this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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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.
"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.
Also: CGNAT means an IP isn't 1 person anymore. If you're reading this I know it was you, but that's another tool to deny having done it.
The information posted is completely outdated, Germany has changed its laws considerably since then:
https://www.anwalt.de/rechtstipps/bgh-urteil-zu-filesharing-keine-antwortpflicht-auf-abmahnungen-i-zr-228-19-200553.html
This is old and false information. The incident in the link happened already a decade ago and laws have changed since then.
The current situation is that they need to prove it was you and not someone else in front of a court, so if you tell them it wasn’t you but someone you know they’d need to open up a court case which is way to expensive for them and that’s it.
Also what are you on about „citizens reporting on each other“, lol. This is some lawyers who found an easy way to make money. Those exist in every country. Also everywhere „private companies“ (aka lawyers) can make investigations and go prosecute someone. That’s what they’re for.