MPAA: online privacy hurts anti-piracy initiatives

The MPAA has published a review of international “trade barriers” for the US government, which, according to the organization, are detrimental to the media industry. One of the major problems, according to the reviewers, is online privacy, which does not allow copyright holders and authorities to monitor Internet pirates.



Each year, the United States Trade Representative Office (USTR) identifies problems that prevent local businesses from working abroad. The MPAA report identifies problems for work abroad by major Hollywood studios.



The MPAA believes that many countries are not working enough to carry out a serious fight against online piracy. This is especially true for European countries, where strong legislation protecting the rights and privacy of Internet users complicates the task for rights holders trying to fight online pirates.

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“Privacy has always been the main task of the European Union. European countries have implemented many projects that protect the user's personal data, ”the MPAA report says. The MPAA considers the European rules for the protection of users' personal data to be quite complex and confusing. As a result, these rules are often used as a tool to combat online piracy initiatives.



For example, in several European countries, IP addresses are protected by law and are considered personal user data. These features of the legislation can be used by cybercriminals.



“All members of the European Union have decided on the rules for the protection of private information of users. These rules are often very clear and unambiguous. Most consider IP addresses to be private information that is protected by relevant laws, ” the MPAA report says.



As a result, Internet providers often reject the possibility of cooperation with copyright holders, believing that such a partnership violates the right to protect personal information. “Telecom operators and ISPs often use legislation to protect the personal data of users in order to avoid any meaningful collaboration with the content sector,” the MPAA report said.



In addition, representatives of the MPAA are not particularly pleased with the decision of the European Court, according to which the issuance of user data is now not mandatory. As a result, many large communications providers no longer store IP logs.



As we see, the MPAA is not too happy with the increasing interest of legislation in the problem of protecting the personal data of web users.