Thousands of Germans get “porn troll” letters over streaming video

I had a hard time understanding this article, so I looked up some German resources and also the original letter linked in the article. Still, the sum is still confusing. Here&#x27;s what happened:<p>1. This swiss company got the home addresses of the people by deceiving the court in the first place. They suggested that the people in question were using a file sharing platform, not a streaming website (former is illegal, latter is not).<p>2. Then, they sent thousands of cease-and-desist orders to these people, claiming that &quot;streaming a video&quot; means that you store a video temporarily (or permanently) on your own device, which is infringement of copyright (and utter bullshit, because it isn&#x27;t according to German law).<p>3. All in all, they probably got a few bucks out of this trolling, but they are unlikely to be successful in court, because it is not illegal in Germany to consume copyright protected material. You may not provide it (upload it). This would be illegal. But this didn&#x27;t happen in the first place. The people who should get a cease-and-desist order is RedTube for uploading and streaming copyright protected material.<p>All articles also talk about this weird software &quot;gladii 1.1.3&quot; without talking about how this software can collect IP addresses in the first place, if you connect to a server (RedTube) and not to a bunch of random peers.<p>Edit: Clarification in 1.

One very interesting aspect is how they got the IP addresses in the first place. There is some evidence that they bought traffic from a traffic broker, redirected that through their on domains and then to the final target.<p>If it happened that way, it does seem very unlikely that they would have any chance to succeed before a court. They can&#x27;t prove that the user actually intended to see the video in question, they can&#x27;t prove that they actually arrived at the target site and saw the video.<p>Some more recent information in german about this is at <a href="http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Porno-Abmahnungen-Indizienkette-zur-IP-Adressen-Ermittlung-verdichtet-sich-2065879.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.heise.de&#x2F;newsticker&#x2F;meldung&#x2F;Porno-Abmahnungen-Ind...</a>

This is an info-graphic provided by some committed German guy. It shows the daily views of the video before and after the video-rights were sold to the swiss company. Maybe you guys notice something :)<p><a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2512901/abmahnwelle-redtube-uc-sebastian.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dl.dropboxusercontent.com&#x2F;u&#x2F;2512901&#x2F;abmahnwelle-redt...</a>

This is just another example that shows it is not so much the law that is broken in the face of new technology (although it could use some updating), but the utterly clueless interpretation of the law by the courts that is the main problem.<p>Just like for instance the Pirate Bay blockades we keep seeing instances where courts can easily be tricked into implementing measures or allowing evidence that the legislature would never approve of.

The way I would get the IP addresses is to threaten the redtube.com website with a copyright infringement lawsuit and offer them to sell the IP addresses instead. Win-Win.<p>Another way is to set up other websites that redtube users would likely visit (maybe even advertise from redtube), then find out if they have visited certain links on redtube. There may be certain exploits to do that, be it flash or even the css &quot;old links&quot; trick. Then you could at least claim that the IP addresses actually visited the videos in question even though the site did not cooperate and no wiretapping was necessary.

&gt; from a company called Matratzensport<p>Suitable name for a porn company: Matratzensport = &quot;mattress sport&quot;.

I don&#x27;t get it. Why is visiting said website something illegal that should be paid for?

Flash also supports P2P: <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager09.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macromedia.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;documentation&#x2F;en&#x2F;flashplay...</a><p>Maybe redtube uses this functionality to get the stream faster to everyone.

Old stuff, here&#x27;s same story by TorrentFreak. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6885356" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6885356</a>

This whole case just shows, how incompetent many people in Jurisdiction are. Also no positive promotion for the German government.

It&#x27;s also kind of dickish to send letters to people&#x27;s homes saying &quot;you watched porn&quot;.