Posted on 01/29/2008 7:23:26 AM PST by Stoat
BRUSSELS, Belgium - Record labels and film studios cannot demand that telecom companies hand over the names and addresses of people suspected of breaking European copyright rules by swapping illegal downloads, the EU's top court ruled Tuesday.
But European Union nations could — if they want to — introduce rules to oblige companies to hand over personal data in similar cases, the European Court of Justice said.
The court upheld Spanish telecom company Telefonica SA's right to refuse to hand over information that would identify who had used peer-to-peer file-sharing tool KaZaA to distribute copyrighted material owned by Promusicae, a Spanish nonprofit group of film and music producers.
EU law did not require governments to protect copyright by forcing companies to disclose personal data in civil legal actions, the Luxembourg-based court ruled.
They could draft national rules to change this but they will then have to balance the right to privacy against property rights and "cannot however affect the requirements of (protecting) personal data," a court statement said.
The ruling "raises the question of the need to reconcile the requirements of the protection of different fundamental rights, namely the right to respect for private life on the one hand and the rights to protection of property and to an effective remedy on the other," the court said.
A Spanish court had asked the European court to give guidance on the case after Promusicae complained of Telefonica's refusal to hand over details identifying the people who used the computer addresses linked to the illegal downloads.
Telefonica claimed Spanish law only allows them to share personal data for criminal prosecutions or matters of public security and national defense.
The European branch of the Motion Picture Association — which represents American film studios such as Universal, Walt Disney, Paramount and others — welcomed the ruling as balanced because the court had held up copyright as a fundamental right alongside the right to privacy.
The MPA of America claimed in a 2005 study that U.S. film industry lost $6.1 billion to piracy worldwide that year, most of it outside the United States.
Millions of people use file sharing sites to download both legal and illegal copies of albums, films, TV episodes, computer programs and even books.
The music industry has largely shunned file sharing, preferring digital tools to restrict how songs can be copied and played.
Qtrax, a revamped online file-sharing service that planned to launch this week with the promise of free music downloads from all the major record labels hit an apparent snag on Monday when several labels said they had not authorized the use of their content on the service.
Qtrax had boasted it would carry up to 30 million tracks from "all the major labels."
New York-based Warner Music undermined that claim, declaring in a statement that it "has not authorized the use of our content on Qtrax's recently announced service." Universal Music Group and EMI Group PLC also confirmed they did not have licensing deals in place with Qtrax, noting discussions were still ongoing.
(Thanks to Matt Drudge for this article link)
FYI
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