File sharing: Liability for family connection

The Frankfurt District Court has ruled that the owner of an Internet connection is liable for copyright infringements through file sharing, even if it is not certain that the connection owner himself is the perpetrator and it is a “family connection”.

In the underlying case, the film “Divergent – Die Bestimmung” had been illegally offered for download via a file-sharing platform on a certain day using an IP address that was assigned to the defendant’s connection. The rights holder filed a claim for damages and warning costs against the defendant. The defendant pointed out that it had never downloaded the film via file-sharing networks and that it was not aware of any file-sharing networks. Her Internet access was encrypted, she said, so no one but her, her husband and her son could access it. When friends come to visit, the Internet connection is also used for games. The Internet is used for playing games or watching the news, but also for correspondence and obtaining information. To her knowledge, neither her husband nor her son used file-sharing sites on the Internet.

The Frankfurt District Court ordered the defendant to pay damages in the amount of 1,000 euros – which corresponds to the amount of a corresponding usage license – and to pay warning costs in the amount of 215 euros.

Based on the case law of the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) (e.g. BGH, judgment of March 30, 2017 – I ZR 19/16 – NJW 2018, 65), if the owner of a family connection refers to family members as possible perpetrators of copyright infringement, he must explain what research he has conducted to substantiate this suspicion, according to the Higher Regional Court. He would also have to state which circumstances that speak for a perpetrator other than the owner of the connection would have resulted from the investigations. However, the defendant had not done so, but had even expressed the opinion that her husband and son did not use file-sharing software. Neither of them could therefore be seriously considered as perpetrators, so that it could be further assumed that the defendant itself had offered the film for download.