A French Court of Appeals judge looked at the convictions of two file-sharers and canceled the rulings because the IP addresses were illegally obtained. The news very likely comes as a major blow to the French record labels and employed anti-piracy outfits.France has been in the headlines for a while over the "Three Strike" proposal for copyright infringement. While the moves to get such a rule in place have reached international headlines, there appears to be some news that may point to some consumer positive moves happening from within the country as well. The news (French) comes from late last week on a French news site 01net (Google Translation) The report says (via Google translation), "the Court of Appeal of Rennes found that the sworn officers of the Sacem and the SCPP (1) had collected the IP addresses of Internet users suspected of Piracy in an unlawful manner, because without the prior approval of the Cnil." The decision is reminiscent of an argument from the Tanya Anderson case in the US which puts into question of whether or not the major record labels investigation techniques were actually legal. On the other hand, what was being argued might be more closely tied with the more recent big question being brought to courts of whether or not an IP address is actually considered private information. The news of a court judge in the US ruling that Viacom can have the IP logs of all its users on YouTube would like be the biggest example in North America addressing this sort of question. From the report (Google translation): justice reaffirms the personal nature of the IP address, even if the latter can not directly identify the owner of a computer. In 2007, the Paris Court of Appeal had considered the contrary, that IP was not "a name given indirectly relating to a person." Obviously, the question of whether or not an IP address is personal information will likely be readdressed in the French courts given that there are two contrary rulings. In any event, this may prove to be a critical legal development for French file-sharers. Further reading from the report: In these two separate cases, the Court of Appeal quashed Rennes convictions in the first instance of two surfers. In the first case, ruled in March 2007, a freenaute was accused by the SCPP to be made available by the Direct Connect software nearly 23 000 audio and video files. He was sentenced to three months suspended prison sentence. |
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