It's a privacy issue, which isn't expressly protected (by the Constitution, anyway). I doubt he (in the eyes of the law) has any reasonable expectation of privacy if he is placing his information (images, videos) on someone else's computer.

First, I don't think there was any violation of this person's rights by US law. Second, judges and juries are people, not automatons that blindly apply law. Considering the circumstances, I have a hard time believing a judge or a jury would think that the thief deserves a monetary reward.

Nah, not a monetary reward, just getting the video taken down. I don’t think the thief would get some sort of monetary reward in Germany, either.

That's the only tangible outcome that would come from suing the person who uploaded it. Getting money for "damages" is the only reason to sue the individual, in this case.

If you want the video taken down, it would be more direct to go after YouTube. In this case, the individual isn't really the "publisher," YouTube is. You probably wouldn't even need to sue YouTube, you could probably go through the "inappropriate content" channel.

He can probably just do a simple DMCA takedown. He made the video, so he owns the copyright. Even better -- just turn on monetization and buy a new laptop in a week.

He doesn't necessarily own a video he made using someone else's equipment, especially if he didn't compensate the owner of the equipment for its use. If you don't produce intellectual property on your own time and with your own equipment, your full ownership of what you produce is not a given.

German laws are much different than US laws, and even if they weren't, I don't think anyone cares about a thief's personality rights. It's not a violation because Mark owns that data and the thief willingly recorded it on the disk.

What people care about shouldn't affect the law.

Suppose a 14year old girl stole some underwear - the store then videos her in her bedroom in the underwear and puts it on TV as an ad campaign. Still acceptable in the USA?

On the contrary, what people care about absolutely is the law in the Anglo-American setup. Laws are black and white (sort of), but the world is grey. We have juries not just to ascertain guilt, but to decide whether punishment should be brought forth.

No jury will ever side with the thief for what is essentially mischief.

That's completely different, and you know why.

I can't believe this thread got this big over something this simple.

Whether you think it's right or wrong, a jury isn't ever going to give the thief any leniency here. I believe in some European countries there are professional juries? Perhaps Germany?

We don't have that here. It's just people off the street and they have no legal training and they go with their gut feeling quite often and they DEFINITELY will in a case this simple.

If the thief's apartment was burned down or he was murdered or got beat up or something like that as a result of the notoriety, then there may be a case. But not because of some public humiliation or something related to privacy matters.

This is just the way juries work in the US.

For better or worse, the US is not Germany. Comparing the two won't necessarily be that enlightening. Consider, for a moment, why the thief in this case is not being prosecuted at this very moment. I would consider that even more unprofessional.

So yes, abstractly, a thief should not have to give up their rights, but on the other hand, it's a thief -- and there's a particular concrete US ethos that influences mine and the jury's thinking about this. We wonder why we should care about the rights of this particular person who chose to steal other people's possessions.

In other words, cry me a river. :-)

First of all, at the moment he hasn't been proven guilty. Second, when and if he is, criminals aren't stripped of all of their rights.

Both of which are true, but irrelevant to the comment I made.

I'm confused. Are you saying that U.S. juries and judges are likely to overlook this in name of an, uh, ethos?

No. What I think everyone is saying is that we find it surprising that the thief recording a video and putting it on the victims computer (essentially giving it to him) would have any rights to sue for at all in Germany or anywhere else for that matter.

The fact that the thief knows that the computer is stolen property and is not rightfully his makes a big difference. For example, if he bought the computer for $250 he might be suspicious that it was stolen (otherwise why such a good deal?), but it is theoretically possible in that situation to give him the benefit of the doubt. Of course, that's not the case here.

It's not in the "name" of anything. That is, it's not a principled stand. He is claiming that people's prejudices and biases will cause them to overlook it.

> But why?

Jury nullification. US Juries can find in opposition to the facts, the evidence, the law, the judge's instructions, etc.

In short, if you put a case in front of a US jury, with a clearly documented violation of a clearly worded law, you may still find the jury returning a verdict of 'not guilty'. And that's just the way it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification