Internet piracy is still a relatively new phenomenon, most countries are currently far from nailing down their legislation on the spectacle, and the debate is well under way on how piracy should be treated in the justice system. Sweden, being a fore runner when it comes to both Internet piracy, and piracy prevention, is still leagues from a solid answer.
Therefore, leading judgments are important, and since the Internet and information sharing is global, it is very interesting to examine how other countries deal with their cases of piracy. A case well worth putting under the microscope is a subpoena from the U.S.; Malibu Media Llc vs. John Does.
Malibu Media Llc saw how some of their movies (and other IP products) were leaked on the Internet. The company then tracked the IP-address used for sharing these files over a Bittorrent protocol, and based on that IP-address the company found the uploader. This time it happened to be a home user rather than a public hotspot. Subsequently geo-location was used to find the physical address, and the subscription service used, and thereby identified the physical person behind the uploads.
Or so they thought.
The law suit is as a classic example of what may cause many pirates to choose to hide their IP-address, i.e. example via VPN services, but interestingly enough, the judge in Florida decided to go a different route. The judge ruled that although the address was correctly identified, you cannot rule out the possibility that someone else used the computer. Home networks and home computers are after all often shared by several people.
Similar judgments have been identified previously in the U.S., and seems to be increasingly common. In Sweden we have had relatively few court cases of piracy that had been triad on the basis of IP-address, but this case may be setting the stage for how these cases can come to be interpreted.
What do you think about internet piracy? Please comment below.
