Dear customer,

please tell your friends not to sign any prepared agreements by the lawyers representing the rightsholders. These agreements usually go further than necessary and may raise the risk of being part of further civil reponsibilities for future uploads (the act prosecuted is the act of sharing files to other users which automatically happens when downloading something using a P2P network).

However, it is important to comply with the deadline for delivering the declaration that one will not continue to share the mentioned content of the rightsholders (Unterlassungserklärung). Otherwise relatively costly summary proceedings are likely due to the high values of claim.

Due to the complexity of the issue it is the safest and often also cheapest way to let a lawyer experienced in these cases (keywords Urheberrecht, Abmahnung) do the negotiation. Ask for the price before. Many German lawyers will do such cases for around 200 Euros without sticking to the rediculously high values of claim used by courts and the rightsholder's attorneys.

The defence stating that not the friends but your daughter did the violation will not be successful before German courts unless your friends can prove that the had forbidden the use of such P2P-filesharing software and actually did control that. Entering into proceedings with this defence may be risky in relation to the relatively cheap sums which can be negotiated beforehand.

Regards