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.

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.

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. :-)

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.

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.

> 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