It seems folks while the big media giants like to demand
you follow the letter of the law, when it comes to their own or their "associate" companies they feel the law does not apply to themselves, how wrong they are
http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-company-breaches-privacy-080123/Swiss based anti-piracy company Logistep gathers information about alleged file-sharers from all over Europe, and sells it to copyright holders who want to make a business out of threatening legal action against file-sharers, in order to get cash ‘compensation’.
Currently there are hundreds of people in the UK being threatened due to the data Logistep gathered for the Two Worlds, Dream Pinball 3D and Colin McRae cases. Having heard nothing for 12 months after receiving their initial threats through the post, people accused of sharing the pinball game are now being threatened again - and some are getting more worried that this isn’t going to go away. Or is it?
We mentioned in a previous article how P2P tracking companies are seen by some to be breaching privacy laws. It seems Logistep has come to the attention of the data protection commissioner in Switzerland (EDÖB -Eidgenössische Datenschutz- und Öffentlichkeitsbeauftragte). He believes there is a problem with Logistep handling personal data, when it’s far from clear that the person being spied on has even committed an offense.
TorrentFreak spoke to Christian Solmecke, a lawyer defending five hundred file sharers in Germany, for more details. He told us: “In my eyes we have a similar problem here in Germany. The data protection commissioner is of the opinion, that collecting data (which is against telecommunications secrecy laws in Switzerland) is only allowed in the context of a criminal prosecution and not in private [civil] law.”
Logistep, has 30 days to stop collecting data, or face further action.
This company operate their collection method using a modified "Shareaza" client that allows them to log IP's from both the gnutella networks as well as bit torrent users in a "swarm", its been the case that some games companies have been using there services to demand purchase or compensation for allegedly breaching the owners copyright, proof of their claims is often lacking and in some cases fabricated to imply the entire file was downloaded from users when in the time frame they specify it would be provably impossible to do so, lets hope this illegal data harvesting is looked into more deeply and those companies acting illegaly to extort filesharers closed down or face massive fines for their
criminal actions.
