In a recent ruling (Case C-461/10 – Bonnier Audio AB/ v Perfect Communication Sweden AB, available at http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf;jsessionid=?docid=121743&doclang=EN&mode=req&cid=1153798) the European Court of Justice has examined an important question of law, regarding online piracy: can Member States grant their national courts the power to order to ISPs the release of personal information of people illegally distributing copyrighted contents online through a certain IP address?

The main case involved a legal action filed by a collecting society (Bonnier Audio), which requested its national court to disclose the identity of the person who spread illegal copies of copyrighted audiobooks via FTP through a certain IP address, against the internet service provider (Perfect Communication Sweden) which provided connectivity to the alleged pirate.

Perfect Communication Sweden, which in fact had assigned the challenged IP address to the pirate, opposed the confidentiality of it’s
client’s communications, and strongly questioned the legality of the sweden law allowing judicial disclosure of personal data related to an IP address.

The injunction, granted by the court of first instance, was contested towards the Svea Court of Appeal, which finally raised the question to the European Court of Justice.

In the judgment under review, the Court of Justice makes a thorough survey of the rules contained into the EU Directives on copyright,
privacy and telecommunications, highlighting the many purposes addressed and the protections tools provided, and finally stating that, at the present date, nothing seems to preclude the recognition of such a power to national courts, and that indeed the Directives have so far taken care to leave room for Member States’ action on the matter, so to offer a correct balance of interests while enforcing copyright protection.

We shall follow the developments and the effects of this judgment on European law; at a first glance, however, we note that this ruling modifies the previous orientation of the ECJ, expressed in the
“Promusicae” case, where privacy protection was reputed as prevailing
against the judicial protection of copyright, and basically allows for the
first time the allocation of strong disclosing powers to national judges.”