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.'"

Comments

The REAL Villains Here

[Nom du Keyboard]

The real villains here are the Swiss prosecutors who are going along with this scheme. They should be ashamed -- and Fired! (Donald Trump, where are you?)

Re:The REAL Villains Here

[eiapoce]

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/

Who watches the watchers?

[KublaiKhan]

So who is it that should prosecute the prosecutors?

Re:Who watches the watchers?

[realthing02]

Is that similar to meta-moderating?

-1, jailbait.

Re:Who watches the watchers?

[KublaiKhan]

More or less...all the meta-levels get a little odd after a while.

Quite seriously, though, what sort of judicial review exists in Switzerland? Is there anything in place to hold these people accountable?

Swiss law is broken

[Anonymous Coward]

if someone can attack you on the internet, and there is no way to identify who the attacker is to file a lawsuit against the person. This goes for other things besides file sharing, such as libel.

Swiss independence

[redelm]

Oh my. Somebody is going to get into _big_ trouble. The Swiss are _very_ independant minded, perhaps even moreso than Americans. They also take their laws very seriously and playing games is quite simply not allowed.

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.

Re:Swiss independence

[Tribaal_ch]

They don't get to lobby to get a law changed. In Switzerland, national laws are voted by referendum.

Re:Swiss independence

[redelm]

Sure, Berne/Bern is in Switzerland. The Federal capital, and capital of the canton. That doesn't mean they signed the convention (although I think they did). The Swiss are famous for hosting things that they don't sign on for. In spite of hosting many UN agencies in Geneva since the beginning, the Swiss only joined the UN in 2002.

Re:Swiss independence

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Swiss are _very_ independant minded, perhaps even moreso than Americans"

HAHAHA +1 Funny! Americans + independent minded?
Most Americans are so "non-independent minded" that they think they are!

In all fairness,

[gnarlyhotep]

The "anti-piracy" group didn't violate the privacy laws, they conspired with the prosecutors, who are the ones who may have violated the privacy laws (if a criminal case was not warranted).

Either way, it's still a gross violation of the spirit of the law, and certainly reprehensible.

Re:In all fairness,

[TubeSteak]

The "anti-piracy" group didn't violate the privacy laws, Alright

they conspired with the prosecutors I guess where you're from, a conspiracy is not a civil & criminal offense?

If the prosecutors are going to get slapped, so is Logistep and vice versa.

Re:In all fairness,

[gnarlyhotep]

"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.

Re:In all fairness,

[gnarlyhotep]

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.

What's the bounty for turning in the IP trackers?

[WillAffleckUW]

I foresee a long wonderful friendship between me and law enforcement as I track down RIAA agents using extreme measures for the bounties ...

Lock and load, filesharers! It's clobbering time!

EU law too.

[oliverthered]

IP addresses have just been made private data under EU law too, don't know how that affects civil law cases though

Re:EU law too.

[DJ Decay]

Switzerland is not in the EU, so it probably doesn't have much of an effect.

Re:Kickbacks

[gnasher719]

You gotta wonder whether and how much money changed hands to make these criminal cases happen. None. All they have to do is go to the police, claim that their copyrights have been infringed to some degree that would make it criminal, and then the police would be supposed to investigate. They tried exactly the same thing in Germany. The only difference apparently was that the German police and judges quickly figured out that the record companies didn't have any intention whatsoever to actually follow through with the roughly 10,000 criminal cases that they wanted the police to investigate, so in Germany the police decided that they have better things to do than wasting their time on filesharers.