I got one of those years ago and never replied. Never heard back again.
A friend got one some time after that. He got scared and got a lawyer. He phrased a response letter with a reduced payment. He explained to me, that the phrasing is very important. You cannot under any circumstance show guilt for the alleged infringement, because then they come back with a vengeance (demands in the thousands of €). Paying the 900€ would already equate an admission of guilt.
This is a really nice TIL, I’ll remember this for the future
The letter from the lawyer was basically saying, that there is no way that my friend infringed on any copyrights since he acquires all his media legally. Someone had to have hacked in to his wi-fi, and he is willing to pay a couple hundred € for the troubles of the damaged parties.
That’s enough for those scummy private laws firms. Going against an actual lawyer would cost more than it would net them.
I’m not from Germany and not a lawyer so take this with a pinch of salt, but they wouldn’t be offering a settlement at such an early stage if they were confident they could successfully sue you. If it were me, I’d ignore them, and if it gets to the point I can no longer ignore them, I’d deny deny deny.
The situation in Germany is terrible - https://blog.raychenon.com/file-sharing-violations-in-germany/
In Germany private law firms can carry out the investigation, warning letters and prosecution, maybe in the latter case with the GVU. Germany loves its citizens reporting eachother ever since the DDR days.
My advice would be to move anywhere but Germany.
How can they prove you downloaded something if all they can see is an IP address? For all you know you accidently left your wifi open and some ruffian driving by downloaded the file.
Edit: guess I could have read the link first.
The German Federal Supreme Court decided that every person who owns an internet connection is under an obligation to ensure that it is secured.
“secured” in this instance means password protected. This does not mean it can’t be accessed by tech-savvy people with nefarious intentions. That’s why you can still claim you never had anything to do with it and get away with it, because you did your duty and an IP isn’t enough to identify a person.
