Porn producer Golden Eye (International) Limited has succeeded on appeal in asking the Court to overturn a previous decision which had prevented Golden Eye obtaining the private details of thousands of defendants.
The argument revolved around licensing deals entered into by Golden Eye with other film producers and whether Golden Eye then had the right to sue infringers with regard to material they did not themselves hold the copyright to.
The previous Court ruling declared this invalid on the basis of the fundamental freedoms and the data protection rights of individuals, however this decision has now been overturned on appeal, leaving Golden Eye intent on pursuing the original 9,124 proposed defendants and more.
Golden Eye will not however be permitted to demand a fixed penalty from each defendant of £700, which equates to $1127 or €853 at current exchange rates, and will therefore have to deal with each case on an individual basis.
The Open Rights Group has however expressed severe concerns regarding the appeal decision and in their blog entry, available here, state that "We are concerned that such a decision effectively means that someone who themselves has no interest in a claim can acquire personal details to obtain large sums of money. In this case Golden Eye are not a firm of solicitors, and thus are not regulated in the same way solicitors are".
The BBC discusses this story further here and the Open Rights Group has provided access to a full copy of the decision here.
