Let's take a deep breath and consider what's happened. The Federal Court of Justice has sent the case back to the lower court. They have not ruled on anything. They have not said ad blocking is piracy. They have essentially said: lower court, you had 25 boxes to tick but you only ticked 24 in your ruling. Go back and do one that ticks all of them.

It's entirely possible that the lower court will change its ruling based on the intricacies of German copyright law, which is shit. But it's not very likely if you ask me. Regardless, whoever loses will appeal it again. This rodeo is far from over. And when it's eventually over the technology will have moved on, with any luck the law along with it, and the only beneficiaries will have been the lawyers.

So the headline should read more like "German court does not rule out that ad blocking could be a copyright infringement."

The argument that Axel Springer is just doing it for their love of democracy is also comical. Media pluralism is important, I agree with them that far, but they are stuck in an outdated mindset. They launched a silly tabloid Fox News wannabe TV channel and failed. They are trying to force eyeballs on their content like you are at a news agent. Meanwhile, news is happening on TikTok and so-called AI is going to reduce their page views to dust. By the time we get a final ruling they will have pivoted strategy 10 times to keep the c-suite in caviar while the established media business that made them successful is rotting away under their assess.

[–] sad_detective_man@leminal.space 5 points 6 days ago (4 children)

isn't overturning a previous ruling kind of clear intention? what other purposes does this have?

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 15 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Is returning it to a lower court overturning a ruling?

This sounds more like as described - "redo it". Overturning would be this court literally "over turning" and saying adblock is piracy.

[–] sad_detective_man@leminal.space 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Yes. The article only links to it in German but "Werbeblocker IV / Ad Blocker IV" on July 31 was the overturning case.

Axel previously tried twice in 2018 and 2023 and failed. Now that it is overturned, he is going to the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg to get a new ruling.

However I don't speak German or live in Germany, this is my understanding of this article and these court cases.

[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 11 points 5 days ago

No. This is how the legal system works. When you appeal to a higher court, they can make a call themselves when massive mistakes were made at the lower level or they can say the lower court overlooked something and then make them redo their work. It's a convenient choice for the higher judges not to have to do more work themselves. But it's part of the process.

[–] Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 10 points 5 days ago

To have a proper justice system.

As the main comment explained: this is not saying "you got the wrong result", this is saying " the way you reached that result is not the proper way for our justice system".

So they are just saying that the lower court didn't do it's due diligence and needs to look again at the case, this time considering the parts they missed the first time.

It is not uncommon in Germany that cases like this end in the same result

To try and explain it in an easier to understand way:

Person X murders Person Y

Court A says "Guilty, because you suck"

Court Higher B says: "Suckiness is not a proper judicial term, do the whole thing again"

Court A says "guilty, because here is the witness testimony, your finger prints on the murder weapon and the video footage of you killing person Y".

Same result as before, but this time in a proper manner fitting a proper judicial system.