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Anti-Piracy Group Violates Swiss Law to Track File Sharing
An anonymous reader writes "Another fight appears to be brewing in Switzerland over how file sharers are identified. Logistep, a company that specializes in anti-piracy by collecting computer evidence against file sharers for use in lawsuits, seems to have taken an end run around Swiss law in order to try and settle cases out of court. 'Under Swiss law, the identity of a subscriber to an ISP (Internet service provider) can only be revealed during the course of a criminal case, not a civil one, Schaefer said. The IP (Internet Protocol) address of a computer controlled by the subscriber is considered "personal" information. In order to try to claim damages from people suspected of trading songs or movies, Logistep has asked Swiss prosecutors to open criminal cases, Schaefer said. As the criminal cases progresses, Logistep receives information from prosecutors that identifies the file sharer.'"
So who is it that should prosecute the prosecutors?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
I expect the civil suits to be dismissed with prejudice (or whatever the civil code equivalent is) and countersuits for fraudulent prosecution to proceed.
If the copyright holders don't like the law, they can lobby to get it changed. Otherwise, the Swiss guard their privacy very jealously. They've stood up to various flavors of nasty Germans and French. I very much doubt they'll cave to the RIAA equivalent. Please also remember that K-Tel is a swiss corp deliberately to take advantage of copyright laws.
"I guess where you're from, a conspiracy is not a civil & criminal offense?" Conspiracy is, in almost every jurisdiction, a seperate prosecutable offense related to a violation of the law. It's understood to be illegal to conspire to violate the law, due to the fact that one or more of the conspirators do not actually violate the law.
In this case, they weren't the ones obtaining the IP addresses under (presumably) false pretenses, nor providing them illegally. They convinced the prosecutors, who have an obligation to the public, to do such a thing. Ire placed solely upon the "anti-piracy" group is misplaced; the bulk of it should go to the prosecutors who were the ones *directly* violating the law and abusing the public trust.
Did the conspiracy violate a law? yes. Did the conspiracy violate the *privacy* law specifically? no. Semantic difference, but the law is all about trifling details and semantics.
Correction: the conspiracy most likely violated the law. I don't know the specifics of Swiss law, nor am I a lawyer, nor do I play one on tv.
Unfortunately it is the "allowing content to be created" part the has been trolled around since the '70 by the RIAA and recently by the MPAA... Everybody knows that if that was true then there would'nt be any music by now.
The last year we, the costumers, have been exposed to frequent scripwriters strikes. They clearly stated that MPAA associated corporations keep most profits for themself and then starve honest content creators. This is enought to debunk the myth.
Now it is also more than clear that part of the money goes to borderline legal firms like Logistep who (ab)use loopholes in international law to violate citizens privacy and honestly in europe we don't tolerate this. We rate privacy more than corporate profit over here... http://www.mafiaa.org/