Sweden, which is touted to be the birthplace of The Pirate Bay, is now also the place for copyrights battles. The country is now having the highest number of Copyright Trolls and is expected to rise even further in upcoming years. A report made by Bahnhof, a local ISP reveals the statistics of copyright trolls in Sweden since 2016, where over 140,000+ lawsuits were filed since then. And in the year 2019, a record of 60,000+ IP addresses was targeted of allegedly sharing copyrighted files via BitTorrent.
What’s a Copyright Troll?
It’s the use of law to extort money from those who illegitimately shared copyrighted files. Here, adversaries cum original copyright owners are more interested in procuring money from infringers, rather than publishing their works by providing official licences. While this practice seems reasonable, filthy intentions of gaining money using litigations aren’t accepted by the torrenting community, or at least Bahnhof.
Bahnhof who?
I wish my internet provider to be like this. Bahnhof is a Swedish ISP who’s actively fighting against such copyright trollers. Though it seems typical, the firm’s actually against such extortion. It’s so supportive that, it’s maintaining data of all these cases since the beginning and even dedicated a page for public information. Further, the firm even evades obeying to court orders for disclosing their subscriber’s data. While this may seem weird, it could be more of a PR for the firm and even gives a competitive advantage over its competitors.
In Sweden, stats of such trolls have increased to peak heights of targets complaining about 60,000+ IP addresses to be caught, just in 2019. The law firms representing the actual copyright holders are demanding the court to obtain personal details of infringers so that they can have a direct settlement for their acts. These trolls do not seem to be slowing down anytime soon, as there were dozens of cases filed in 2020, already.
