
Domain Registrar Can Be Held Liable for Pirate Site, German Court Rules - thexa4
https://torrentfreak.com/domain-registrar-can-be-held-liable-for-pirate-site-court-rules-181224/
======
eridal
> The case in question was filed by Universal Music over Robin Thicke's album
> Blurred Lines.

Incredible. The same guys that were found guilty of copying that song ..

> Robin Thicke has lost the "Blurred Lines" lawsuit he has been engaged in
> with the Marvin Gaye estate. Robin Thicke, Pharrell to Pay $7.2 Million in
> 'Blurred Lines'

[https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/robin-
thicke-p...](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/robin-thicke-
pharrell-lose-multi-million-dollar-blurred-lines-lawsuit-35975/)

~~~
close04
Not that it matters but I have 0 respect for any ruling (or the court giving
it) that doesn’t follow up with applying the same harsh decision in case it
turns out the complaint is bogus. Especially when the party making the claim
had no right to do it in the first place.

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AdrianB1
This is something you expect to see in China when the government wants to shut
down someone's mouth, but it is now accepted by a large number of people.
Based on wrong arguments like "we protect the children" or "we protect
copyright holders" or "we fight against terrorism" one can shut down anyone in
disgrace under false pretenses that general public agrees without
understanding.

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kuhhk
This is a German court (Higher Regional Court of Saarbrücken) for those that
are curious about jurisdictions.

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walrus01
That is a pretty shit precedent to set. What's next, suing RIPE because they
allocated a /24 to a colo server hosting company that hosted a piracy site?

~~~
squarefoot
Or the hardware store owner because a screwdriver bought there was used to
kill someone. That's plain crazy.

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dgellow
Wow, what a terrible precedent to set...

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AJ007
It is a good precedent for moving to a decentralized naming system.

~~~
ttul
Maybe for sketchy stuff, but mainstream sites that stay out of legal trouble
will prefer the regulated internet.

~~~
Beltiras
Until the legal troubles are brought to innocent mainstream sites by those who
prefer to regulate the internet.

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elliekelly
Europe is moving in the wrong direction when it comes to law enforcement on
the internet. Instead of figuring out a system to hold _offenders_ accountable
they simply shift the responsibility for enforcing the law onto websites and
platforms.

~~~
xiphias2
Luckily the tor domain is not affected, so just more people need to learn
about private browsing.

~~~
elliekelly
It's not just a privacy issue, though. It's a matter of public policy.
Shifting the enforcement responsibility from the government (who must be
diligent and only silence certain types of speech) to the
platform/intermediary company (who will take the quickest/easiest approach to
compliance) has a silencing effect on all users.

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porpoisely
Every day, more bad news for an open and free internet. The corporate and
political powers are using the legal system and the media to strangle the
internet-as-we-knew-it to death. Instead of a quick painless death, it's a
slow prolonged death by a thousand cuts.

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expertentipp
American media companies behave as if EU was their backyard. Willingness of
German justice system to engage into nuances of copyright-related trivialities
is intriguing.

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dimensi0nal
IMO publickey-as-hostname is the best solution to registrars' and CAs' control
of the Internet.

~~~
test6554
How do you convert a public key to an IP address? Where does someone go to
discover available public keys and addresses? How do you update your IP
address in a timely fashion when it changes?

Is this where you say "blockchain"?

~~~
realPubkey
With tor, your public key IS your ip adress.

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mariuolo
If this joint liability holds up in court even in the final stage, I wonder
what's going to happen to German registrars.

Won't every domain name just be moved abroad if they can be held hostage on a
whim from a third party?

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NicoJuicy
Bye bye YouTube and Facebook ( 1 page of copyright infringement is enough to
take everything offline and no one may take over the domain name)

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RossM
Daftness aside, I think the courts/rights-orgs have just correctly identified
registrars as the weak link - see the ease of which a number of right-wing
sites had their domains dropped. My experience with registrars doesn’t feel
like they’re aiming to provide a quality service (with ancient web UIs for
example) - they’re there for the volume recurring revenues. Hopefully domains
will have their letsencrypt moment soon.

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JustSomeNobody
How can you predict how anyone will use a domain? This just seems boneheaded.

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Illniyar
Site hosters can be held liable. Search engines are required to remove links
to such sites.

I fail to see how a domain registrar having to do the same is worse.

I don't like the rulings much, but at least it is consistent.

~~~
pornel
Hosters host the offending content on their equipment.

Search engines at least have specific knowledge of the content they direct to,
and might have a (partial) copy.

But registrars don't have any of this. They provide a service that is
completely independent from any content being served, and the offending
content never touches their infrastructure.

