Advocate General says that ISPs aren’t required to reveal the identity of customers accused of illegally downloading copyrighted music.
The Advocate General to the European Union’s top court, Juliane Kokott, advised the court that ISPs aren’t required to hand over the personal information of customers suspected of illegally downloading music in civil cases.
She said today that "…it is compatible with EU law for European countries to exclude communication of personal data in the context of a civil, as distinct from criminal, action."
The case stems from a lawsuit brought by Promusicae, a Spanish music and audiovisual industry association against the Spanish ISP Telefonica. Promusicae had asked Telefonica to provide the names and addresses of certain customers it suspected of engaging in illegal file-sharing of copyrighted music in order to take legal action against them.
The P2P file-sharing program KaZaA lies at the heat of the matter and is the one Promusicae "infiltrated" in order to round up suspect IP addresses engaging in illegal activity.
Telefonica has refused Promusicae’s request to turn over the identities of customers on the grounds that the law requires it to only reveal such information for the purpose of criminal prosecutions, and not for civil lawsuits.
Apparently the Advocate General’s opinion is followed by judges about 80% of the time, meaning that a huge victory for file-sharers in Europe may be near.
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I HOPE this sets a legal precedent in Europe. Mabye then the MPAA and RIAA here in the US may have the tide start to go against them around the world….
Mmm I don’t know. This reminds me of when in Italy a court decided that a file-sharer was not to be persecuted because he didn’t make money out of the files he had downloaded. The Italian government changed the Italian law to avoid having this precedent being used in future times.
I think the EU will change eventually its internal law to fight p2p/piracy. This news will probably speed things up.
I hope you are wrong. That would be a bad legal move for any country to change it’s laws to fit an industry….it is bad enough the US has such laws.