That answer to that question has been a long time coming and has its roots in two cases dating back more than three years.

In the first case, initiated following the 2009 introduction of the IPRED legislation in Sweden, five book publishers delivered a request to a district court.

Led by anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån, the publishers wanted to force the ISP Ephone to provide the personal details of one of their subscribers who they claim uploaded 2000 audio books to a server, 27 of which in breach of copyright.

In June 2009 the district court ordered Ephone to hand over the information to Antipiratbyrån. The ISP objected, arguing that the request was not in line with the data retention directive, and took the case to the Court of Appeal. The ruling of the district court was eventually overturned and the case was sent to Sweden’s Supreme Court for consideration.

The Supreme Court sought the advice of the European Court of Justice which responded in April 2012 stating that the data retention directive does not preclude the handing over of information on alleged infringers in civil cases as long as certain conditions are met (detailed analysis here).

The case went back to Sweden’s Supreme Court for its decision, one that would affect the privacy of another individual in a second important case. He or she is the alleged administrator of the SweTorrents BitTorrent tracker and was also targeted under IPRED.

That case was also initiated in 2009 just after IPRED kicked in. Four movie studios applied to the Södertörn District Court in an attempt to force ISP TeliaSonera to hand over the personal details of the individual.

In December that year the district court said that TeliaSonera must hand over the name and address of the SweTorrents operator to anti-piracy groups Antipiratbyrån and Rättighetsalliansen (Rights Alliance). Like Ephone before it, TeliaSonero was concerned over the disclosure and took the case to the Court of Appeal, but the attempt was unsuccessful and the earlier district court ruling stood.

Refusing to accept defeat TeliaSonero asked the Supreme Court to hear the case. However, the Supreme Court already had the Ephone matter to deal with and the decision there would affect the SweTorrents case.

Two days before Christmas 2012, the Supreme Court decided that the book publishers in the so-called “Bonnier Audio” case did have the right to obtain the personal details of the individual who had stored the 2000 audio books on his server.

Whether it will be possible to find the individual remains unclear. During the case Ephone went bankrupt and of course it has dragged on for such a long time further evidence will probably be long gone. Nevertheless, the publishers say the ruling will still prove useful.

Pia Janne Nyberg, a lawyer at the Swedish Publishers’ Association, said that the ruling will be used to obtain the personal details of other people sharing content online so they may be sent warning letters. At this point it is unclear if other rightsholders will chose to take things further.

With the ruling on EPhone handed down, the Supreme Court announced yesterday that it had rejected TeliaSonera’s request to have their case heard.

“The Court of Appeal’s decision stands. The decision means that TeliaSonera needs to give out the information about who was the registered user of the illegal file sharing site SweTorrents,” Rättighetsalliansen lawyer Sara Lindbäck told TorrentFreak.

“The legal system is catching up. In recent months there have been several verdicts from the courts against copyright infringers. We will now take some time and see what the next step will be,” Lindbäck concludes.

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

In December the Court announced its decision and said that the ISP must hand over the name and address of the SweTorrents operator to Antipiratbyrån. Not wishing to breach customer privacy, TeliaSonera launched an appeal.

Earlier this week the Court of Appeal upheld the earlier decision of the District Court. Failure to comply would result in a 750,000 kronor ($96,500) fine.

The company has until June 7th to submit an appeal, but made the decision to do so almost immediately.

The decision against TeliaSonera is based on the Court’s belief that under the IPRED legislation, the ISP must hand over customer details in file-sharing copyright cases. TeliaSonera, however, feels that it has a fundamental obligation to protect customer privacy which precedes IPRED.

“The rules governing privacy and confidentiality have long existed in the rules that govern our industry and the IPRED law is brand new,” says Patrik Hiselius, a lawyer at TeliaSonera. “It is important that there is a principled review of the Code and the Anti-Piracy Agency’s interests.”

Another ISP, Portlane, is facing a similar set of problems. This week it was also ordered to hand over the details of a BitTorrent admin, this time at the OpenBitTorrent tracker. Portlane also has the chance to appeal, but has yet to announce whether it will do so.

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

Svensk Filmindustri, Pan Vision, Filmlance and Yellow Bird in conjunction with Antipiratbyrån (APB) said that the SweTorrents BitTorrent tracker had made five copyright movies available to the public via their site, some of them in advance of their commercial release. To this end they applied to the Södertörn District Court to force ISP TeliaSonera to hand over the details of the account holder behind the site.

In December the Södertörn District Court announced its decision that TeliaSonera must hand over the name and address of the SweTorrents operator to Antipiratbyrån. The ISP didn’t want to breach customer privacy so easily, so it launched an appeal.

Yesterday the Court of Appeal panel – which included forthcoming Pirate Bay appeal judges Christina Boutz and Ulrika Ihrfelt – found that there was probably cause for the existence of copyright infringement and therefore decided to uphold the earlier decision of the District Court.

Not only does TeliaSonera have to pay the movie companies’ costs of 60,000 kronor ($7,715) but failure to comply with the decision will result in it collecting a 750,000 kronor ($96,500) fine.

The company has until June 7th to decide whether to appeal.

“We have not decided yet [whether to appeal], but it begins to honestly get a bit tedious dealing with IPRED,” Patrik Hiselius, Director of Public Affairs at TeliaSonera, told AFB. “We would prefer to sit and talk about film premieres being available on customers’ home sofas to curb copyright violations.”

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

They asked the Södertörn District Court to demand that TeliaSonera give up the information because SweTorrents was infringing on their copyrights. The application was made under the IPRED legislation introduced earlier that year, which was put in place to make it easier for copyright holders to track down and identify potential copyright infringers.

In December, the Court ruled in favor of the movie companies and ordered TeliaSonera to hand over the requested information to Antipiratbyrån. Claiming that the ruling violates the privacy of one of its customers, the ISP decided to appeal the decision.

In its appeal, the ISP argues that IPRED is in direct violation of the EU’s data retention directive, under which the privacy of the SweTorrents owner would be protected. According to TeliaSonera’s lawyer, the directive applies to this case even though it hasn’t yet been implemented by the Swedish government.

“The protection of privacy contained in the directive prevents the application of the Swedish IPRED law in this case,” TeliaSonera’s lawyer Patrick Hiselius said in a comment.

TeliaSonera further notes that in its ruling the District Court speaks of “the material that is uploaded on the website,” even though there is no copyright material on SweTorrents, only torrent links. Therefore, it appears that the Court’s ruling is “based on faulty technical knowledge,” according to the ISP.

If TeliaSonera’s appeal is successful, the new IPRED law will be crushed, which would be a huge setback for the anti-piracy outfits that lobbied long and hard to get it passed.

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

The companies, Svensk Filmindustri, Pan Vision, Filmlance and Yellow Bird in conjunction with Antipiratbyrån (APB), applied to the Södertörn District Court to force ISP TeliaSonera to hand over the details of the account holder behind the Swetorrents BitTorrent tracker.

A representative from APB said that Swetorrents made copyright movies available on the Internet, some of which have yet to have their commercial release, and claimed that the site negatively affects the revenues of the movie companies.

Today the Södertörn District Court announced its decision. TeliaSonera must hand over the name and address of the Swetorrents operator to Antipiratbyrån. Failure to comply will cost the company 750,000 kronor ($110,000) in fines.

It had been argued that since Swetorrents is a so-called private BitTorrent tracker which requires registration to access, this meant that the site is closed and not open to the public. This claim was dismissed, since the site has around 20,000 members and on this basis, could not be considered to be private.

“Today’s decision shows that it’s the victim of infringing activity that must be protected, rather than the perpetrator,” said lawyer for Antipiratbyrån Sara Lindbäck in a statement, noting that it was no longer acceptable to protect illegal activity by hiding it behind an IP address.

When the initial application was filed by the movie companies, TeliaSonera indicated it would fight to maintain the privacy of its customers, adding that it could appeal if the court decided against it.

“If there is an order from the court, it’s highly probable that we will appeal the decision,” a TeliaSonera spokesperson said at the time. “We’re not just going to hand over the information. It’s our duty to protect our customers’ privacy.”

At this stage a number of issues are unclear. The first, whether TeliaSonera intends to stand by its original intention to appeal. The second, whether the person behind the IP address is actually the operator of the site or simply the account holder, and the third, whether the account holder even handed over his correct details to TeliaSonera in the first instance.

in any event, the site’s current public IP address does not belong to TeliaSonera.

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