ISPs Monitoring For Illegal Downloads Breaches Privacy, EU Official Says

A European Court of Justice official is finding against a verdict which said a Belgian ISP should filter out copyright-infringing content from its network.

In a case dating back to 2007, the ISP, Scarlet had been ordered to strip from its transmissions unauthorized transfers of music whose rights are held by the Belgian Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers (SABAM). But Pedro Cruz Villalón, who, as an advocate-general to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), advises the continent’s highest court, has declared: “The installation of the filtering and blocking system is a restriction on the right to respect for the privacy of communications and the right to protection of personal data, both of which are rights protected under the Charter of Fundamental Rights.” The UK government must take heed of Villalón’s advice since, out of the embers of its Digital Economy Act, it is working with British ISPs and content rightsholders to table proposals under which ISPs must block access to websites deemed to be hosting content without authorization. Villalón says: “A restriction on the rights and freedoms of Internet users ... would be permissible only if it were adopted on a national legal basis which was accessible, clear and predictable.”