Jan K of the P2P Blog, who obviously reads German with a far greater amount of skill than I can muster writes, "The State Attorney General of Northrhine Westfalia Roswitha Müller-Piepenkötter now said that taxpayers have to pay millions to ISPs alone in order to get the information necessary for these lawsuits. In Germany an ISP can bill law enforcement officials for the work that is necessary to find the corresponding personal data connected to an IP address at a given time."

Since German courts won't cough up a subpoena to reveal the subscriber information the IFPI needs to sue in a civil action, they take another route. The IFPI files criminal charges against alleged P2P users, at which point Germany's attorney general's office has to deal with uncovering evidence. Once the Attorney General has uncovered the details of a broadband user's account data, the IFPI uses that information (which the German authorities paid the ISP to dig up) to sue in a civil action. So far, none of the criminal cases have gotten very far but, that's really of no concern to the IFPI.. they just want your address.

It's costing German taxpayers 35 to 40 dollars a shot to uncover the subscriber details, and when the IFPI decides to go after a few thousand people at a time, those costs really add up. Should the German taxpayer be forced to support the IFPI's fractured business model and flagging sales?

[via P2PBlog]