EU Court: Copyright Trolls Can Target BitTorrent Pirates Provided Claims Aren’t ‘Abusive’
Europe's top court has ruled that so-called copyright trolls can demand cash settlements from alleged BitTorrent pirates. Clarifying that sharing fragments of data associated with BitTorrent transfers still represents a communication to the public, the EU Court of Justice says that cases can be pursued but only when local courts consider them to be non-abusive, justified, and proportionate.
Cyprus-based Mircom International Content Management & Consulting (Mircom) is a well-known entity in the world of copyright trolling.
The company acts as a middle-man between rightsholders and legal action against alleged pirates from whom it demands cash settlements to make supposed lawsuits disappear.
Mircom and controversy are rarely far apart. In 2019 the High Court in the UK threw out its efforts to obtain the identities of Virgin Media customers and in Denmark it was accused of filing cases it had no right to file.
In 2019, Mircom demanded that Telenet, the largest provider of cable broadband in Belgium, should hand over the personal details of subscribers behind thousands of IP addresses alleged to have downloaded pornographic movies using BitTorrent.
