Copyright Trolling Continues in Sweden

Back in 2016, Sweden was fighting off the wave of copyright trolls, and now a new one is about to hit the country with cash demands, involving British, German and Danish companies.


Last year, an outfit called Spridningskollen launched its new “initiative” of extracting settlements, claiming that it would save the entertainment industries and educate the public. Of course, it caused a huge backlash among the masses and in the media. As a result, the group eventually discontinued its operations in Sweden, but the country anticipates a new wave of trolling now.

A Danish law firm Njord and movie company Zentropa are about to start new series of trolling: they target the subscribers of several Internet service providers, such as Bredbandsbolaget, which will also begin blocking The Pirate Bay shortly. So far, it is unknown how many people will exactly be targeted, but IP addresses are listed in 42 pages of court documents. The ISP also confirmed the existence of a court order and said that it would have to hand over the user personal details, despite its appeal of this request in court.

The copyright trolls seem to be taking extreme measures to make sure that the Internet service providers comply. Although some Swedish ISPs usually delete IP address logs, a recent court order required the ISP to preserve data or face a $22,000 fine. The copyright holders claimed that after identifying the Internet subscribers they want to start a non-aggressive dialogue with them, but instead of sounding like a friendly approach, it makes it clear that the ultimate aim will be to extract money. The dialog will start regarding sharing of 2 Zentropa titles and other movies, including London Has Fallen, Mechanic: Resurrection, Criminal and others.

Some investigation of the entities behind this operation makes it clear that the case is clearly trolling: the BitTorrent tracking was carried out by a German company MaverickEye, which is regularly noticed in similar cases all over Europe and the US. MaverickEye’s operator is also a sole director of UK-based Copyright Management Services Ltd, which is also involved in the case. The latter outfit shares London address with fellow copyright trolling partner Hatton and Berkeley, which is also known for sending cash settlement demands to Internet users in the United Kingdom.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.