Privacy & Justice on the front line

It's one thing to write laws... And quite another to see them tested through the courts...

The week's big news - which admittedly got a bit lost here in the Swedish blogoshere with FRA in the news- is that a court in Romania has ruled the Data Retention Directive to be a breach of individuals' right to secrecy of communications. Which is GREAT news.  It's not immediately going to affect the legal position in other EU countries, but in the long term it's untenable that an EU country can conclude that EU law is in breach of our civil rights and that not propogate up to an EU wide judicial test. More on this at the Open Rights Group.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the Swedish appeal court has ruled against five publishers in the first case under Sweden's controversial IPRED legislation (Allowing media companies to demand details from ISPs on who uses which IP address). The court overturned the previous ruling concluding that the prosecution had failed to show that e-books on a password protected server were 'available to the public'.  If nothing else this is going to drive up the standards of evidence required to show a copyright infringement has taken place - which is no bad thing.  Congratulations to ephone that have stood up to protect their customer's privacy.

The third legal news this week is that the boys from the Pirate Bay are back in the news with allegations that evidence used in a trial in the Netherlands is fabricated.  Peter Sunde has a long explanation on his blog on why a company credit search presented to tie them to ownership of the Pirate Bay is a fake - and an official complaint has now been lodged.  Amongst other things the company that are supposed to have created the search record have no record of making the search...    Is the media industry so desperate for convictions that they are fabricating evidence?  It will be interesting to watch this one...

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party -  Putting Privacy first.