Up until recently, Sweden's movie and game industries have been busy trying to fight illegal file sharing, however it has not been until recently that Sweden's music industry decided to join the battle also. Sweden's branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) decided to start its battle as a result of file sharing showing no signs of decline.
To start with, the IFPI will not start its legal action until it has made the public aware of its plans. So far, they have been given the right to log the IP addresses of those found to be illegally sharing copyrighted content, however there is a catch: An order from the Swedish Board of Data Inspection requires them to inform the owners of the IP addresses that their IP address is being recorded. As an IP address is just a set of digits, much like someone's car license plate, the only place the organisation can get the owner's personal details for a given IP address, is from the ISP. If you copy, please show appreciation by linking back to cdfreaks.
While ISPs are required by law to provide the police with the owner's details for a given IP address and time-stamp, currently this is not a requirement for other organisations. So, the ISPs have decided to protect their customers by ignoring the requests from the IFPI as well as the games and film industry - the APB. According to a press officer from Telia Sonera, this ISP will not even send out warnings on anyone else's behalf. However, while the ISPs may get away in the short term, they may have issues in the long term due to a working copyright law being a condition of their business.
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(Further down the article) Only the file sharer's ISP can link the IP address to the person. If the ISP receives a request for such information from the police, they cannot refuse it, but a few calls from TT revealed that requests from APB would be ignored. "We don't send out warning letters to our customers on anyone else's behalf," said Jan Sjé¶berg, the press officer at Telia Sonera Sweden. |
At least this is one other country where the ISPs are standing up for their customer's privacy. However, this is not likely going to last for long if their entertainment industry finds a way to get the ISPs to cooperate with their requests. For example, one ISP in Sweden has been raided by the Swedish authorities for hosting a substantial amount of pirated content on their services.
Source: The Local
