Swedish DPA: music industry may collect IP addresses

According to the Swedish e-zine The Local, the Swedish Data Inspection
Board now allows the Swedish anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån and the
record industry group IFPI to collect the IP addresses of file-sharers.

In an earlier ruling EDRI-gram reported about, the Swedish Data Protection
Authority said APB and IFPI broke privacy laws, because they were
collecting personal information without permission. Only government
authorities were allowed to create registers of criminal offences. The DPA
now grants the organisations an exception from the law. APB and IFPI
maintain they do not keep extensive personal files, but just pass on the
IP addresses to providers or to the police.

From the rulings it seems the anti-piracy group collected the IP addresses
itself, with a computer program. In the Netherlands and in Ireland,
anti-piracy groups used the services of the US based company MediaSentry
to collect the IP addresses. Because this company does not comply with
European data protection legislation, ISPs in the Netherlands have
successfully objected against claims from the industry to hand-over
identifying data of their customers.

Green light to chase file-sharers (13.10.2005)
http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=2282&date=20051013

Swedish DPA reprimands anti-piracy group (15.06.2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.12/sweden

Datainspektionen säger ja till film- och musikbranschen (Swedish, 13.10.2005)
http://www.datainspektionen.se/nyhetsarkiv/nyheter/2005/oktober/2005-10-13.shtml