A woman in Germany was sued back in 2008 for uploading a pornographic movie via the eD2K network. Only thing is that she was running an add-on that made it so her filesharing client is unable to upload anything. Additionally, there is no evidence to support the claim that she did any uploading.
The judge presiding over the suit doesn’t know anything about filesharing or tech, so he is requiring the woman to hire an outside expert to testify as to whether or not the woman could have uploaded the files in question. The source information is pretty unclear as to whether the woman is using the expert offensively or defensively (she did file her own suit against the rightholder), but we do know that the woman is paying for the expert out of her own pocket. The total cost is 5000 euros, 3000 of which are being supplied by a lawyer. The rest of the money is going to come from donations.
Requiring the woman to pay to hire her own expert is not as unfair as it may initially sound (especially if the expert is testifying for the woman as a plaintiff). Germany is one of many countries which, unlike the United States, require the losing party to pay for the winning party’s legal fees. Presumably, the term “legal fees” encapsulates the costs of bringing in outside testimony.
As it stands, the woman should win her cases. After all, the woman was unable to commit the acts of which she’s being accused.
