An Amsterdam court has rejected a demand from a German porn company to hand over names and addresses of illegal downloaders on the UPC Nederland network.
UPC refused to hand over customer data to the German company Belirex, who claims to have the rights to the adult movies. The court ruled that UPC does not need to release the names of customers who have illegally downloaded porn.
The case before the Amsterdam court was the first instance in which a rights holder has tried to obtain data after the introduction of a law against illegal downloads in the Netherlands.
The verdict of the Amsterdam court has mainly to do with uncertainty about the actual broadcast rights. Belirex owns the brand Inflagranti, which owns the copyrights of the movies.
However, the court questions whether the broadcast rights indeed belong to this company. There is also uncertainty about the list of IP addresses that Belirex handed over to UPC. The company did not convince the court that these are actually the illegal downloaders.
The court also dismissed UPC’s defense that the data required by Belirex are sensitive data and that it has to protect the customer.
