James Delahunty
14 Mar 2005 12:48
Bahnhof, a Swedish ISP was raided on March 10th by Swedish authorities; an action that has been praised by Hollywood who say its at a major blow against movie piracy. However, questions are now arising about the legality of the raid as data involving thousands of users was seized. This may violate Swedish data privacy laws. Four servers were seized, containing 23TB of data. On these servers were approximately 1,800 movies, 5,000 software files and 450,000 audio files.
The Motion Picture Association of America was delighted with the raids. A spokesman said Bahnhof was a "haven for high-level internet piracy for years" and home of "some of the biggest and fastest servers in Europe". Bahnhof has been quick to defend itself from such accusations saying it does not condone in piracy and suspended two staffers, suspected of hosting vast quantities on warez on its systems without management permission.
Bahnof released a statement expressing their concerns about the data seizures which could have involved data from as many as 20,000 users. The raid against Bahnhof is not the first anti-piracy bust in the country but it's reportedly the first to take place without any advance notice.
Source:
The Register