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: Switzerland, a longtime haven for all kinds of financial
: shenanigans, has just expanded its reputation for
: "discretion" to cover file-sharing as well. That's the
: conclusion of Logistep AG, anyway, as a Swiss court has just
: gutted its P2P surveillance business with a ruling that says
: gathering even publicly available information is illegal.
:
: Logistep has operated in Switzerland since 2004, doing what all
: of these firms do: trolling BitTorrent sites for movies, music,
: or software, then connecting to swarms and logging the
: information of everyone offering the file. Bits of the file are
: downloaded as proof that these aren't simply
: "mistitled" files, and information like IP address,
: file hash value, and time of day are recorded in a giant
: spreadsheet. Content providers who rely on Logistep can take
: this information and submit it to local courts, seeking to
: identify and then sue individual file-swappers.
:
: But Europe has fairly strict data privacy laws and a cultural
: expectation that data collection will be disclosed, with the
: data used sparingly. This often alarms Internet advertising
: companies like Google, which objected in 2008 to an EU proposal
: to label IP addresses "personal data."
:
: The current EU approach can hardly be described as
: "hardline" - member states are actually required to
: implement a Data Retention Directive under which ISPs must hang
: on to user information so that police can investigate crimes.
: And IP addresses are not always "personal
: information." Companies like Logistep (including Guardaley
: and DtecNet) operate across the EU and perform almost identical
: functions; Guardaley, in fact, powers the US Copyright Group
: mass lawsuits currently underway in the US.
:
: But Switzerland, which is not an EU member, has decided that it
: can't sanction Logistep's behavior. The country's Federal Data
: Protection and Information Commissioner, Hanspeter Thür, took
: Logistep to court and this week won a major victory. The Federal
: Supreme Court ruled that IP addresses are in fact personal
: information and that companies like Logistep can't go about
: slurping them up for mere civil cases like file-swapping
: lawsuits. Logistep must cease all current copyright infringement
: data collection.
:
: In a press release issued yesterday, Thür praised the court's
: decision. He sees Logistep as trying to "assume tasks
: clearly in the State's domain." Only the state can violate
: personal privacy, and only when pursuing criminal cases.
:
: Thür made clear his view that "today's decision provides
: no protection for anyone breaking the law. Clearly it should be
: possible to punish copyright infringements on the
: Internet." But how will this be done?
:
: Logistep's dueling statement rounded up a quote from Nikolai
: Klute, a Hamburg lawyer, who said the decision flew in the face
: of most other European precedent: "Soon, Switzerland is
: likely to have the reputation of a safe haven not only for tax
: evaders, but also for copyright infringers."
:
: The company also hinted that it might move across the Swiss
: border to a country where its work remains legal.
:
: The ruling would appear to make it difficult to sue just about
: anyone for anything on the Internet; unearthing someone's
: identity for a defamation suit or copyright infringement
: generally requires an IP address. It would also prevent any sort
: of mass lawsuit campaign against P2P users from taking place in
: the country's courts.
:
:
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