A dutch court has told the music industry that forcing ISPs to hand over data on P2P customers would represent a breach of privacy.

The Brein Foundation asked five ISPs - UPC, Wanadoo,Tiscali, KPN and Essent Kabelcom, to hand over personal data on people downloading large amounts of music and films.

However, the Dutch court ruled that Brein had illegally obtained the names of the alleged internet pirates through a US research outfit MediaSentry.

The Court didn't like the way that MediaSentry's software scanned all the content of the "shared folder" on the customer's hard disk, which could also contain non-infringing data and personal information.

Personal data in the EU is a bit better protected than in the US where the music industry can do whatever it likes to obtain names of downloaders.

A software engineer and champion of peer-to-peer file sharing is planning legal action after being sacked for expressing his views on BBC's Newsnight.

Alex Hanff, 31, was just a week into his job as a consultant at Aldcliffe Computer Systems in Lancaster when he was invited on to last Monday's edition to comment on the US supreme court's decision to hold software companies responsible for permitting illegal file sharing over their networks.

The next day managers told him he was fired because the opinions he expressed on the show were "inappropriate", Mr Hanff claimed yesterday.

Newsnight interviewed him because in March he was served with legal papers by the Motion Picture Association of America for running a website called DVD-Core that pointed users to files of movies, some illegally copied, distributed using BitTorrent file-sharing software. It was this his employer objected to, saying he should have disclosed it when interviewed.

"As far as I was concerned they knew about it. They're an IT company with IT professionals, it wouldn't have taken five minutes on Google to find out," he said, adding that several colleagues had discussed the case with him prior to his dismissal.

The Supreme Court handed movie studios and record labels a sweeping victory against file-swapping, ruling Monday that peer-to-peer companies such as Grokster could be held responsible for the copyright piracy on their networks.

In a unanimous decision, the justices ruled companies that build businesses with the active intent of encouraging copyright infringement should be held liable for their customers' illegal actions.

The decision comes as a surprisingly strong victory for copyright companies and stands to reshape an Internet landscape in which the presence of widespread file swapping has become commonplace.

With the potential to rewrite the Supreme Court's 1984 Sony Betamax ruling that made VCRs--and by extension any technology with "substantial noninfringing use"--legal to sell, the decision has been closely watched across Silicon Valley.

Hollywood studios and record labels had argued that allowing file-swapping networks to continue with a free pass on copyright issues would undermine any business-producing copyrighted works and, by extension, a large portion of the U.S. economy.

"The most important message from today's historic decision is that progress and innovation do not have to come at the expense of recording artists, songwriters and the people who make their living in the entertainment industry," Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman said in a statement. "This important decision will allow artists and the creative community to prosper side by side with the technology industry."

Public peer-to-peer networks have always been associated with adware program distributions, but BitTorrent, the program created by Bram Cohen to offer a new approach to sharing digital files, has managed to avoid the stigma.

According to Chris Boyd, a renowned security researcher who runs the VitalSecurity.org nonprofit resource center, the warm and fuzzy world of BitTorrent has been invaded by a massive software distribution campaign linked to New York-based adware purveyor Direct Revenue LLC.

Boyd said he got the first inkling that BitTorrent was a major adware distribution vehicle while searching for the source of Direct Revenue's Aurora, an adware program that includes the prevalent "nail.exe" component. Sifting through mountains of HijackThis logs posted on security forums, Boyd said the answer was staring him in the face. (HijackThis is a popular freeware spyware removal tool that keeps detailed logs of Windows PC scans).

"I expect we'll see more of this, and if the first ever 1GB malware/adware install has a chance of happening anywhere, it will be on file-sharing networks where programs are broken up into pieces. The problem is, you never know what's going to come out the other side," he said.

Swedish anti-piracy group Antipiratbyran (APB) has been disciplined by the country's Data Inspection Board for breaking privacy data rules in its hunt for illegal file-sharers.

ABP used special software to record the IP-addresses of file swappers, the file name and the server through which the connection was made, Sweden's The Local says. The company, a private organisation, reported hundreds of people to the police recently and has sent up to 2,000 emails a day to internet service providers notifying them of abuse.

ABP believed that there is nothing illegal about collecting IP addresses, but linking them to an individual can't be done without permission, Swedish Data Inspection Board now says.

It isn't the first time that ABP's actions have been questioned. Earlier this year, Swedish ISP Bahnhof pondered legal action after it emerged that illegal material uncovered in a raid on its premises was placed there by a paid informant of ABP.

Homeland security agents from several divisions served search warrants on 10 people around the country suspected of being involved with the Elite Torrents site, and took over the group's main server. The agency said it was the first criminal enforcement action aimed at copyright infringers who use the now-popular BitTorrent file-swapping technology.

"Our goal is to shut down as much of this illegal operation as quickly as possible to stem the serious financial damage to the victims of this high-tech piracy--the people who labor to produce these copyrighted products," Acting Assistant Attorney General John Richter said in a statement. "Today's crackdown sends a clear and unmistakable message to anyone involved in the online theft of copyrighted works that they cannot hide behind new technology."

According to the investigators, the "Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" movie was made available though the site before being shown in theaters, and was downloaded more than 10,000 times. The site had 133,000 members and distributed more than 17,000 individual movie, software and music titles, investigators said.

"Today's actions are bad news for Internet movie thieves and good news for preserving the magic of the movies," said Motion Picture Association of America Chief Executive Officer Dan Glickman in a statement.

"Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" has been leaked onto a major file-sharing network just hours after opening in theaters, at a time when Hollywood is increasingly concerned about online piracy.

At least two copies of the film, which was first shown in theaters in the early hours of Thursday, have been posted to the BitTorrent file-sharing network -- a new and increasingly popular technology that allows users to download large video files much more quickly than in the past.

The Motion Picture Association of America has been aggressive in going after Web sites that provide "tracker" links that enable BitTorrent downloads of copyrighted material, including six lawsuits this week against sites with links to TV shows.

According to Web site Waxy.org (http://www.waxy.org/), one print was leaked on Wednesday before the film was even released in theaters. The movie was time-stamped, suggesting it may have come from within the industry rather than from someone who videotaped an advance screening.

Not that i ever want to see anyone lose their jobs, but it will be nice for music label employees to have all the subsidies they are paying the RIAA go to their artists. (Yes you were supposed to laugh at that one )

As Barry Ritholz smartly pointed out in his blog, the introduction of Yahoo's Music Unlimited Service sets the new marketvalue for all the music you can download in a month... 5 bucks.

The RIAA can no longer claim that students who are downloading music are costing them thousands of dollars each. They cant claim much of anything actually. In essence, Yahoo just turned possession of a controlled music substance into a misdemeanor. Payable by a $5 per month fine.

Of course, RIAA staffers wont go quietly into the night. They will continue to scream loud and hard about evils of illegal downloading. The question is, will they move the money they are currently spending on court cases and filing suit, towards promoting the new subscription services that are available. Particularly Yahoo's dirt cheap service.

The average viewer of the SciFi network is young and decidedly geeky. They are masters of media; they can find ways to get things they shouldn't have. Thus, a few hours after airing on SkyOne, "33" was available for Internet download. No news there.

While you might assume the SciFi Channel saw a significant drop-off in viewership as a result of this piracy, it appears to have had the reverse effect: the series is so good that the few tens of thousands of people who watched downloaded versions told their friends to tune in on January 14th, and see for themselves.

Audiences are technically savvy these days; they can and will find a way to get any television programming they desire. They don't want to pay for it, they don't want it artificially crippled with any digital rights management technologies - they just want to watch it. Now. This is the way that half a century of television and a decade of the Web has conditioned them to behave. We can't really complain that audiences are simply doing as they've been told.

Continuing its war on Internet file-swapping sites, the Motion Picture Association of America said Thursday that it has filed lawsuits against a half-dozen hubs for TV show trading.

The trade association said that piracy of TV programming is growing quickly online, and that shows are as important to protect as big-budget films. This is the first legal action from the group that has focused most heavily on TV content.

"Every television series depends on other markets (such as) syndication and international sales to earn back the enormous investment required to produce the comedies and dramas we all enjoy," MPAA Chief Executive Officer Dan Glickman said in a statement. "Those markets are substantially hurt when that content is stolen."

The suits are focused on the sites that serve as traffic directors for BitTorrent swaps, rather than on individual computer users uploading and downloading content. The MPAA also has sued individuals, but has not said how many people have been targeted.