EU's Court Rules in Favour of Internet Downloads Privacy

Earlier this week, on Tuesday, the EU's top court rule in Belgium reached a most hailed decision. The court ruled against Telecom companies having to hand on the names and addresses of people supposed to have broken European copyright rules by sharing illegal downloads as requested by record labels and film studios.

However, the European Court of Justice also said that European Union nations may well establish rules to force companies to deliver personal information in similar cases, if the choose to.

The court endorsed Spanish telecom company Telefonica SA's right to refuse to give up information would allow the identification of those who had been using peer-to-peer file-sharing client Kazaa to swap copyrighted material owned by Promusicae, a Spanish nonprofit group of film and music producers.

Although the laws protecting copyright are very clear EU law did not require governments to apply them by any means as for example compelling companies to reveal personal data in civil legal actions.

If this state of affairs would change then they will have to face a sort of a conflict of interest and importance between the right to privacy and property rights, a sort of re-assessment of the two and "cannot however affect the requirements of (protecting) personal data," a court statement said.

The aforementioned case went to the European court after a Spanish court had asked for assistance and guidance following the Promusicae’s complaint of Telefonica's negative response to disclose data leading to the identification of those who used the computer addresses linked to the illegal downloads.

Telefonica position was firm as they claimed Spanish law only requires them to give personal information in the case of criminal prosecutions or matters concerning 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 - received the ruling as unprejudiced and fair as the court had supported copyright as a fundamental right together with the right to privacy.