about (2): Streaming of copyright-protected media is generally considered legal, only copying is not. But it's claimed that streaming a file to the flash-player is actually "progressive download" and hence falls under illegal copying. (of course for purely technical copying between buffers, temporary files, ... there's even an exemption in the law (§44a UrhG), but that does not stop the lawyers from trying this reinterpretation).
About "gladii": The most interesting thing are the crosslinks between the companies involved. The company that claims to hold the rights to the porn is "The Archive AG" and the company that claims to have determined the IP addresses of porn-consumers is "itGuards, Inc". Normally the expert-witness should be somewhat independent of the plaintiff, but in this case the websites of both parties have been put on by the same user on the same shared webhost: wix.com (funny enough "wix" in German is a homophone of "to jerk off"). (details: http://blog.kowabit.de/porno-sein/). Also both companies seem to be founded within one week in March 2013, possibly on purpose.
Then maybe another interesting thing about these special "Cease and Desist" ("Abmahnung") letters in Germany: As someone has already mentioned, they have been invented to lower the workload of the courts, so that they don't have to deal with trivialities (basically between businesses, mostly used for/against wrong claims in advertising).
But the crucial thing is: The "fine" the receiver has to pay only is allowed to cover a certain aspect: The actual damage (here: possibly $10 for a porn-movie) and expenditures that the rights-owner had to pay to the lawyer. So if a nice lawyer sends out 100'000 cease-and-desist letters at a flat-rate of $10000 in total, you'd only be allowed to "fine" the receivers $10 for the porn-movie + 10 cent + postage or so. And if the lawyer "fines" the receivers $100 per rights-violation, he technically would have to bill the rights-owner 10 million dollars, even if the cease-and-desist doesn't have any merit, every single receiver would ignore it, and a judge would through the case out. Unfortunately there's no way to force the lawyer or rights-owner to let anyone know about their contracts, but sadly this makes almost every "Abmahnung" an invalid one, even though no one can proove it.
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about (2): Streaming of copyright-protected media is generally considered legal, only copying is not. But it's claimed that streaming a file to the flash-player is actually "progressive download" and hence falls under illegal copying. (of course for purely technical copying between buffers, temporary files, ... there's even an exemption in the law (§44a UrhG), but that does not stop the lawyers from trying this reinterpretation).
About "gladii": The most interesting thing are the crosslinks between the companies involved. The company that claims to hold the rights to the porn is "The Archive AG" and the company that claims to have determined the IP addresses of porn-consumers is "itGuards, Inc". Normally the expert-witness should be somewhat independent of the plaintiff, but in this case the websites of both parties have been put on by the same user on the same shared webhost: wix.com (funny enough "wix" in German is a homophone of "to jerk off"). (details: http://blog.kowabit.de/porno-sein/). Also both companies seem to be founded within one week in March 2013, possibly on purpose.
Then maybe another interesting thing about these special "Cease and Desist" ("Abmahnung") letters in Germany: As someone has already mentioned, they have been invented to lower the workload of the courts, so that they don't have to deal with trivialities (basically between businesses, mostly used for/against wrong claims in advertising).
But the crucial thing is: The "fine" the receiver has to pay only is allowed to cover a certain aspect: The actual damage (here: possibly $10 for a porn-movie) and expenditures that the rights-owner had to pay to the lawyer. So if a nice lawyer sends out 100'000 cease-and-desist letters at a flat-rate of $10000 in total, you'd only be allowed to "fine" the receivers $10 for the porn-movie + 10 cent + postage or so. And if the lawyer "fines" the receivers $100 per rights-violation, he technically would have to bill the rights-owner 10 million dollars, even if the cease-and-desist doesn't have any merit, every single receiver would ignore it, and a judge would through the case out. Unfortunately there's no way to force the lawyer or rights-owner to let anyone know about their contracts, but sadly this makes almost every "Abmahnung" an invalid one, even though no one can proove it.