Swedish Internet Service Providers Destroy IP Logs

The so-called 'intellectual property' environment in Sweden makes this a fascinating country to live in. Today the Stockholm based paper Dagens Nyheter published three more letters to the editor in regards to peer to peer file sharing. The lead letter has the heading "The Recording Industry is Dead. The Music Industry Lives!"

In the same edition, and across radio, television and internet (English) the big news today in Sweden is that an increasing number of major internet service providers are destroying the information on customers IP information. Today it was Tele2 that said it would not be keeping customer IP information more than the obligatory (by European Law) three weeks. This is in reaction to the extreme interpretation of the IPRED law which the Swedish government introduced on April 1, which states that if a rights holder of a music or film work can show there is a suspicion that an IP address is sharing copyright material, the records of traffic for the IP address can be obtained with a court order from the IP service provider. The loophole in the IPRED law is that the legislators forgot to add a clause that compelled the IP service provider to keep the IP address information. The focus of the IPRED law it seems was getting the information.

So today one of the main figures in the so-called anti-pirate forces, Henrik Pontén makes the bizarre statement regarding the destruction of IP records:

This question is much bigger than file sharing. Think of a pedophile alarm for example - how could the internet carriers protect a victim of the crime with this situation? This reaction means that all legislation regarding the internet is compromised. Profit goes before the law.

It seems to me like a panic reaction; pedophiles, victims, anarchy and the dissolving of all legal society online. The final sentence regarding the sanctity of the law over profit seems ironic considering the claims of hundreds of millions made against The Pirate Bay (only 30 million crowns was awarded in damages) recently and the losses claimed to sales which seems to drive the whole legal process against file sharing. The IPRED law is only 27 days old. How did we survive March?

The turn among major (and minor) service providers is the latest in a week of disasters for the anti-pirate organisations inSweden with a retrial demanded and 45 submissions made to the The Ombudsmen of Justice (JO) or the Parliamentary Ombudsmen on the possible presence of bias in The Pirate Bay Trial.

It's only Tuesday. What will happen next?