Danish ISPs Get Win That Could End Copyright Trolling In Denmark

Copyright

from the this-is-the-end dept

We have talked in recent years how the scourge of copyright trolling has hit the nation of Denmark particularly hard. While trolling operations started off about the same as they do elsewhere in the world, their requests to unmask ISP customers soon ramped up to enormous levels. It was enough to turn two ISP rivals into allies, with Telenor and Telia fighting in court for their respective customers’ privacy rights. After an initial loss, the companies appealed up the legal chain and managed to get a win with the court siding with the ISPs’ privacy concerns over the copyright trolls’ nefarious business model. After that, one of the copyright trolls appealed to Denmark’s Supreme Court, hoping to reverse the decision once again.

It didn’t work. The Supreme Court is refusing to hear the case, potentially putting an end to copyright trolling in Denmark.

Unfortunately for the trolls, their hopes were shattered this week when the committee responsible for references to the Supreme Court said it would not be putting the case forward.

As a result, the May 7th decision of the Østre Landsret will stand, with Telenor and Telia no longer required to cooperate with parties involved in trolling cases.

As the article notes, the ISPs will no longer have to cooperate with copyright trolls moving forward. And that really should be the end of copyright trolling entirely, as the whole business model hinges on ISPs being forced to give up their customer information so that those customers can be targeted with the threat letters that have milked so much money from the public. This of course doesn’t mean that these ISPs will never be required to hand over customer information. Rather, such unmasking can only occur at the request of police investigating criminal conduct.

Telenor Denmark’s Legal Director, Mette Eistrøm Krüger, welcomed the decision.

“Both personally and on behalf of our customers, I am really glad that we are being strictly ruled by the National Court’s decision, and we once again find that logging data should only be handed over to the police to combat serious crime,” he told Version2.

And so now we’re left to hope that the rest of the world’s courts will catch up to the pro-consumer stance taken by the legal system in Denmark.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright trolling, denmark, isps, privacy
Companies: telenor, telia