TeliaSonera Fighting IPRED Up To The Swedish Supreme Court
from the privcy-rights-trump-your-business-model dept
Last year, of course, Sweden passed a strict "anti-piracy" law called IPRED, following a ton of pressure from the US entertainment industry (and US diplomats repeating debunked industry talking points). While some have declared the law a "success," because music sales went up last year, there's little evidence to suggest the law has been useful at all. The amount of unauthorized file sharing did drop initially, but quickly went back up and now is higher than it was before IPRED became law. If the goal was to stop unauthorized file sharing, it failed miserably. As for the increased money in the music industry? A lot of that is actually due to new offerings, such as Spotify.Of course, many people pointed out that IPRED, beyond being unlikely to work, also created a whole bunch of unintended consequences and problems -- including a dangerous attack on the privacy rights of those in Sweden. And, remember, this is Europe, where privacy rights are an even bigger deal than in the US.
When the first attempts to use IPRED to get user info from ISPs were made, some ISPs refused to hand over the data, saying that IPRED violated the EU's privacy rules. So far, the courts have no agreed, but Swedisn ISP TeliaSonera is now taking the issue to the country's Supreme Court:
"The rules governing privacy and confidentiality have long existed in the rules that govern our industry and the IPRED law is brand new," says Patrik Hiselius, a lawyer at TeliaSonera. "It is important that there is a principled review of the Code and the Anti-Piracy Agency's interests."
Filed Under: copyright, ipred, privacy, sweden
Companies: teliasonera
