I used to live in Germany and can confidently say there was never any police around to enforce this. Though I lived in a small dorf and would commute in to a small city. Not sure how it is in larger cities.
One doesn't need to look much farther than Spotify to see how large corporations exploit their market power to disadvantage artists unless they're wicked famous.
Does anyone know the process for paying these fines? Like maybe a source where you can check that the fines were actually paid? These are huge fines and I'm sure there are plenty of excuses so they can delay payment for decades.
The question will be whether that was maybe reckless or negligent.
This is one of the hardest things to pin down in any court system since it's difficult to prove negligence, especially when they had the word of a state actor. It's basically the most pseudo-trustworthy exchanges you can make (absent certain nation states like N. Korea, etc.)
Yes and no. It is not illegal to make these things. The creation of hacking tools is not illegal. The use of them in an "unjust" way, is. Unjust is emphasized since it really depends on who is deciding who gets the terrorist label.
Sure. Like any other large org that capitalizes on other people's labor.