recht

"As far as legal knowledge is concerned, Interior Minister Friedrich – after all a lawyer – still has a lot of catching up to do." via Internet-Law » Friedrich uns graut vor Dir.

"We sometimes need your permission to do what you ask us to do with your stuff for example, hosting, making public, or sharing your files. By submitting your stuff to the Services, you grant us and those we work with to provide the Services worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works such as translations or format conversions of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent reasonably necessary for the Service. This license is solely to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services. You must ensure you have the rights you need to grant us that permission." - weil sicherlich wieder haufenweise halbinformierter Unfug geschrieben werden wird, nachdem Dropbox die ToS leichter lesbar und vervollständigt hat, hier der wichtige Punkt nochmal rausgegriffen. Nicht dass ich mich der Illusion hingebe das würde die halbinformierten Unfugposts verhindern, aber wenigstens kann ich dann einfach auf die passende Stelle zeigen.

Secret texts 'key to Julian Assange case' - or "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't trying to fry you". It's looking more and more like a campaign by the currently investigating prosecutor and less and less like a legal procedure. But as a Swedish acquaintance laconically commented: "we also throw people in jail for posting links to files that contain links to illegal downloads".

The Risks of Cloud: Lessons from Wikileaks - Simon Says.... Summary of the actions against Wikileaks and what this means for business on the web. Because what happened to the Wau Holland Foundation with PayPal (their PayPal account was frozen, not Wikileaks') can happen to anyone if someone doesn't like your nose. Without even a rudimentary legal process. They simply claim that the Terms of Service were not followed. And even self-hosting doesn't really help because you are still dependent on many others (the place where the server runs, the domains ...). Strangely, this arbitrariness on the net is never mentioned when politicians talk about the terrible "lawless space Internet".

Wau-Holland-Stiftung: Donors of Wikileaks threatened with sanctions. But it's actually less about Wikileaks than about the foundation's negligence. Financial statements are standard business for foundations, if you simply leave them out, you can expect - predictable - trouble with the authorities.

Harsh criticism of French Concorde ruling. Okay, that Continental is at fault is certainly clear - after all, it was their aircraft that was poorly maintained. However, with 113 fatalities, it is probably only understandable for sarcasm-dripping cabaret artists that this company pays a fine of 200,000 euros - but 1 million euros to Air France for the image damage. It then also fits that the mechanic, who - possibly with a lack of care, but simply as a mechanic an employee - did his job and riveted a blade to the aircraft, goes to prison. Strange world.

Court: E-mail cease and desist letters are admissible - every time a post starts with "The Hamburg Regional Court," I already know there's nonsense again from the technically most incompetent authority among the regional courts. How good that there are still higher instances that don't fall for such nonsense quite as often. The cease and desist lawyers will certainly be pleased that they will soon only need to write to outdated email addresses or wherever - it doesn't matter, it's delivered anyway ...

Lawyer Günther convicted of aiding and abetting fraud - is this the beginning of the end for extortionate cease-and-desist letters?

Roman Polanski - since Johnny has closed the comments, my comment here. Polanski admitted to committing the rape and knowing how old she was. No, having sexual intercourse and anal sex with a 13-year-old girl whom you previously made compliant with drugs is not "seduction". It is absurd that so many people from the film industry are now taking to the barricades and thinking something like this should simply be forgotten. No, the fact that the victim has now forgiven him does not change anything. He did it. He admitted it himself. There is no discussion about the "if", but only about the "how much" - years in prison. Damn it, he raped a minor. Why do you want to defend someone like that? This advocacy for Polanski is a slap in the face of every raped and abused girl.

Search of forum operator's home unlawful - "The mere fact that third parties may offer links to pirated copies in an internet forum does not yet justify a search of the operator of this forum." - says the Federal Constitutional Court. Which is also logical, forums are usually not operated from home computers, but from servers. But apparently some of the overzealous "law enforcers" still don't understand this ... (and again, why does the Federal Constitutional Court constantly have to protect us from things that should be clear to any half-witted person?)

OLG Hamburg restricts forum liability - well, if a few more judgments of the LG Hamburg are overturned, the nonsense might soon stop that cease-and-desist letters particularly like to go there ...

Federal Constitutional Court rules against voting computers - a victory of reason over the penny-pinchers at the ballot box. Yes, it may be true that elections are expensive to conduct. But if we throw the principles of free, democratic and verifiable elections overboard just because a few euros are involved, we might as well do away with the whole state. It's a shame that in recent times, the Constitutional Court has generally had to put a stop to the madness from Berlin. One would actually think that these prolethicians in Berlin, who have to swear an oath to the constitution when they assume their ministerial offices, would actually know the constitution ...

Gravenreuth must be imprisoned - "Including an additional penalty, Gravenreuth was sentenced to a total prison term of 14 months. The Berlin Regional Court did not suspend the sentence on probation, as "the defendant [...] cannot be given a sufficiently reliable positive legal and social prognosis," according to the court in September 2008." - and now it is final. I think I will open a bottle of sherry this evening in honor of the verdict!

Richter: Wahlcomputer insecure - "Several judges criticized on Tuesday during the oral hearing of the court in Karlsruhe that with the current systems neither the correct storage of the votes cast nor their counting can be controlled." - what is so hard to understand that Prolethikers still argue against it?

OLG Hamburg: RapidShare is liable as a co-contributor for copyright infringements - new from the Internet's nutty ideas. "RapidShare could, for example, exclude the use of its own service with dynamic IP addresses and require users to use static IP addresses without the intervention of a proxy server." - clear, because there are also rows of static IPs for users with dynamic dial-up. Here the donkey is kicking the camel: Rapidshare is anything but rapid if you are not already registered, and IMO really dispensable. Just like the opinion of the OLG Hamburg on various Internet topics.

Throw the guy in jail! - "The Berlin Regional Court today sentenced lawyer Günter Freiherr von Gravenreuth, known for his cease-and-desist letters, to 14 months in prison without parole." - You can't comment on this any better than it reads! (Unfortunately, not yet final)

Cabinet decision: High penalties for illegal telephone advertising - will Unitymedia be impressed? They make unauthorized calls, they also suppress caller IDs. All signs are there.

No broadcasting fee for PC in law firm - "Moreover, the fundamental right to freedom of information ensures that one can inform oneself unhindered from generally accessible sources. The introduction of a broadcasting fee for an internet PC would create a state access barrier that has nothing to do with the information sources and contradicts the principle of proportionality." - whether the judgment can be upheld? After all, the general possibility of reception is the sole decisive criterion according to the argument of the GEZ. (by the way, I pay broadcasting fees for my Mac - but there is also a DVB-T receiver in it, which is even used once a year for the Tour de France)

Bushido wins in court against three retirees - it would actually be quite nice if the courts could agree on something for once. Because this is just getting ridiculous. Quite apart from that: who actually wants this acoustic noise pollution?

Court Ruling Will Expose Viewing Habits of YouTube Users - if anyone thinks that only in this country courts make strange decisions regarding the disclosure of private data, take a look at this. Have you watched videos on YouTube? If so, Viacom will now have to be freshly served this information by Google, unless Google finds a way to convince the court of the absurdity of it. Great, isn't it? Just like that, all access data on YouTube handed over to a company in the music industry that is by no means acting selflessly and is, of course, extremely interested in this data.

Panorama freedom in danger - great, now they're making photography completely impossible by requiring every little thing to be registered with permission in triplicate and checked with the big boss first. What nonsense? Public space is public space, even if there's some alleged art crap standing around. With the cultural understanding of our prolethicians (who are usually responsible for the "beautification" of public space), these things are mostly just disruptive to photography anyway... (yes, I saw the note about "commercial use" - but since commercial intent is often attributed to blogs, photo bloggers quickly find themselves in a gray area)

hacksector.cc as a model case for § 202 c? - this is where we see what this infamous "hacker paragraph" leads to. Pointless action against a forum. Where is the alleged technical competence of the investigating authorities and the appropriate assessment of the tools in question? All the stupid soothing talk of the prolethicians in Berlin turns out to be exactly that: stupid nonsense without any reference to reality. Yes, credit card data was probably pushed around - which is illegal, but which was already illegal before. But all the fuss about the alleged hackers, the great investigative work and the great success with the "breakup" is simply ridiculous.

The iPhone SDK and free software: not a match - a reason why GPLv3 is good, no matter what some (otherwise quite popular) idiots say. Because exactly this problem - the effective blockade of open source through codesigning - is addressed by the GPLv3.

Court: Display of Thumbnails in Search Engines Illegal - classic "Hmm" ruling. Meta-tags have long not been so important in search engine optimization and robots.txt should be known to every website creator as basic knowledge. How this all fits into reality is not entirely clear to me. I mean, what about my pages here - they don't have meta-tags. Can I now sue Google?

Magenta

Magenta

At the top, the #ED008C Magenta used by engadget. On the right, the RAL 4010 used by Telekom with the web code #E20074. At the bottom, the Magenta sometimes referred to as RAL 4010 with #BF1773, and on the left, the also used #C03F7D specification (e.g., Wikipedia). And now there is a dispute about this. According to www.telekom-cg.de, the specification RAL 4010 with "telemagenta" and the implementation on RGB with #E20074 is registered.

ral 4010 bf1773 - Google Search - much more usage, but also not the specification chosen by Deutsche Telekom itself.

ral 4010 C03F7D - Google Search - not many results, I guess they all copied from each other and someone got it from a (poorly designed) Telekom page at some point.

Telekom Farbverwendung - PDF on telekom-cg.com which lists the Telekom color definitions. I only found it there, it looks official. Interesting is the sentence about where the web color comes from: "The hexadecimal value (www) conforms to the global norm and is taken from the 'Websafe Color Library'" - it sounds more like it was selected after visual inspection and is closest to RAL 4010 (which is ultimately a color tone specification rather for print or coating) (sRGB is not that big).

Karlsruhe leaves little room for covert online searches - "Moreover, the highest German court has established a new fundamental right to the 'guarantee of confidentiality and integrity' of information technology systems." - now it's a matter of waiting and seeing how our prolethicians will try to hollow this out again. Bavaria has already been making a lot of noise and wants to continue. NRW will surely try to fiddle with something and whether Schräuble will backtrack is more than questionable. Nevertheless, thanks to Karlsruhe.

LG Hamburg will comprehensive forum liability when using pseudonyms - news from the Hamburg judge-zoo.

Zypries threatens imprisonment or fine for storing IP addresses - "According to a now published decision (PDF file) of January 10 (Az. 5 C 314/06), in case of non-compliance, a fine of up to 250,000 euros and, as an alternative, even up to six months imprisonment for Federal Minister of Justice Brigitte Zypries (SPD) personally is threatened."

OLG Frankfurt: Providers do not have to block content - it's somehow logical. Hopefully, other courts will follow suit.

Breakthrough for CC music - in Denmark. The century in which GEMA will follow suit is not yet known.

Three constitutional judges argue over jurisdiction for data retention - for some reason (probably overly optimistic) I hope they are arguing about this because they all want to beat up the prolethikers in Berlin, as attacks have come from that direction more often.

Interior Ministry blocks release of Buback files - and of course, one immediately wonders what is in the files that they should not be given to their own federal prosecution service ... the refusal means that these files "would cause disadvantages to the well-being of the Federation or a German state". Hmm. Very interesting.

Child pornography: Companies to evaluate hard drives - "In their investigations against child pornography in connection with the nationwide operation 'Heaven,' the Berlin police want to use internet specialists from external companies." - as if it were such a good idea to hand over private data (and every hard drive contains such data) to companies instead of having it examined by officials. What nonsense is this? Of course, the volume of data may overwhelm the officials - but one could have realized that beforehand. Now, however, to ultimately devalue all potential evidence by handing it over to entities outside the investigating authorities is quite a strange action.

Australia to enforce a "rating system" on web, track users - Australia has now completely gone off the deep end. Age verification for 15+ content - so could the Internet be turned into an unsupervised children's playground. I mean, okay, Australia is a continent, but it has some island mentality somewhere. But that's really completely crazy.

Creative Commons will bypass EU database protection rights - new versions specifically for Germany and EU law.

New setback for music industry's cease-and-desist lawyer - "In his judgment, Judge Schulz criticizes the fact that the Rasch law firm did not notice the transposition of numbers in the correspondence with the public prosecutor's office. He also read the riot act to the latter: The transfer of the personal data behind the IP address to the lawyer had been unlawful. The Code of Criminal Procedure would not allow such a transfer of personal information by the prosecutors."

Foren-Haftung: LG Hamburg insists on prior review - every time one is happy about a few positive judgments or comments from Karlsruhe or the BGH, one can be sure that the court least competent regarding the internet (at least among those who feel they must comment on internet issues) will speak up again. How this fits with current case law, in my opinion, the court itself cannot convincingly explain. I don't mind - I am a) not a friend of comments at all (sorry, but if you have something to say, you can run your own blog, which is really simple enough today) and b) in my opinion, all the spammers are reason enough to restrict comments. With forum systems like Heise or similar, this is of course completely different.

BGH declares control of letters in Hamburg to be unlawful - amusing how a SPD politician justifies the excessive action, contrary to the BGH's argumentation. How prolethicians repeatedly place themselves above the judiciary and the law is quite shocking. That the Social Democrats are right at the forefront of this is, of course, not surprising since Schily.

BGH: "Militant group" not a terrorist organization - Sometimes reason prevails. Maybe now, in light of this ruling, the terrorism card will be played less often - and not every sneeze classified as an attack.

Richter hält Vorratsdatenspeicherung für verfassungswidrig - well, whether this will impress the paranoid wheelchair user? Even with a constitutional complaint and a corresponding assessment by the Federal Constitutional Court - there is still Schäuble's "Yes and, then we change the constitution" hanging in the air ...

Police hand over computers of suspects to music industry lawyer - even more goats, even more gardeners.

Black money affair: Kanther gets away with a fine - not everyone is equal before the law. Or does anyone believe that as a regular citizen they could have wriggled out of it so easily? Against a clear violation of the law by a federal minister (who, like all officials, has sworn an oath to our constitution - but what is that worth these days)?

Lawyer Gravenreuth sentenced to prison - "In doing so, she acknowledged the fact that Gravenreuth was already convicted in the year 2000 for forgery in 60 cases. During the trial, the judge emphasized, according to taz, that the public must be protected from Gravenreuth."

Under house arrest - how the blogosphere is silenced with cease and desist letters and court proceedings. Sure, you can sometimes win in the next instance - but it costs to get there first. And in many cases, the legal protection insurance has a clause in the contract that excludes the matter at hand. How convenient.

Investigation of the subscriber in file-sharing criminal proceedings is unlawful - the reasoning of the court reads so convincing and logical, I bet it will be overturned by a higher authority.

Judgment against Skype for GPL violation - it seems that with every case that is actually opened, the legal certainty of the GPL increases. Very good!

Abmahngrund: Fotos vom Fotostudio - the whole thing is so strange that you don't even understand what was not understood at all. However, one should remember: it is best to fix in writing exactly for what a photo should be used.