Is it true that in Germany you can get fined for illegal downloading? How do they detect what you download? Is it only P2P and file sharing, or every kind of data?
Yes it is true. I and several of my non-German colleagues have been fined. Each movie downloaded through torrent costs them 813 EUR. I didn't pay. I hired a lawyer to troll the company who sent me the warning. First my lawyer asked if they could forgive me just this time. They said no. Then my lawyer asked can i pay less. They offered another, lesser, fine. My lawyer offered something else. They refused. My lawyer wrote a letter to plead. They offered something else, etc. Anyway I told my lawyer to never agree to anything and just keep the bargaining up. It's been 2 years now and he hasn't heard from them since the last letter. I guess they gave up. They basically need to prove that you downloaded the movie and not someone else who got your wifi's password, which is a tall order. They send these fines around and hope the people being fined would be scared and pay right away. One colleague of mine got the letter and ignored it and they haven't contacted him since.After we got the letter we all started using VPN though.