Danish ISPs don’t have to give up pirates

[Len]

Two Danish telecommunication Internet Service Providers (ISP) have won the right to refuse the disclosure of information of suspected pirating customers.

Østre Landsret ruled that Telia and Telenor are not required to disclose the details of subscribers who had allegedly pirated films and music.

Over 4,000 infringing IP addresses were detected by Copyright Management Services (CMS), which was looking to prosecute the infringers.

The court ruled that the disclosure of customer’s personal details would be a breach of the consumer’s rights and privacy as set out by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU.

The court noted that CMS only uses the requested information to send out “threat letters”, not prosecute offenders. A witness in the case said that this was “unsympathetic” as the threat was not real.

In previous rulings, CMS had acquired the addresses and names of alleged pirates and sent letters to subscribers.

In the latest ruling, however, Østre Landsret ordered that because the subscriber information that was previously provided as a result of the earlier trial had not led to litigation, it must be assumed that the information was not being used to prosecute against copyright violations.

The Court added that the delivery of data is intrusive for subscribers, and that, due to a lack of certainty as to who may or may not be a pirate, a concrete balance must be made and that there can only be extradition if each violation is of a certain extent.

Commenting on the matter, Cathrine Stang Lund, communication manager at Telenor, said: “In Telenor, we guard our customers’ data and trust.”

“The recent ruling established that we cannot be required, by default, to deliver personal data about our customers in Denmark to private parties who are driven by their commercial interests”

She added: “We view the ruling as an important victory for Telenor Denmark’s right to protect its customers’ data.”