European Court Decides FileSharers Should Stay Anonymous

[Impotence]

European file-sharers were given a huge legal boost today, as the European Court of Justice declared that EU law does not allow Internet Service Providers to be forced to reveal the personal details of people accused of file sharing.

Telefonica, Spain’s largest telecom operator successfully argued that the law only required it to reveal the identities of those accused of a criminal offense and that sharing of music was a civil issue.

The European Court of Justice agreed with Telefonica in its dispute with the Spanish music rights holders association Promusicae. In order to start civil proceedings, Promusicae had asked for the names of Telefonica subscribers, who allegedly infringed copyrighted material by using KaZaA.

The court said that: “Community law does not require the member states, in order to ensure the effective protection of copyright, to lay down an obligation to disclose personal data in the context of civil proceedings.”

This ruling is a huge victory for EU filesharers, whose privacy is now backed by a ruling from the European Court. For ISPs this should be a huge relief as well, and they can finally put their time and effort in working for their customers, instead of against them.

The tide is changing for European filesharers. Last week we reported that the data protection commissioner in Switzerland criticized the infamous anti-piracy tracking outfit Logistep for helping to breach the privacy of filesharers. A few days before that decision, Greens EFA, a coalition of two political parties that currently have 42 seats in the European parliament, launched a pro-filesharing campaign named “I Wouldn’t Steal”.

Original Article: European Court Decides FileSharers Should Stay Anonymous | TorrentFreak
Source: Digg

 

[Swansen]

then they should just give their names to the people from which they are stealing from.

 

[Impotence]

then they should just give their names to the people from which they are stealing from.

This assumes that it was actually them downloaded the copyrighted material... and not just someone else using there connection (or you host a proxy server / tor node etc etc).

The only 'evidence' which they can use to claim you did anything wrong is an IP address, which only doesn't prove who did what only where happened (and even the physical location of where changes with ISP's who hand out addresses dynamically).

I'm not saying something shouldn't be done about it, I'm saying i don't see what can be done about it while preserving privacy (without privacy you don not have freedom of speech, perhaps one of our most valuable rights).

Distributing CD's and DVD's is a failing business model, the general public know that they can download it for next to nothing... and i assume they wonder why the physical copies are so expensive!

The only 'solution' to piracy that i can see is cheap, DRM free music... with an interface that makes it easy to get, and FAST... it could uses P2P tech to distribute files with the content servers you would normally download from acting as seeds (and even offer people discounts for being a seed / when they have uploaded XYZ MB's of data).

I have seen how most people download music (they search for individual tracks with limewire/frostwire) and i really think that if they were offered at a low enough cost they would prefer it (as it would be legal, and done right faster too)

if your selling to the entire world with very low distribution costs, how much do you need to charge per track to make a profit?

 

[Swansen]

And IP address is a start, if activity keeps popping up at a certain IP, then something should be done. On the drm free thing, Amazon officially opened its service, and it works pretty cleanly, i like it.