Court Orders ISP To Hand Identities Behind 5,300 IP Addresses To Copyright Trolls (torrentfreak.com) 41
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: An initiative, fronted by Danish law firm Njord and backed by known international copyright trolls Guardaley, made headlines when it began targeting the customers of several ISPs, including Telia, Tele2 and Bredbandsbolaget, the provider that was previously ordered to block The Pirate Bay. At the time it was unclear how many people the law firm had in its sights but the situation has become more clear following a recent legal development. Sweden's new Patent and Market Court, that was formed last year to handle specialist copyright complaints, handed down a ruling on Friday. It grants Njord and its partners the right to force ISP Telia to hand over the personal details of subscribers behind thousands of IP addresses, despite the ISP's objections. Telia says that although it places great value on its subscribers' right to privacy, complying with a court order is a legal requirement. In all, subscribers behind 5,300 Telia IP addresses will be affected, with claims that each unlawfully downloaded and shared a range of movie titles including CELL, IT, London Has Fallen, Mechanic: Resurrection, Criminal and September of Shiraz. All have featured in previous Guardaley trolling cases in the United States. It's not known how many of the 5,300 IP addresses Telia will be able to match to subscribers, or whether each IP address will identify a unique subscriber, but it's safe to say that thousands of households will be affected. "There is probable cause of infringement of copyright in the films in that they were unlawfully made available to the public via file sharing networks," the Court wrote in its judgement. "The applicants' interest in having access to the information outweighs any opposing interests, including the interest of the individual [subscribers] to remain anonymous." A Telia press spokesperson told SVT: "We believe that our customers' privacy is incredibly important, but now we must comply with this court decision."
then Danes have their problems right now (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
just rotten, i tell ya.
As I read it, no danes are affected yet. This was against ISPs in Sweden by a Swedish court. The Danish lawfirm is just representing a US troll to a Swedish regulatory captured court, to all collectively screw Swedish customers.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
just rotten, i tell ya.
I'm disappointed by how many people didn't get this.
Solving the problem through random numbers (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I believe that due to subpoena requirements logging is mandatory for ISPs in many (most?) countries. I know I've had to implement that on service routers as a requirement. It becomes a pain in the ass with Carrier Grade NAT because multiple customers share a single public IP. Then you also have to log port and time-stamp and those have to be provided as part of the subpoena.
Re: (Score:2)
Does that mean that one or more subscribers who have never "shared" copyright material will have their details sent to the court?
Educate me, please - just how could a plaintiff establish to a court's satisfaction which particular subscriber was involved?
Talk about a scattergun approach.
"Here is the list of subscribers sharing that IP address at nine PM last Tuesday night, your honor."
"What, there's twenty of them, all at different physical addresses, and not otherwise related to each other? Case dismissed.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Subpoena would more likely be for online threats, locating fugitives, charlie papa, DEA stuff.
DMCA violations are different requests that follow the same technical process but are taken more or less seriously depending on the ISP. If a subpoena is received saying "Email provider X says that a bomb threat was sent from IP A.B.C.D at 4:32 on the 13th of December", more or less. They typically already have subpoena'd some information from Google or Yahoo or Microsoft or somebody. Then the ISP goes back through
Re: (Score:2)
I sense that you think this is difficult, and I agree.
The ISP logs have to show the exact time of possession, and use, by an alleged offender of a particular IP address.
This exercise may reveal exactly how much the ISP knows, like MAC address (and smart device equivalent), that could be discovered by confiscating user's machines.
Re: (Score:2)
The MAC address of the router would be visible, but not of the computer, as that is not passed outside the local network (for the most part...).
Re: (Score:2)
What's the outrage here? (Score:2)
It would've been understandable, if the users were deanonymized by police or other parties directly — such as through bullying of some kind.
But this is a court's decision — the judge(s) heard both sides and rendered judgment. This is how a law-abiding society is supposed to work...
Re: (Score:2)
If the court order says to hand over the identities of these users, we have to assume the court currently doesn't KNOW the identities of these users.
How, then, has the court heard both sides of the case?
Re: (Score:1)
The users don't own the data that was requested in the sapina. Why would they be involved in this court case?
They'll be involved in the follow on court case, where they will be given the oppertunity to present arguements in their favor, but have zero involovment in the articles case.
Remember, your identity is DATA that can be owned, it is not private.
Re: (Score:2)
Informally, this is hardly a unique situation — in many cases lawsuits are filed against parties unknown at the time of filing, their very identities subject to discovery [wikipedia.org]. See also "John Doe [wikipedia.org]".
Formally, the two sides, obviously, are the ISP and the (supposedly) injured party. Once the user-identities are known, separate suits will be filed against them and the court will hear their side, no doubt.
Re: (Score:2)
This is how a law-abiding society is supposed to work...
An example of why this is broken is that the term "made available". Effectively it's a crime less crime. Show me who downloaded stuff. Show me the economic damages that specific person caused down to the number of copies that were transferred. Show me that the person who retrieved the copy used it in full and didn't either just download, or just watch / use a small portion allowed under fair use.
THAT is how law-abiding society is supposed to work.
Re: (Score:2)
It is illegal to be making such copies available — because duly-elected lawmakers decided to illegalize it. The judge(s), who are supposed to interpret the law, did interpret it...
I don't have to show you anything. It is illegal to allow others to copy the media, period. But, interestingly, your argument is similar to something, spammers would claim: "just press Delete — you
Re: (Score:2)
It is illegal to be making such copies available
Before you go any further I encourage you to:
a) look this up (because I think you'll be surprised)
b) realise that this is a civil case not a criminal one so what is legal and illegal takes a back seat to contract and copyright laws. None of which mention anything about making available.
It is illegal to allow others to copy the media, period.
Nope.
No, that's a society of thieves you are talking about.
A law that is not respected by the population is not a law of a civilised society. If it's a society of thieves we are in, then I'm going to take a seat in it, right next to Rosa Parks cheering for an end to corporate bo
Re: (Score:2)
You really want to split hairs and be formal about it — fine. You aren't sold a piece of entertainment. What you get for your money is a right (a license) to enjoy it. One of the conditions of that license is that you do not make it available to anyone else. By making it available you violate the contract — knowingly and willingly — and should be screwed to the wall for it.
Ha-ha! Rosa Parks was actually
Re: (Score:2)
Yes one needs to split hairs in legal matters.
As for producers not owing anything and following letters of the law, i can see you know nothing of copyright history.
Much less how contact law works (pirates didn't enter into a restrictive "make available" contract precisely because they didn't pay anything). So that falls back onto what's written in copyright law and again there's no mention of making things available in it.
Try again. Me I'll be continuing the civil disobedience until copyright holders return
Re: (Score:2)
Alright, what do Quentin Tarantino and Clint Eastwood owe you?
OMG, you really do equate your "civil disobedience" fighting for your "right" to free entertainment with that of Rosa Parks fighting racial discrimination... You want to steal — fine, live with it. But your desire to clean up your conscience and appear righteous leads to hilariously idiotic statements...
What a list (Score:3)
CELL, IT, London Has Fallen, Mechanic: Resurrection, Criminal and September of Shiraz
It's amazing how most copyright trolls are targeting people for downloading utter pieces of crap that no one would every pay a cent to see.
11, 10, 25, 29, 30, 33, Respective Rotten Tomato scores out of 100. It's almost like they sorted them by crapness.
Re: (Score:2)
10 for IT? I assume this isn't Stephen King's IT, then? I find it hard to believe that would get a 10/100.
Re: (Score:2)
Given how every other item on that list was a very recent release and it's a recent lawsuit, I would assume it's https://www.rottentomatoes.com... [rottentomatoes.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I noted that Gerard Butler is a "Producer" for the third one, which I assume is code for "You need to pay me more to keep doing this rubbish".
Not Surprising (Score:2)
It's amazing how most copyright trolls are targeting people for downloading utter pieces of crap that no one would every pay a cent to see.
What's surprising about that? They clearly are not going to make money from people voluntarily paying to see these films are they?
Re: (Score:2)
It just kind of re-enforces that notion that pirates are not customers, that a pirated copy is not a lost sale, and that piracy is not actually causing losses to the studio.