Dutch Filmworks Takes Quest to Identify Alleged Pirates to the Supreme Court
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for chromas:
Dutch Filmworks Takes Quest to Identify Alleged Pirates to the Supreme Court - TorrentFreak:
Piracy settlement letters have become a serious threat in countries all round the world. Until now, Dutch Internet users have been spared from this practice but local movie distributor Dutch Filmworks would like that to change.
Two years ago the company received permission from the Dutch Data Protection Authority to track the IP-addresses of BitTorrent users who shared pirated movies.
However, that was only the first hurdle. 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. The case went to court, where the movie company requested the personal details of 377 account holders whose addresses were used to share a copy of "The Hitman's Bodyguard".
This didn't go as planned for Dutch FilmWorks. In February, the Central Netherlands Court denied the company's request for data and last month the Court of Appeal reached the same conclusion.
Both courts concluded that Dutch Filmworks' plans lacked transparency and it's not clear what the movie company plans to do with the personal data it obtains. Dutch Filmworks said that it could either warn subscribers or request damages, but the criteria remain a guess.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.