Yeah, but the Swiss justice system has so far been of the opinion that a consumer could not possibly understand what content is pirated and which one not (I believe the reference case was about "the pirate bay"... How could anyone know that their stuff is pirated???) ... let alone understand that a torrent uploads stuff in the background. I am sure that some gullible people will accept some settlement if some lawyers threaten them... but right now is there next to zero risk unless you are some sort of commercial pirating operation.
Torrent. Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time, a long time.
Asked my nephew last summer and there's new stuff to download movies. Just in case it's needed. However, widespread streaming of music and movies have dwarfed piracy.
Last I read in Europe was copyright holders outsourcing the job to literal privateers. Small companies that operate like debt collecting companies that send a threatening letter. If the target pays, debt collectors pay a fraction to the company owning the intellectual property and get their cut. The big lawsuits of the past aimed to scare people are a thing of the past.
Not so sure. I just read a long thread on Reddit (r/germany) on the same issue.
downloading is legal. Uploading/seeding is illegal.
It is pursued quite strongly in Germany and significant fines are levied and pursued strongly.
The law is the same across CH and Germany.
Pursing claims may not be as strong in CH. Hopefully.
In cooperative countries a request is made to the ISP based on the IP address. In Switzerland this route is blocked so the Swiss have been spared the threatening emails that other countries see.
However, I believe (and he would not confirm my guess, but smiled when I asked) that he is also running various VPNs (ironically advertised on torrent sites) and so knows the identities of users and can link to IPs. So I guess one day, he's going to cash in those VPN correlated cases.
Dude relax, we are not in the socialist republic of Germany where you will get fined for downloading a movie.
Just make sure that you don't seed much (e.g. put a low uploading speed limit on the torrent) and stop seeding once downloaded. If you are downloading for personal use and not for commercial use (e.g. to charge people to watch that movie in your Cinema) there is no problem.
Everything else written here concerning prosecution etc. etc. is applicable for other countries but not for Switzerland.
Exactly. Even if at some point the law changes, the changed law will be applicable only for any offence committed after the law becomes valid.
No serious country would ever allow people to be charged retrospectively after a change in the law. Sounds like your friend is just harvesting data, probably illegally.
your friend is dreaming and I would be very worried about people showing signs of "Schadenfreude". He will not be able to cash in anything since it would require a retrospective law and I won't go into the questionable process which he is using to gather that information.
As discussed earlier, there is no change in law. It is already illegal. There are just various barriers to prosecution which possibly be removed in the future - so no retrospective law change required.
The amount varies. On the reddit thread one mentioned €600, another €900. Note that this was for a single infringment. You can imagine this can multiply out quite quickly if you have multiple infringements.
There is a cap at 1000 EUR for first time offenders and 5k EUR for repeat offenders. The five digit claims that lawyers made a decade ago are a thing of the past in Germany. Fun fact: They will need to prove beyound reasonable doubt that an individual broke the law. Using data that was collected and stored illegally... as your friend does... even if he is in fact representing copyright holder at an unknown time in the future would get immediately thrown out of court.