BERLIN, July 26 (Xinhua) -- Germany's highest court, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH), confirmed on Thursday a new law passed in 2017, which takes away liability of private providers who are operating WiFis in Germany for illegal actions committed through their hotspots.
The so-called "telemedia" law that was designed to make public internet access easily available in Germany, has now been confirmed by the highest judicial authority in Germany which argued that the law did not impede on European law. Copyright was sufficiently protected, as providers could still be forced to block certain contents.
The first case which put the law change in motion dates back to 2013. The computer game "Dead Island" had been illegally shared through a WiFi hotspot and the provider of the hotspot was sent a cease and desist letter by the copyright owner of the game, who demanded 1,000 euros (1,171 U.S. Dollars) in damages.
The German defendant, who operated five open WiFi hotspots and two so-called Tor networks that enables users to surf the web anonymously had filed a legal complaint.
Before the new law was passed, providers of public internet access in Germany were at least partially responsible for illegal activities on their network. Partly because this so-called "Stoererhaftung" (liability of interference), Germany was behind many European countries in terms of freely available public WiFi. Enditem
