Privacy Infringement vs. Copyright Infringement

Swiss supreme court orders company to stop selling personal information of file-sharing suspects to movie and music companies .

Always happy to bring you this sort of news – The Swiss Supreme Court has ruled that Logistep AG, a company specialized in anti-piracy solutions, must stop the practice of prying on internet users suspected of illegal file sharing. The court said this is a violation of the privacy rights since the information collected by Logistep AG (such as IP addresses that identify computers on a network) falls under Switzerland's strict data protection laws.

According to the Lausanne-based Federal Tribunal, Logistep AG gathered personal information on people using file-sharing websites and sold it to movie and music industries always eager to grab this sort of data and sue someone or try squeezing some money from suspected file sharers after threatening with lawsuits.
The court’s decision emphasized that Logistep's attempt to ensure the protection of its clients' copyright cannot be used as a justification for an obvious breaching of the privacy of those suspected of copyright infringement.