Comment on the Supreme Court's judgment in the so-called "ePhone case"

The Supreme Court has today, Friday, December 21, handed down a judgment in the so-called "ePhone case". The copyright holders' application for an information injunction against the internet service provider ePhone was granted.

IT&Telekomföretagen appreciates that the legal situation has been clarified. This should reasonably make it easier for rights holders as well as access providers to respond to demands for information injunctions in the event of suspected copyright infringement.

However, in the future use of this new legal tool, there is a real risk that information injunctions against access providers will be rather ineffective. This is because it is likely to motivate illegal file-sharers to make greater use of various forms of anonymization services, making it technically impossible to obtain information about potential infringers.

The most important thing, however, which was far from obvious when the IPRED Directive was to be implemented in Swedish law, is that an information injunction requires assessment and approval by a judicial body and rights holders cannot arbitrarily demand information about, for example, internet service providers' customers.

At the same time, it must be emphasized that illegal file sharing is essentially a symptom, and not a cause, of a non-functioning digital media market. Consumers are very willing to both consume and pay for good digital media services. But this also requires that there is premium content available. Here, the market players and not least the rights holders have a great responsibility to change their business models to better reflect how today's media consumers want to access culture online.