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Swedish Court Says IP Numbers Privacy Protected

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the then-how-can-i-ping-you dept.

oh2 writes "The highest applicable Swedish court, Regeringsrätten, has ruled that IP numbers are protected (in Swedish) since they can be traced to individuals. This means that only government agencies are allowed to track and store IP addresses, leaving 'anti-piracy' advocates with no legal way to find possible copyright infringers." Update: 06/18 14:42 GMT by KD : The original linked article had been pulled due to factual errors and a new article has been posted (link replaced above). Here is a Google translation. The new article makes clear that the ruling does not affect the anti-piracy efforts of rights-holders.
Update: 06/18 15:08 GMT by KD : Behind the link below is a summary in English of the article sent in by the submitter, oh2.
This autumn Datainspektionen will start monitoring how the IPRED law is applied when it comes to disclosure of personal information. A recent verdict in the Regeringsrätten, Sweden's highest applicable court, has upheld Datainspektionens decision that IP addresses are to be considered personal information and therefore protected under law.

In 2005 Datainspektionen ruled that collecting and storing personal information online like copyright advocates were doing was a breach of the Swedish PUL, Personal information act, that regulates how and what kind of information that can be traced to a single individual that can be stored. The anti-piracy organizations were quickly granted an exemption though, that expired March 31st. Starting April 1st this year IPRED allows holders of copyright to apply to the courts for this information.

Datainspektionen will now monitor closely how any personal information acquired from the courts in this manner is used by copyright holders.

7 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. bad rule by gmack · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And no way for server admins to track what virus infected bots are trying to break into their systems.

    This rule will hurt more than it will help.

    1. Re:bad rule by jtev · · Score: 4, Insightful

      First thing I thought of too. That, and almost all servers already log connections by IP address. I mean, I look at /var/log/secure and what I see is a list of IP addresses that have connected to my machine, with what they have been trying to do. Someone didn't have their thinking caps on when they wrote this law.

      --
      That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
    2. Re:bad rule by polle404 · · Score: 5, Informative

      the first article has been removed, since it was wrong on several points.
      http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/nyheter/ny-dom-paverkar-inte-ipredlagen-1.894500
      the court says: IP's are personal information, therefore you can only get this information through a court of law, and this ruling does not affect the Ipred law
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPRED

      so a sysadm is not prohibited in managing his own network.

      --

      ~men are from earth. women are from earth. deal with it.~
    3. Re:bad rule by Narpak · · Score: 4, Informative

      "The highest applicable Swedish court, RegeringsrÃtten, has ruled that IP numbers are protected (in Swedish) since they can be traced to individuals. This means that only government agencies are allowed to track and store IP adresses, leaving "anti-piracy" advocates with no legal way to find possible copyright infringers."

      This is pretty much the way things are, and have been, in Norway now for many years. And so far I have heard none of my friends in IT, nor anyone in the media, complain about "And no way for server admins to track what virus infected bots are trying to break into their systems."being a problem.

      --
      The Long Now Foundation
  2. Article has been replaced by mattj452 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article had a lot of errors and DN has replaced it with a new article: http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/nyheter/ny-dom-paverkar-inte-ipredlagen-1.894500 In short: They can still do what they want, but they need a permit for it.

  3. Double edged sword? by wamatt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think overall this is a win for Copyright lobby and not the other way around.

    1) Legitimises IP address being tied to account holder. IE lessens the "TOR/ Wifi Defense"
    2) APB have gotten an exemption and are now allowed to track IP's.

  4. Re:Privacy in Sweden by mikael_j · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is thanks to something called "offentlighetsprincipen" which is basically the idea that anything related to the government (taxes, car registration, legislation, police records and so on) should be available to the public. One of the main criticism of the EU that tends to be get brought up in Sweden is actually that the EU doesn't work the same way, that there are a lot of things that are withheld from the public in the EU (or at least kept out of reach by bureaucracy and pointless paperwork).

    Personally I rather like our system, if its not explicitly classified as secret then anyone can access it.

    /Mikael

    --
    Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4