Precedent verdict in a Swedish filesharing case

[TankGirl]

Precedent verdict in a Swedish filesharing case

A local court in Västerås, Sweden, has given its verdict in a high-profile precedent case against a 28-year old Swedish filesharer who was caught sharing a movie called "Hip Hip Hora" on a Direct Connect hub and who also confessed his copyright sins to the police when they questioned him. The penalty was a fine of 16.000 Swedish Crowns (about 1.700 Euros or 2.000 USD).

The case will almost certainly be appealed to higher courts but if the penalty stands as fines only it will have an interesting consequence: a similar court case will not be possible in the future in Sweden. This is because the industry-owned Swedish Antipiracy Bureau based its identification of the filesharer on an IP number (which it had acquired by entering the hub with its own snooping p2p client), and according to the Swedish privacy laws any crimes worth fine penalties only are too insignificant to justify any breaks of personal privacy - such as ISPs identifying their customers from their confidential IP number logs.

In its comments the Swedish Pirate Bureau seemed relatively happy about the fine verdict and its implications but also expressed its grave concern - further echoed in Rasmus Fleischer's Copyriot blog comments - about the fact that the court had accepted a screen capture provided by the Antipiracy Bureau as a valid evidence in the trial. Any software professional knows that it is trivial to forge or manufacture screen captures - as demonstrated in a striking fashion by Pirate Bureau's Evidence Machine. As the case proceeds to a higher court, the validity of screen captures as evidence - especially as collected by a profit-seeking industrial organization and not the police - will certainly be one of the issues to be reconsidered.

- tg