Filesharing

Online exchange services have developed into one of the 'killer applications' of the Internet. Peer-to-peer, eDonkey or BitTorrent - the key terms of filesharing technology have become a common part of media culture and are at the same time a source of irritation for the international copyright industry. Online exchange services make is possible to transfer almost any file across continents within a very short period of time and almost free of charge, which means that this technology is destined to cause legal problems. Guido Brinkel does a comprehensive and detailed analysis of these legal problems. He focuses deliberately not only on the evaluation of the actual actions of the users but puts a stronger emphasis, in consideration of the comparative law aspects, on the liability of those who participate indirectly in the platforms, for example client software producers, link portal operators or even access providers.