AfterDawn: News

File sharing fight given green light in Sweden

Film and music companies have been given the green light in Sweden to resume collecting data about file sharers who are spreading copyrighted works illegally on P2P networks. The Swedish Anti-Pirate Bureau (APB)B and other organizations such as the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) have been given permission to collect the IP addresses by the Swedish Data Inspection Board (DI). Earlier the DI had ruled that the data collecting methods in use were a violation of privacy rights and also illegal because only government authorities could keep registers of criminal offenses.

However now both the APB and IFPI have been granted exception from the law. "The organizations' collection of IP numbers does not constitute an undue infringement of personal integrity," DI argued in a press release. Björn Gregfeldt, chairman of APB said that the ruling meant the fight against illegal file sharing could begin immediately. "We have never kept a register of personal details," he said. "We can restart our operations pretty much immediately, and maybe now we’ll be able to persuade Internet service providers that they have to take this problem seriously."



The two organizations hadn't actually been keeping a register of offenses beforehand anyway, they were simply sending the information onto the relevant ISPs.

Source:
The Local

Written by: James Delahunty @ 14 Oct 2005 13:24

• Previous article

• Will Apple kill national TV broadcasters?

• Next article

• Biggest ever pirate CD bust in U.S.

• 4 comments

• nohelpme

  First guess they will be all over piratebay.org sense it is run in sweeden. GET PEERGUARDIAN!

  14.10.2005 13:53 #1

• dirkadirk

  They cant do anything to thepiratebay.org ,all they do is host trackers, no actual material.
  The material is of course transferred via bittorrent ,
  so its split up into many small incomplete pieces.
  How can they keep track of incomplete data from various sources, well enough to even get a warrant based off of a IP address. Peerguardian isnt going to stop anyone from logging your ip address and trying to sue you,itll just keep them from connecting to your computer
  
  

  14.10.2005 15:57 #2

• j0j081

  I think a few sites have been taken down for only hosting trackers so I don't know.

  14.10.2005 17:58 #3

• isepiq

  1. Blocklist Manager
  2. ProtoWall
  3. MUTE
  
  This is just spurring the development of anonymous file sharing.

  19.10.2005 15:31 #4