Sharing copyrighted files online, be it music, video, software, or any other form of media, is illegal pretty much universally. But while the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) wants to go after everyone found to be participating in online piracy, other countries are learning to take a much softer approach.

So it is in Germany, where law enforcement officials from several states have declared that the vast majority of illegal file-sharing will simply be ignored from now on. It seems that while the big players will still be pursued with the full force of the law, small-time sharers need not worry about being prosecuted.

According to Janko Roettgers at the P2P Blog, the toning down of pursuing file-sharing lawsuits was first mooted last week by the state prosecutor of Nort-Rhine Westphalia. Speaking to German site Jetzt.de, he openly stated that file-sharers will not have to worry about legal proceedings unless they share files on a “substantial, commercial” level.

Obviously this begs the question: what constitutes substantial or commercial levels of file-sharing? It seems that not all files are equal, and that it’s not only a question of the number of files shared but also the specific value.

The economic value of a music file is about one Euro, whereas a movie is valued at about 15 Euro. Based on that we define a commercial level as damages greater than 3000 Euro.

But that doesn’t mean you can safely share 3000 music files in Germany without fear of prosecution, as the commercial infringement involved is affected by the nature of each individual file. For instance, sharing a movie that hasn’t been commercially released in Germany at that time could spell trouble regardless of your other activity.

That sounds fair enough, and it makes sense to only go after the people sharing thousands of files, or files that could potentially impact on a successful release of a film or album. Maybe the RIAA should take note of this softening from the German authorities and alter its strategy as a result.

Unfortunately not all European countries are as lenient as the Germans seem to be becoming, with the British government and the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) recently stepping up its fight against the illegal sharing of music files. For the first time in my life I actually want to move to Germany.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 6:00 pm under Crime, Opinion, Piracy.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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