Early June, movie companies Svensk Filmindustri and Nordisk Film, supported by anti-piracy partner Rights Alliance, embarked on legal action in an effort to track down the operators of The Pirate Bay.
Early Background
After obtaining information from Cloudflare, Rights Alliance later filed a lawsuit in Sweden against a local ISP, requesting an information injunction that would compel it to hand over information relating to The Pirate Bay.
This request stumbled and was thrown out early on when it was discovered the IP actually belonged to VPN provider OVPN. Soon after, OVPN became the focus of attention, with Rights Alliance demanding that it should disclose the same information about The Pirate Bay.
OVPN Fightback Begins
In its initial response, OVPN made clear that as a no-logging provider, it couldn’t provide any useful information about its alleged customer, The Pirate Bay. The company also argued that no law exists in Sweden that compels a VPN provider to keep logs.
The company won the first stage of the legal battle by asserting that with no information to hand over, an information injunction compelling it do so would be completely futile. Furthermore, no evidence had been produced by Rights Alliance or the movie companies stating that it did hold any relevant information.
In response, Rights Alliance hired a VPN expert who concluded, from his knowledge of how other VPN providers operate, that OVPN would probably had some information to hand over. However, when presented with more evidence, he later appeared to reconsider his position.
Court Sides With OVPN, Believes No-Logging Claims
Following a decision handed down Thursday at the Patent and Market Court in Stockholm, OVPN has now emerged victorious. Given the complexities of the case, the decision appears to have been a relatively simple one for the Court.
Essentially, if a party denies it has access to specific information – in this case information related to OVPN’s alleged customer The Pirate Bay – it falls upon the applicants to provide sufficient evidence that the data is available to be retrieved.
The statements and evidence provided by the plaintiffs failed to show that, according to the Court.
“t is not possible on the basis of the statements, which contain a number of uncertainties, to draw any definite conclusions about OVPN’s access to the information to which the application for an injunction relates. Nor does any other investigation arrive at such conclusions,” the decision reads.
“Applicants’ application for an information injunction should therefore be rejected,” it concludes.
OVPN’s David Wibergh welcomes the Court’s decision which seems to have turned on the provider’s no-logging policies and, as detailed in our earlier reporting, early deletion of server backups.
“Rights Alliance and their security experts have not been able to prove any weaknesses in OVPN’s systems that could mean that logs are stored. OVPN therefore wins the information injunction as our statements and evidence regarding our no-log VPN policy have not been disproven,” Wibergh says.
“OVPN is one of very few VPN providers that have had their no logs claims proven in court. OVPN is the only Swedish VPN provider that has proven that no logs are stored,” he adds.
Rights Alliance Disappointed But Will Maintain the Pressure
Rights Alliance says it is disappointed by the Court’s decision, noting that The Pirate Bay “causes harm to rights holders” so it is in their interests to hide to continue their business.
“In this case, they have used a Swedish service provider to hide and it is sad to see that they have got away with it, this time. Here, the VPN service has made money by hiding criminal activities and that can not be right.
“We will continue to act where we see companies selling their services to infringers,” says Rights Alliance chief Sara Lindbäck.
As a result of their loss in this matter, the movie companies represented by Rights Alliance must also pay OVPN’s legal fees, equivalent to around US$12,300.
“OVPN is the VPN service to use when privacy matters, and we firmly believe that privacy always matters,” Wibergh adds.
“As such, our entire infrastructure is built with privacy & security as the core principles. OVPN does not log any activity when connected to our VPN service. Therefore, we do not know who is connected to our service, what they are doing or when they did it.”
For those interested in studying the case in-depth, all relevant court documents can be obtained here (zip)
Source: TorrentFreak