p2p news / p2pnet: A Swedish prosecutor says Big Six studio efforts to nail a man they say shared a movie online may have effectively slammed the door in their faces.

A Swedish appeal court yesterday ruled it couldn’t hear a case against a 27-year-old man who’d been fined the equivalent of 80 days’ salary by Sollentuna district court for breaking copyright laws, says The Local.

“He admitted making the Swedish action film ‘The Third Wave’ accessible to others through a file sharing programme.”

But not only did Hollywood’s Antipiratbyrån fail to move the court, “I interpret this as a clear decision that individual file sharers, if they don’t earn money from file sharing, won’t get anything more than a fine,” the story has prosecutor Håkan Roswall saying.

“That means we can’t trace IP addresses, which means that we can’t trace private file sharers.”

The question of punishment, “is decisive in determining how police and prosecutors may investigate file sharing,” says The Local. “If only fines are imposed, then the crime is not so serious that IP addresses, each computer’s unique identifier on the internet, can be requested from internet service providers.”

The prosecutor also wants the punishment reviewed, “and appealed against the judgement,” says the story, adding:

“After Wednesday’s decision in the high court, he said that a change in the law would now be required if legal proceedings were to be brought against individuals.”

[A PledgeBank fund has been started here. http://www.pledgebank.com/FreeSpeechCanad. Please have a look, help if you can, and spread the word. Cheers! And thanks ……. Jon]

Also See:
The Local - Hunt for private file sharers is over - prosecutor, April 5, 2006

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