Internet provider Ziggo is not required to hand over the personal details of 377 alleged pirates, the Dutch Supreme Court has ruled. The personal information was requested by movie distributor Dutch FilmWorks. Its goal was to collect settlements from 'pirating' subscribers but instead, the movie company must now pay the ISP's legal fees.
Piracy settlement letters have become a serious threat in countries all round the world. Thus far, Dutch Internet users have been spared from this practice but local movie distributor Dutch Filmworks planned to change that. Four years ago the company received permission from the Dutch Data Protection Authority to monitor and store the IP-addresses of BitTorrent users who shared pirated movies. However, that was only the first hurdle it had to overcome. The next step was to identify the subscribers behind the IP-addresses and Dutch Internet provider Ziggo didn’t want to share any customer data without a court order.
torrentfreak.com
