Okechukwu, B. V. (2007). When Rights Clash Online: The Tracking of P2p Copyright Infringements Vs. the EC Personal Data Directive. International Journal of Law and Information Technology, 16(3), 270-296.
‘Anti-piracy Group Broke Swedish Data Laws’. This was the headline to a news story published on the 10th of June 2005 by The Local, a Swedish online news publication. As it turns out, one of Sweden’s anti-piracy groups, Antipiratbyrån (APB), in its bid to track copyright infringers, allegedly proc- essed the personal data of Swedish peer to peer (p2p) file sharers in con- travention of the Swedish Personal Data Act. This story is representative of the divergent perspectives that have been adopted by copyright owners and p2p file sharers. On one hand, a review of postings in some of the forums frequented by p2p participants indicates that some file sharers assume that there should be a legal rule by which copyright holders are prevented from invading their privacy. On the other hand, developments in the US go to show that the copyright holders seem to have taken the view that the fight against online copyright infringements should supersede all privacy consid- erations. There is therefore an apparent clash between two well-recognised rights, copyrights and data protection/informational privacy. The need to carefully consider this clash with a view to a possible resolution has now inspired this paper.
