This is scary. In Denmark, where I live, we still have this retention of IP addresses which the EU Court has said is is a violation of the European Human Rights when done on a blanket basis.
And here the top use of these IP addresses have been for copyright trolls sending out speculative invoices. My numbers are not completely up-to-date, but there has been more than 300.000 cases where the use was for copyright trolls, and about 22.000 cases where the use was for other purposes, like investigating serious crime. 300.000 cases is a lot in my small country with less than 3 million households.
In 2004 copyright lawyer and lobbyist Johan Schlüter managed to get the law changed, so information of the subscribers name and address could be given to claimants in civil cases without the normal due process. Johan Schlüter later started the first speculative invoicing campaign in Denmark, which lasted about four years until a higher court ruled that an IP address alone cannot be used to prove. Later Johan Schlüter was convicted to years of imprisonment for aggravated fraud in a copyright case.
Since then we have seen one wave after another of copyright trolls popping up here in Denmark. Getting the names and addresses of internet subscribers was extremely easy and cheap for the copyright trolls: They only had to approach a court and pay a fee of about $50. The ISP could dispute the claim of the copyright trolls, but that would be expensive for then, so they never did. This "court case" (which was not a real court case) did not involve the internet subscribers whose information was about to be handed over - they were not even informed. And a single case with the low fee of $50 could be used to hand over more than 100.000 subscriber identities, so the price was really low for the copyright troll.
The last wave of speculative invoicing was really bad: The lawyers here asked the ISPs for tens and hundreds of thousands of subscriber identities per case, making it such a burden for them that they finally pushed back: They elevated one of the cases to a proper court and later to an appellate court who decided that the IP addresses were stored to combat terrorism and serious crime, and thus could not be used in cases no more serious than a parking ticked, as the court stated.
This did not stop the copyright trolls in the last wave, as they already had name and addresses of more than a hundred thousand internet subscribers, which the new court ruling did not restrict them from using. What stopped them was when they could find no more people they could scare into paying to avoid a court case. Thousands of court cases were started, and the outcome of these cases differed wildly due to no good precedence on the new legal theories the claimants used. So it was decided that five test cases be bought to an appellate court before the other cases in the lower courts could move forward. The conclusion of the appellate court was the same in all five cases: The claimant did not even have the copyrights they claimed were violated, This finally stopped the last copyright trolls here from trying the speculative invoice scam.
It has been peaceful in Denmark for almost two years because the speculative invoice scam is no longer possible here. But this new ruling might overrule the court decision that stopped copyright trolls from doing speculative invoicing.
That might not work in my country. I know of several criminal cases where it was argued that the the defendant did this on purpose, and the court accepted the argument.
I live in Denmark and have followed this case closely.
The problem is that telecoms are required by law to collect location data of phones. This law has been declared illegal (violation of human rights and the proportionality principle) by the EU court of justice several years ago, but has not been changed yet.
The location data is frequently used in criminal cases here, and counts as objective evidence, like a vitness report.
This scandal is that our police "converted" the data obtained from the telecom before presenting it to the court, and that there were several serious errors in this "conversion". Even worse, our police kept this secret for months after it was discovered.
Now add that the defense in a criminal case in our country are not allowed to do any investigation, as our police has a monopoly on this. So if a defence lawyer tries to obtain the original location data from the telecom he would break the law and loose his license to practise law.
This means that the defense in a criminal case has to rely on the location data "evidence" presented to the court by the prosecution.
When news of the "conversion errors" were first made public, we were told that this error could have been happening since 2012, but later it has been revealed that it could have happened even before that.
More than half of all "criminals" in jail in my country today vere convicted because of this faulty location data presented to the courts, so this is a huge scandal.
This is what really spooked me. I never wanted a smartphone, but my employer insisted. I know for sure that it had not been used before, as I unwrapped the sealed package myself. And I never logged into any service on my new phone - in fact I had never even browsed the web on this phone before the incident. Also I had not installed any apps, and only used a few of the pre-installed aps (phone calls, SMS, alarm clock and Google Maps).
I had turned on wifi a few times to download updates to the phone, but I immediately turned it off when done, and wifi was never turned on near my home. I had begun to use Google Maps for navigating while away from home, and turned off GPS again when done.
But the first time I forgot to turn off GPS after using it with Google Maps for navigation (without logging in to Google) and returned home, almost all Adwords ads on my private home PC were suddenly about smartphone equipment.
I can relate to that. Several times I searched for something I wanted to buy and bought it online.
And then I began to see a lot of ads for what I just purchased. Even if it was something you usually just buy once, and never again for many years.
Waste of advertising money, but a profit for the advertisement seller.
Because I never logged in to Google or any other service on my new phone before this happened.
I just used Google Maps for navigation without logging in. And I did that several times in the preceeding months without seing any targeted ads, as I remembered to turn off GPS before returning home.
There should have been nothing at all linking my work phone to my home PC - until I forgot to turn off GPS before returning home just once.
Years ago I got a new phone, my first smartphone. I do not remember if it was a Samsung Galaxy 3 or 4. It was a company phone, so it was not directly linked to my name or my address.
For about 3 or 4 months I remembered to always turn off wifi and GPS before going home. In this period the advertisements I saw on my home PC were pretty normal. I never installed any apps on the smartphone that were not preinstalled. And I never opened any of the more creepy apps that cannot be uninstalled, like Facebook Messenger.
But then one day when I had been out I had been using Google Maps to navigate to a place I did not know, and I forgot to turn off GPS when I was done.
When I was home I went on the net on my home PC, and suddenly all the advertisements I saw were for smartphone add-ons. This made me check my phone and I discovered that I forgot to turn off GPS. Of course I immediately turned it off.
But now somebody (hello Google) had made the link between my smartphone and my home PC. And the ads for smartphone add-ons continued for almost half a year, although I never clicked a single one (they freaked me out).
This was in Denmark. And even with the weaker privacy laws we had at this time, this kind of tracking was supposed to be illegal.
This is probably due to Council Directive 2002/55/EC of 13 June 2002 on the marketing of vegetable seed: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32002L0055:EN:HTML
This directive could be interpreted to make it illegal to sell any seeds not on the official list of allowed seeds. Due to the cost of getting a seed variety on the list, only seed varieties encumbered by intellectual "property" are on the official list.
When this directive was about to be implemented in the EU member states, the seed companies saw this as a great opportunity to get rid of competition by making it illegal to sell all the old heirloom varieties not on the official list of allowed seeds. So they lobbied big time in the various EU member state parliaments, and in most states they had success.
Where I live (Denmark) sales of seeds from the many old heirloom varieties became illegal when this directive was implemented into local law.
But a lot of people concerned about biodiversity defied the new laws and continued to produce and sell the now "illegal" seeds. These seed pirates also became very vocal to media and politicians that the new laws were bad.
This lead to "COMMISSION DIRECTIVE 2009/145/EC of 26 November 2009 providing for certain derogations, for acceptance of vegetable landraces and varieties which have been traditionally grown in particular localities and regions and are threatened by genetic erosion and of vegetable varieties with no intrinsic value for commercial crop production but developed for growing under particular conditions and for marketing of seed of those landraces and varieties." (Yes, the title really is that long). But that directive did not really change anything.
But seeds of many plant species have limited storage time, so if not constantly grown and taken seed from these plant varieties would go extinct. This has been an argument for the seed pirates from the beginning, but now more than a decade has passed this argument has more weight: Several thousand heirloom plant varieties in Europe would have gone extinct if not for the illegal work done by these pirates.
In Denmark this resulted in a small law change last year: Now it is legal to sell the heirloom seeds not on the official list of allowed seeds, provided the seeds are not sold for commercial plant production. So now I am no longer a criminal.
I am glad that something similar seems to be happening in France too.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by ole_husgaard.
This is scary. In Denmark, where I live, we still have this retention of IP addresses which the EU Court has said is is a violation of the European Human Rights when done on a blanket basis. And here the top use of these IP addresses have been for copyright trolls sending out speculative invoices. My numbers are not completely up-to-date, but there has been more than 300.000 cases where the use was for copyright trolls, and about 22.000 cases where the use was for other purposes, like investigating serious crime. 300.000 cases is a lot in my small country with less than 3 million households. In 2004 copyright lawyer and lobbyist Johan Schlüter managed to get the law changed, so information of the subscribers name and address could be given to claimants in civil cases without the normal due process. Johan Schlüter later started the first speculative invoicing campaign in Denmark, which lasted about four years until a higher court ruled that an IP address alone cannot be used to prove. Later Johan Schlüter was convicted to years of imprisonment for aggravated fraud in a copyright case. Since then we have seen one wave after another of copyright trolls popping up here in Denmark. Getting the names and addresses of internet subscribers was extremely easy and cheap for the copyright trolls: They only had to approach a court and pay a fee of about $50. The ISP could dispute the claim of the copyright trolls, but that would be expensive for then, so they never did. This "court case" (which was not a real court case) did not involve the internet subscribers whose information was about to be handed over - they were not even informed. And a single case with the low fee of $50 could be used to hand over more than 100.000 subscriber identities, so the price was really low for the copyright troll. The last wave of speculative invoicing was really bad: The lawyers here asked the ISPs for tens and hundreds of thousands of subscriber identities per case, making it such a burden for them that they finally pushed back: They elevated one of the cases to a proper court and later to an appellate court who decided that the IP addresses were stored to combat terrorism and serious crime, and thus could not be used in cases no more serious than a parking ticked, as the court stated. This did not stop the copyright trolls in the last wave, as they already had name and addresses of more than a hundred thousand internet subscribers, which the new court ruling did not restrict them from using. What stopped them was when they could find no more people they could scare into paying to avoid a court case. Thousands of court cases were started, and the outcome of these cases differed wildly due to no good precedence on the new legal theories the claimants used. So it was decided that five test cases be bought to an appellate court before the other cases in the lower courts could move forward. The conclusion of the appellate court was the same in all five cases: The claimant did not even have the copyrights they claimed were violated, This finally stopped the last copyright trolls here from trying the speculative invoice scam. It has been peaceful in Denmark for almost two years because the speculative invoice scam is no longer possible here. But this new ruling might overrule the court decision that stopped copyright trolls from doing speculative invoicing.
Re:
That might not work in my country. I know of several criminal cases where it was argued that the the defendant did this on purpose, and the court accepted the argument.
Some information from a local
I live in Denmark and have followed this case closely.
The problem is that telecoms are required by law to collect location data of phones. This law has been declared illegal (violation of human rights and the proportionality principle) by the EU court of justice several years ago, but has not been changed yet.
The location data is frequently used in criminal cases here, and counts as objective evidence, like a vitness report.
This scandal is that our police "converted" the data obtained from the telecom before presenting it to the court, and that there were several serious errors in this "conversion". Even worse, our police kept this secret for months after it was discovered.
Now add that the defense in a criminal case in our country are not allowed to do any investigation, as our police has a monopoly on this. So if a defence lawyer tries to obtain the original location data from the telecom he would break the law and loose his license to practise law.
This means that the defense in a criminal case has to rely on the location data "evidence" presented to the court by the prosecution.
When news of the "conversion errors" were first made public, we were told that this error could have been happening since 2012, but later it has been revealed that it could have happened even before that.
More than half of all "criminals" in jail in my country today vere convicted because of this faulty location data presented to the courts, so this is a huge scandal.
Re: Re: Re: Re: How I really saw the extent of the tracking
This is what really spooked me. I never wanted a smartphone, but my employer insisted. I know for sure that it had not been used before, as I unwrapped the sealed package myself. And I never logged into any service on my new phone - in fact I had never even browsed the web on this phone before the incident. Also I had not installed any apps, and only used a few of the pre-installed aps (phone calls, SMS, alarm clock and Google Maps). I had turned on wifi a few times to download updates to the phone, but I immediately turned it off when done, and wifi was never turned on near my home. I had begun to use Google Maps for navigating while away from home, and turned off GPS again when done. But the first time I forgot to turn off GPS after using it with Google Maps for navigation (without logging in to Google) and returned home, almost all Adwords ads on my private home PC were suddenly about smartphone equipment.
Re:
I can relate to that. Several times I searched for something I wanted to buy and bought it online. And then I began to see a lot of ads for what I just purchased. Even if it was something you usually just buy once, and never again for many years. Waste of advertising money, but a profit for the advertisement seller.
Re: Re: How I really saw the extent of the tracking
Because I never logged in to Google or any other service on my new phone before this happened. I just used Google Maps for navigation without logging in. And I did that several times in the preceeding months without seing any targeted ads, as I remembered to turn off GPS before returning home. There should have been nothing at all linking my work phone to my home PC - until I forgot to turn off GPS before returning home just once.
How I really saw the extent of the tracking
Years ago I got a new phone, my first smartphone. I do not remember if it was a Samsung Galaxy 3 or 4. It was a company phone, so it was not directly linked to my name or my address.
For about 3 or 4 months I remembered to always turn off wifi and GPS before going home. In this period the advertisements I saw on my home PC were pretty normal. I never installed any apps on the smartphone that were not preinstalled. And I never opened any of the more creepy apps that cannot be uninstalled, like Facebook Messenger.
But then one day when I had been out I had been using Google Maps to navigate to a place I did not know, and I forgot to turn off GPS when I was done.
When I was home I went on the net on my home PC, and suddenly all the advertisements I saw were for smartphone add-ons. This made me check my phone and I discovered that I forgot to turn off GPS. Of course I immediately turned it off.
But now somebody (hello Google) had made the link between my smartphone and my home PC. And the ads for smartphone add-ons continued for almost half a year, although I never clicked a single one (they freaked me out).
This was in Denmark. And even with the weaker privacy laws we had at this time, this kind of tracking was supposed to be illegal.
Some background
This is probably due to Council Directive 2002/55/EC of 13 June 2002 on the marketing of vegetable seed: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32002L0055:EN:HTML
This directive could be interpreted to make it illegal to sell any seeds not on the official list of allowed seeds. Due to the cost of getting a seed variety on the list, only seed varieties encumbered by intellectual "property" are on the official list.
When this directive was about to be implemented in the EU member states, the seed companies saw this as a great opportunity to get rid of competition by making it illegal to sell all the old heirloom varieties not on the official list of allowed seeds. So they lobbied big time in the various EU member state parliaments, and in most states they had success.
Where I live (Denmark) sales of seeds from the many old heirloom varieties became illegal when this directive was implemented into local law.
But a lot of people concerned about biodiversity defied the new laws and continued to produce and sell the now "illegal" seeds. These seed pirates also became very vocal to media and politicians that the new laws were bad.
This lead to "COMMISSION DIRECTIVE 2009/145/EC of 26 November 2009 providing for certain derogations, for acceptance of vegetable landraces and varieties which have been traditionally grown in particular localities and regions and are threatened by genetic erosion and of vegetable varieties with no intrinsic value for commercial crop production but developed for growing under particular conditions and for marketing of seed of those landraces and varieties." (Yes, the title really is that long). But that directive did not really change anything.
But seeds of many plant species have limited storage time, so if not constantly grown and taken seed from these plant varieties would go extinct. This has been an argument for the seed pirates from the beginning, but now more than a decade has passed this argument has more weight: Several thousand heirloom plant varieties in Europe would have gone extinct if not for the illegal work done by these pirates.
In Denmark this resulted in a small law change last year: Now it is legal to sell the heirloom seeds not on the official list of allowed seeds, provided the seeds are not sold for commercial plant production. So now I am no longer a criminal.
I am glad that something similar seems to be happening in France too.