Swedish ISP turns to Supreme Court to protect identity of BitTorrent admin

Swedish ISP TeliaSonera is ordered to disclose the identity of the admin of BitTorrent site SweTorrents to the Antipiratbyrån (the Swedish BREIN), Torrentfreak reports. Earlier this week the Swedish Court of Appeal confirmed the order of the District Court of Södertörn from December last year.

Not wanting to breach customer privacy, TeliaSonera appealed the first verdict. A few days ago, the Court.of Appeal confirmed that TeliaSonera, based on the Implementation of Directive 2004/48/EC (the Enforcement Directive or IPRED) must hand over customer identifying data in cases of copyright infringement as a result of file-sharing.

TeliaSonera immediately after te verdict, announced that it would appeal the decision at the Supreme Court, when it in fact had until June 6 to do so. The ISP feels that it has a fundamental obligation to protect the privacy of its customers, which precedes IPRED.

"The approach to privacy and confidentiality has long existed in the rules that govern our industry and the Enforcement Directive is brand new," says Patrik Hiselius, attorney for TeliaSonera. "It is important that a fundamental review of the constitution and place the interests of the Anti-Piracy Agency."

This week yet another Swedish ISP (Port Lane) received a court order to disclose the identity of a BitTorrent admin, in this case of the OpenBitTorrent site. Port Lane has not yet announced whether it will appeal.

22 May 2010