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EU Court Says File Sharers Don't Have To Be Named
Stony Stevenson writes "European Union countries can refuse to disclose names of file sharers on the Internet in civil cases, the EU's top court said. The European Court of Justice has ruled on a dispute between Spanish music rights holders association Promusicae and Spain's top telecoms operator Telefonica over Telefonica's Internet clients who shared copyright material on the Web. Telefonica argued that, under a national law based on EU rules, it only had to disclose the name of an Internet subscriber for criminal actions, not civil ones. But the court said: '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.' I wonder if this ruling will have any effect on other cases in other countries."
Probably not. The Spanish law doesn't require telcos to disclose the requested information (actually they would get in serious trouble if they provided it to third parties without a judge involved), and the EU said that said law is ok, but other countries could have a different law and that would be ok as well.
I wonder if this ruling will have any effect on other cases in other countries.
Not in the U.S., that's for sure. We don't care what them damn heathen furriners do in all them other countries...
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Unfortunately for you, the opposite is not quite true.
This court rulings says that European law does not require telcos to supply information, and it does not prohibit it either. Spain does not have any national law on the subject, so Telefonica are not required to supply this information. If Holland does have such a law, then the likes of Chello would be required under Dutch law to supply the information.
We had an article up a few days ago where a file-sharer hunting company was starting criminal cases to get the person's name, settling out of court, and dropping the case. Though forcing everyone to play hardball makes it interesting, is this really the best way to go about things? Litigating groups will just pull the same stunt until the judges get sick and tired of the riff-raff dragging rather harmless defendants across the coals.
I predict the industry and anti-piracy lobby groups to focus on newer additions to the EU from Eastern Europe to do just this. These countries use more EU aid and can be painted as piracy hotbeds.
Well, thanks to the Internet, I'm now bored with sex.
Not being an expert here, could someone tell me the difference between a civil law and a criminal law? Is there any way for the file shares to be persued using criminal law?
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I could search on the internet, but having an answer here would be useful to other readers of
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I bet Sony BMG and Universal will back file sharing sites sooner than most think.
The question is not whether they'll do it but when. Everyone knows their position is getting weaker by the day, and the more DRM and restrictions and other technology they add the more the music industry smells like Vista.
Keep in mind that there is a civil law system in most EU countries (I think the only exceptions are the UK and the Republic of Ireland), so there are no precedents here. This case does not have any effect on any other similar cases in the EU.
A criminal case requires a crime and I don't think you're going to be popular with the police if you keep accusing people of crimes just to get their name.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
for those of us with westlaw and lexis is there an offical report/ trascript available? anyone have a citation?
So true, unfortunately this doesn't help French people because in our country IP violations are considered as criminal acts.
Local lawyers have already found a workaround for this obstacle. They first open a criminal case and receive the identity information from the police. Later they file the civil case.
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.
imsparticus ? It's Spartacus.
I despair. This is supposed to be one of the few sites on the planet that has intelligent people, and yet all we get is "THE MAN CAN'T STOP US SHARING MUSIC!". Sorry, but The Man isn't the record execs on their £100k salaries, it's the musicians trying to break through. Sure, try to break "the system" by copying everything, but you'll get this:
1: The Man will earn just as much doing something else...advertising exec for SourceForge for example....The Man doesn't really care where he gets his money, as long as he gets it. And he will.
2: We'll have wall-to-wall pap (good Scots word, means "meaningless nothing") and it will be called music. Seriously, it'll be far worse than the stuff we get now. Nickelbak will be by FAR the most innovative it gets.
If you want to get free music, then go support the DAMN BANDS THAT PRODUCE IT! If you don't want to pay for music, DON'T BLOODY WELL BUY IT!
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
"he only exceptions are the UK " sorry but just plain WRONG http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Justice/Civil that's Scottish law which is seperate and discinct from english law i am sure if you look you'll find that england also has plenty civil law cases.
I am sorry, I didn't want to offend the Scottish, of course the Scottish have a civil law system. I didn't want to mention that since my original comment was about the rest of Europe and not the UK so it would have been a little bit irrelevant here. Anyway the rest of the UK AFAIK has common law (I am not sure about Gibraltar though). And the rest of Europe doesn't (except the Republic of Ireland, and probably Malta and maybe Cyprus but honestly I'm not sure about those two and too lazy to check out Wikipedia). Based on your comment one could say that the US is not a common law country either because Louisiana has civil law as well.
They now have to prove that you were in fact in front of your computer, and that you were controlling the actions of your computer at the time that your computer was carrying actions that was infringing the copyright.
So that would mean a key logger was monitoring your actions on the computer while a video camera recorded you physical presence at the machine, either in configuring your computer to commit those actions at a latter time or in the concurrent act of committing those actions, all this combined with a recording of all data input and outputs between your computer and all network connections.
This is all required to establish a true a valid line of evidence to ensure guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, especially bearing in mind the severity of the penalties to be applied.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Police need proof of a crime before they can request an exemption to acquire data that would otherwise be protected under the data protection act.
Not that it matters because both Labour and Conservatives are in the pockets of the music industry so they'll probably just ignore this ruling and I can't see any other party getting in.
Criminal cases usually require a more onerous 'burden of proof' than civil cases.
That's why sometimes, (in the UK at least) where people have not been convicted of crimes, their victims will pursue a civil case against them, because it's much easier to get a civil judgement against someone than a criminal conviction (even though the penalties can just be financial not custodial).
If copyright infringement was only allowed as a criminal offence in the USA, I doubt anyone would be convicted of downloading from the Internet. The RIAA wouldn't like that one bit!