SWEDEN – Opponents of online piracy would like nothing more than to get directly at the individuals who are illegally sharing and receiving copyrighted works online. The matter isn’t so simple for the courts, however, who often have to choose between assisting the owners of intellectual property rights and protecting the privacy of Internet users against possible fishing expeditions. When a similar predicament presented itself to a Swedish appeals court recently, the panel ruled in favor of personal privacy rights.The Svea Court of Appeal recently overturned a lower court ruling that had ordered Swedish broadband provider ePhone to turn over information about some of its customers suspected of online piracy. After losing its case in June in Solna District Court, ePhone managed to convince the Court of Appeal that five audio book publishers who filed the complaint had failed to prove that infringement actually took place.

“After all that’s been written that we should have released the information, it actually feels really nice that the court has ended up agreeing with what we’ve said the whole time: that the evidence wasn’t good enough. I think it’s just great,” said ePhone CEO Bo Wigstrand.

According to the EU’s Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive, Internet service providers can be forced to turn over records relating to customers who have engaged in illegal online piracy. But ePhone argued successfully that the audio books in question were stored on a password-protected server, and there was no evidence the password had been distributed on a wide basis.

The decision comes while Swedes are mulling over mixed news about their country’s online activities.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry recently reported that a whopping 40% of Swedes between the ages of 15 and 74 share music illegally on the Internet.

“It’s a very high figure but I’m not surprised,” said Ludvig Werner, head of the IFPI’s Swedish division. He admitted that the number was probably inflated because the survey was conducted entirely online, meaning only Swedish citizens who were already familiar with the Internet took part.

The IPFI’s report was tempered by news from analyst firm Mediavision, which reported this month that 30 percent of Swedes had stopped downloading files illegally since the country enacted a new anti-piracy law in April. Mediavision claimed that many Swedes switched to legal methods of obtaining media online.

A spokesperson for Sweden’s Anti-Pirate Bureau praised the new anti-piracy law for limiting copyright infringement amongst Swedes. The law in question, which granted Swedish authorities new powers to track down content thieves, caused Swedish online traffic to plunge by a whopping 40% in the month after its enactment.

Another poll claimed that only 32% of Swedes had supported the tough anti-piracy law when it was passed in April of this year.