number of such lawsuits was virtually much too large. At the same time piracy shows no signs of having decreased.

Skipis invokes the ‘three strikes rule’ as the single proper way of dealing with piracy. Fortunately, there are some politicians there who are still capable of seeing the big picture: Germany’s Secretary of Justice Brigitte Zypries recently referred to the three strikes model as "a completely unreasonable punishment."