Submission + - P2P Injunctions - Lawyers Pretended to Be Police (torrentfreak.com)
commodore64_love writes: In May of this year, anti-piracy group SGAE made a visit to Juan Colone of Spain, who was running two P2P trackers. They SGAE visitors included a lawyer, a computer expert and a clerk, purporting to be officers of the court and handing-over what appeared to be a warrant. They searched through Colone's house looking for evidence and computers, and then obtained an injunction from a Spanish court to take-down Colone's P2P trackers.
Today the court reversed its initial decision, allowing the trackers to be restored to operational order, and dismissing the collected hard drive evidence. “As I said in the hearing: how can it be that an interchange between a Polish and an Argentinian would be registered in [Colone's] hard disk if not even a single bit passes through my client’s website? I explained to the judge how P2P networks function and he was convinced that this evidence is impossible and useless, so he annulled the previous resolution held by the same court.” said defense lawyer Javier de la Cueva.
What is troubling is that the court initially allowed illegally-collected evidence to be the basis for seizing a private citizen's personal property. Where is due process?
Today the court reversed its initial decision, allowing the trackers to be restored to operational order, and dismissing the collected hard drive evidence. “As I said in the hearing: how can it be that an interchange between a Polish and an Argentinian would be registered in [Colone's] hard disk if not even a single bit passes through my client’s website? I explained to the judge how P2P networks function and he was convinced that this evidence is impossible and useless, so he annulled the previous resolution held by the same court.” said defense lawyer Javier de la Cueva.
What is troubling is that the court initially allowed illegally-collected evidence to be the basis for seizing a private citizen's personal property. Where is due process?
