>I need somebody to explain to me howthismakes any sense.
A ruling from a Swedish court that IP numbers should be considered personal data will not have any impact on the country’s recently passed anti-piracy law.
The Swedish Supreme Administrative Court ruled today that IP numbers should be considered personal information. This is a hot topic because copyright holders routinely use IP numbers to identify people they accuse of illegal file sharing. IP numbers, although issued to a computer, can often be easily tracked back to an individual.
But a policy adviser at Sweden’s ministry of Justice told the Register: “The rumours that this decision will kill off IPRED [Sweden’s anti-Pirate Bay law] are wrong, because the bill creating the law includes an exemption for rights holders – they may request and keep IP numbers for this purpose.”
Call me slow, but I don’t understand this at all. IP addresses are supposed to be personal, but all it takes is an accusation of copyright infringement by somebody who may or may not have a legitimate claim (I’m talking about the music, film and software industries here since some of the claims they make are technically/legally wrong and ridiculous) and all that privacy is out the window without a warrant or a court order? That doesn’t seem at all fair. If you exempt the most egregious abusers of IP addresses, what’s the point of protecting those addresses and the privacy of innocent people in the first place? It sounds like what’s happening here is a good ruling was made but lobbying is almost surely going to ruin it. If I’ve got this wrong, please, somebody set me straight.
