Neues Urheberrecht: Kabinett kriminalisiert Kopierer – Netzwelt – SPIEGEL ONLINE – Nachrichten

Apparently they finally did it. Quiet, sneaky and nearly unnoticed the german parliament made a new copyright law. The process has taken some years now and it included new aspects to secure technologies like DRM, copy protection and comparable techniques. They started with banishing all software that breaks copy protection in some way. This is understandable as far as a huge industry (that couldn’t manage to switch to new media fast enough to provide lawful services) is still interested in protecting its products. But the new “improvements” also allow them to get connection informations directly from the ISPs. Apart from that the so-called “pricate copy” is no longer legal as it has been which actually means that a long battle for the right to copy your property is finally lost.
In my opinion we are slowly reaching a sitution where not the government controls its people (like they did in the former German Democratic Republic) but the large companies do. This is actually common practive in the US. But the question should be whtether any of them has the right to do so though it seems they cooperate very well on this matter atm.
You probably would like to have a look on 1984, a novel by George Orwell which makes me believe we’re only a little late…