14 DAY TRIAL // Germany's Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday that the authorities wouldn't any longer be at large to collect data from the Internet users' personal computers whenever and however they please. Certain limitations were imposed upon the state-controlled agencies, such as the need for judicial permission to attempt tapping into a person's PC, and that is to be granted only under special conditions.
Digital rights activists must have thrown a party when news of the decision broke out, as it is the coronation of all of their efforts dating back to the first day of such activities being reported. "The ruling is a great success for digital rights and civil liberties in Germany," blogger Markus Beckedahl said on Netzpolitik.org.
The underlay of the decision is that it actually instates a right to online privacy, something not very clearly legislated before and attended just now by the European Union. "It is now clear that our computers are protected, and that wasn't the case in the minds of our politicians," Beckedahl was quoted by PC World.
Previous to this first decision, which is thought to start a wave of similar rulings in other countries of the EU and abroad, privacy was something easily trifled with, although granted by right. I distinctly remember one case of the police sweeping a college boy's room, confiscating all of his hardware and sentencing him to two and a half years in jail, after one cop downloaded it using Strong DC, a file sharing software.
The special situations make the eventual use of the spy software have more weight when presented into court. Just yesterday, news broke about one Connecticut boy who was sued by five record labels for having been found with 2,017 tracks they claimed to have had their copyrights infringed. The decision granted by the court in his case was that while there was no actual proof of the teenager sharing the files, the claims were unfounded, and the case could be dropped. It seems that's the trend, and I'm betting the IFPI isn't very happy about it.