Swedish ISP Refuses To Give Up Info; Says IPRED Violates EU Privacy Rules
from the privacy-or-copyright? dept
Since the Swedish IPRED law went into effect, basically requiring ISPs to hand over info on those accused of copyright infringement, many ISPs have begun questioning the legality of the law itself -- specifically noting that the law clearly conflicts with privacy laws already in place in Sweden, as well as wider EU privacy rules. Last year, the ISP Ephone appealed a demand for info, and now Swedish telco giant Telia Sonera is doing the same in appealing a demand for info on whoever runs SweTorrents:In its appeal, the ISP argues that IPRED is in direct violation of the EU's data retention directive, under which the privacy of the SweTorrents owner would be protected....Separately, TeliaSonera also pointed out that the court doesn't seem to understand the most basic technical aspects of BitTorrent, in that it spoke of "the material that is uploaded on the website" in referring to SweTorrents. But SweTorrents is just a tracker, and thus there is no infringing material uploaded to its website. TeliaSonera points out that the demands for information on SweTorrents, then, is "based on faulty technical knowledge."
"The protection of privacy contained in the directive prevents the application of the Swedish IPRED law in this case," TeliaSonera's lawyer Patrick Hiselius said in a comment.
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Filed Under: copyright, data retention, eu, ipred, privacy, sweden
Companies: teliasonera
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Time.
That is why I don't use copyrighted stuff anymore.
There are some nice labels that give out good music like Jamendo, Magnatune and LOCARecords and some others, now why would people choose to get raped by the RIAA when they have choices?
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Technical technicalities
Ha! I love that part. Legal systems are based on technicalities, so I hope that as the professionals in the legal systems get more tech savvy, we'll see more of this kind of thing.
Defense lawyer: "My client is being sued for hosting infringing content on his web site, but he doesn't host any content."
Judge: Looking at web site, "Hmmm. Right you are. Case dismissed."
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For example, if an ISP uses certain logs internally in the company then one could argue that such data is stored in accordance with the directive since it is stored and used for other purposes than criminal investigations. That could be the case even if the same log data were stored in another database with stricter access rules according to the directive.
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correction: then one could argue that such data is NOT stored in accordance with the directive
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Future of Torrents
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