P2P investigations now illegal in Switzerland

Switzerland, a longtime haven for all kinds of financial shenanigans, has just expanded its reputation for "discretion" to cover file-sharing as well.

That's the conclusion of Logistep AG, anyway, as a Swiss court has just gutted its P2P surveillance business with a ruling that says gathering even publicly available information is illegal. Logistep has operated in Switzerland since 2004, doing what all of these firms do: trolling BitTorrent sites for movies, music, or software, then connecting to swarms and logging the information of everyone offering the file. Bits of the file are downloaded as proof that these aren't simply "mistitled" files, and information like IP address, file hash value, and time of day are recorded in a giant spreadsheet. Content providers who rely on Logistep can take this information and submit it to local courts, seeking to identify and then sue individual file-swappers.