Hello
I just got in contact with the swiss advocate of a company who sends us such messages about our users sharring copyrighted content.
I basicly wanted to tell him that he should proceed according to swiss law instead of bothering us with such messages.
He told me that they made very good experience with such messages as according to his knowledge most ISP warn their users if they hear about them sharing copyrighted 'goods'. Their goal is not to sue anybody but just to show them they are not annonymous and hope they'll stop sharing.
So ist this true? Do most of you guys issue warning to your users if you get such messages?
Mit freundlichen Grüssen
Benoit Panizzon
I don't know if is a good idea to write to your Users. We have in our law.. The Article: "Noetigung". If you make an letter to your Users.. it is possible one of your clients will take this artikle.
I think it is the best you are doing nothing till a "Richter" want the details of the connections.
Greetings Xaver ----- Original Message ----- From: "Benoit Panizzon" benoit.panizzon@imp.ch To: swinog@swinog.ch Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 5:00 PM Subject: [swinog] Notice of Copyright Infringement - How do you proceed?
swinog mailing list swinog@lists.swinog.ch http://lists.swinog.ch/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swinog
So ist this true? Do most of you guys issue warning to your users if you get such messages?
Absolutely not. This entire copyright infringement hype finds its way directly to our spam folder. They either follow the correct way, or they will be ignored.
Not even a judge can ask for connection details - he has to ask UVEK- DBA first (yes, they were renamed, don't know the new name at the moment), they will ask us, we will give them the connection details, and they will hand them over to the judge. This is the one and only procedure we do follow.
Regards
Manuel Wenger, Ing. STS/HTL Vice-President & Chief Technology Officer Ticinocom SA ________________________________________________________
Ticinocom SA - Via Stazione 5 - 6600 Muralto Tel. 091 220 00 00 - http://www.ticinocom.com
Benoit, List,
On Fri, 14 Mar 2008, Benoit Panizzon wrote:
So ist this true? Do most of you guys issue warning to your users if you get such messages?
Sure, and as a customer I'd expect from my ISP to do the very same. As long as they just want you to be notified about this incident everything is fine. What you however should underline in your conversation with them is that you have no possibilities to prove or falsify their claim. (this might set you free from any liablity since they can not claim that 'you knew'). Passing the notice to your customer without interacting with the entity that sends you the notice would be the way I'd go. It is of course also important to inform your customer that you can won't verify this claim as it is none of your business as an ISP to check what data your customers are exchanging.
After all it is very likely that your customer doesn't even know about this "problem" as many of those requests i have seen have been for boxes that have been abused by third parties due to security issues for random undesired stuff.
As concerns requests like these in general I stick to the policy "as long as there is no official document like a search warrant i advise the enquiring entity to use the regular correct legal process" if there is such thing like a search warrant i comply politely and do whatever is stated there with caring for the most minimal impact possible.
my experience as netmaster for several isps and the as250.net project showed me that this is some sort of the "golden way" to keep your customers satisfied as well as to comply politely with the law where needed.
kind regards, michael
Hello
Benoit Panizzon schrieb:
I just got in contact with the swiss advocate of a company who sends us such messages about our users sharring copyrighted content.
[...]
So ist this true? Do most of you guys issue warning to your users if you get such messages?
IANAL and I am not an ISP (currently). But I think you should not do too much. Otherwise you take the risk doing something illegal yourself and helping people who don't deserve it. It is possible that this lawyer does not want to sue anybody because he is nice. But it is at least as possible that he couldn't sue anybody with the information he has and tries to scare them using you as the relais.
The question comes to my mind if you should (or even have to) inform your users that this advocate and the company he works for is accusing them to break the law. That has two effects: - User who didn't do anything can take action against false threats (the argument that you shouldn't be too sure that you can stay anonymous works for both sides). - User who really did something might think about it (which is not *that* bad either - at least it frees you some bandwith).
But before you do anything you should throughly check if using your connection data for any such thing doesn't mean breaking a law at your side.
Regards Peter
As an ISP, you do...
- what a customers pays for - what the law requires
Is either the case here? Nope. If anybody wants you to do work for them - and forwarding messages to people, who's IP you'll have to grep out of Logfiles first (in the worst case) *is* work - this entity should pay for it.
Cheers, Viktor
Benoit Panizzon wrote:
Hello
I just got in contact with the swiss advocate of a company who sends us such messages about our users sharring copyrighted content.
I basicly wanted to tell him that he should proceed according to swiss law instead of bothering us with such messages.
He told me that they made very good experience with such messages as according to his knowledge most ISP warn their users if they hear about them sharing copyrighted 'goods'. Their goal is not to sue anybody but just to show them they are not annonymous and hope they'll stop sharing.
So ist this true? Do most of you guys issue warning to your users if you get such messages?
Mit freundlichen Grüssen
Benoit Panizzon
swinog mailing list swinog@lists.swinog.ch http://lists.swinog.ch/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swinog
On Fri, 14 Mar 2008, Viktor Steinmann wrote:
As an ISP, you do...
- what a customers pays for
- what the law requires
Thanks for summing things up in two simple lines, what i were not able to express shorter ;-)
Is either the case here? Nope. If anybody wants you to do work for them - and forwarding messages to people, who's IP you'll have to grep out of Logfiles first (in the worst case) *is* work - this entity should pay for it.
If it concerns dynamically allocated IP addresses I second this opinion, however if it costs you no work to identify the customer, why not forward the message? As long as it is not too much work, the customer will be happy or at least ammused about the mail. So if it costs you significant work to find out who had the ip address, silently discarding the mail is the way to go in deed.
Hi Micheal,
Michael Horn nibbler@nibbler.de a écrit :
If it concerns dynamically allocated IP addresses I second this opinion, however if it costs you no work to identify the customer, why not forward the message? As long as it is not too much work, the customer will be happy or at least ammused about the mail. So if it costs you significant work to find out who had the ip address, silently discarding the mail is the way to go in deed.
As you have already seen in this thread, an ISP have to give information to UVEK-DBA only.
I'm not a lawyer, but if the ISP forward the information to the client, and if the client contacts the original sender of the mail, it's somthing like an "indirect leak of information". There is no clear law on this subject (at least on Switzerland).
As an ISP, I would ask my lawyer before doing something.
Regards,
Vincent M.
Hi Vincent,
On Sat, 15 Mar 2008, Vincent Magnin wrote:
Michael Horn nibbler@nibbler.de a écrit :
As you have already seen in this thread, an ISP have to give information to UVEK-DBA only.
That is what i meant to express - until you are forced by law to comply, don't do anything that might harm you or your customer. If this is the case - e.g. in the above stated UVEK-DBA - comply politely as far as minimally needed. I think we agree on that point.
I'm not a lawyer, but if the ISP forward the information to the client, and if the client contacts the original sender of the mail, it's somthing like an "indirect leak of information".
Which would be in deed a very dumb thing to do as the customer. But I sometimes forget, that - at least some - customers don't always act very wisely. You got a point there in deed.
There is no clear law on this subject (at least on Switzerland).
As an ISP, I would ask my lawyer before doing something.
Which costs money - often considerable amounts. So best thing until more evil things than anoying people sending you emails happen: Mail -> Rundablage.
cheers Michael
Salut, Benoit,
On Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:00:34 +0100, Benoit Panizzon wrote:
I just got in contact with the swiss advocate of a company who sends us such messages about our users sharring copyrighted content.
I basicly wanted to tell him that he should proceed according to swiss law instead of bothering us with such messages.
And that's the only sane thing to do. Swiss law doesn't allow you to act upon such request, because it is none of your business and you are not capable of judging whether or not the material constitutes an infringement. If the lawyer goes to court and gets a preliminary injunction, you must take the content down, but unless this happens, you are not allowed to interfere with the user's content.
Warning the user is even more out for you; you are not a legal expert, so you should not give legal advise.
(The same goes for me, oh well ;-) I have been involved quite a lot with legal issues at FFII, but if you want a clean legal advise, you will have to ask a lawyer.)
He told me that they made very good experience with such messages as according to his knowledge most ISP warn their users if they hear about them sharing copyrighted 'goods'.
I guess so, but that doesn't make it legally correct.
Tonnerre
-
Benoit Panizzon -
Manuel Wenger -
Michael Horn -
Peter Guhl Listenempfänger -
Tonnerre Lombard -
Viktor Steinmann -
Vincent Magnin -
Xaver Aerni