Shrouded in secrecy for most of its duration, a battle between the Simonsen anti-piracy law firm and ISP Altibox wove a tortuous route all the way to the Supreme Court. In the end the ISP was ordered to hand over the identity of the alleged pirate. Simonsen went to work straight away.

Although they ended up in roughly the right place, according to Norwegian news reports the person responsible for the Internet account in question had no idea file-sharing was taking place on his or her connection. It turns out that the uploader was actually a 20 year-old living with his parents.

When confronted by Simonsen he confessed to carrying out the ‘crime’, which was to upload the movie from his bedroom to the now-defunct Lysehubben Direct Connect hub. It is also claimed that the man was a central figure at the hub, possibly the operator.

Aside from the court order not revealing the identity of the actual uploader but the bill payer, there is another issue. Time and again the emphasis is being put on people who are claimed to put material onto the Internet first and the Max Manus case is no different. However, as we detailed in our earlier article, this 20 year-old is almost certainly not the first releaser of the movie.

The date he uploaded Max Manus to Lysehubben was 28th March 2009. However, a release group called KAMERA already uploaded the movie months earlier on 29th December 2008. Within hours the release was available on BitTorrent so thousands of others would have uploaded the movie before 28th March. The general implication has been that the 20 year-old is responsible for thousands of subsequent downloads which seems far from fair, or even true.

So, one has to question if catching the ‘first-uploader’ of Max Manus was really the target in all of this. If it was, in that sense it has failed. It looks more likely that the real aim was the closure of the Lysehubben hub along with some scary media propaganda which shows that would-be pirates can be identified.

“Without this decision copyright holders wouldn’t have the opportunity to pursue copyright violations on the Internet,” said Simonsen lawyer Rune Ljøstad earlier. “Now we have that opportunity, so the question is when to use it.”

There’s little doubt that the high profile chase through the legal system was helped hugely by the support of a big national-pride movie, its producer, and all the emotive issues that go with them. The question remains though – what punishment lies in wait for the 20 year-old after this fairly epic battle? Despite more than a year of work, no decision has been made.

“It’s a bit early to say. We do not aim to storm into boys rooms and take thirteen year olds to trial,” said Max Manus producer John M. Jacobsen. “Our goal is to stop their activities.”

Not a chance. There are currently 17 separately seeded torrents of the movie on The Pirate Bay alone.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Shortly after the movie’s 19th December release date an illicit copy of the movie appeared on the Internet. According to producer John M. Jacobsen the recording was made in an empty theater, prompting suspicions that a projectionist was involved.

“I think this is totally reprehensible, and I wish we knew who is behind it,” Jacobsen told Norwegian media. “Anyway we will go after those who have done this quite mercilessly. There are ways to track these things down.”

An investigation was immediately launched by the Filmkameratene studio, to be handled by the Simonsen law firm with notorious pirate hunter Espen Tøndel at the helm. Technicians went to work, systematically going through every copy of the movie sent out to find a match – that meant checking 103 analog and 20 digital copies.

Their detective work paid off. Simonsen said they had not only tracked the correct copy but also identified the IP-address from where the movie was first uploaded to the Internet. They took the information to the police but were notified that the case would not be a priority for them. Simonsen responded by taking the case to the courts.

Simonsen, a law firm which since 2006 had held a license to monitor alleged pirates and collect their IP-addresses, demanded that the ISP connected with the IP-address hand over the identity of the subscriber, something it had thus far refused to do. The request had the support of the Norwegian telecoms authorities which in this case made a special exception to the country’s Privacy Act, enabling the person’s identity to be handed to a group other than the police – if the court agreed.

On May 5th 2009, Simonsen received the decision from the court but the verdict was kept a secret from the public. Espen Tøndel said this was to prevent the possibility of evidence being spoiled. This lack of transparency caused an uproar, with thousands of Internet citizens demanding to know the verdict in this important case. Many argued that if there was evidence to be spoiled, it would’ve been spoiled by now.

Today in 2010, the verdict is still a mystery to the public, but at least one of the parties is disappointed with the court’s decision.

“I can confirm that the case is being appealed to the Supreme Court, but I can not confirm which of the parties has submitted the appeal, as that may indicate what the results were in the previous hearing,” said movie industry lawyer Rune Ljøstad.

The Supreme Court will now have to decide if it’s acceptable for privately owned companies with financial interests in the outcome of a case to be given the power to obtain the identity of an Internet subscriber behind an IP-address, whether or not they committed the alleged offense.

Despite the leak, Max Manus did incredibly well in Norway, breaking all records. Its 2009 theater run yielded almost NOK 200 million across 1.16 million tickets and the DVD sold 400,000 copies in the same year. From recording a loss in 2008, movie company Filmkameratene made a profit in 2009.

“There is a dramatic change for the better for us in 2009,” said producer Sveinung Golimo. “So we are not now concerned about the future.”

Privacy campaigners will look toward the forthcoming Supreme Court decision before sharing in his optimism.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.