{"id":368581,"date":"2010-02-26T20:11:52","date_gmt":"2010-02-27T01:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100225\/0004518296.shtml"},"modified":"2010-02-26T20:11:52","modified_gmt":"2010-02-27T01:11:52","slug":"french-court-says-ip-address-does-not-identify-a-user","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/368581","title":{"rendered":"French Court Says IP Address Does Not Identify A User"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/PrivacyLaw\/statuses\/9601749433\" >Michael Scott<\/a> points us to the news that a French court has ruled that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edri.org\/edrigram\/number8.4\/french-court-ip-address\" >an IP address is not enough to identify a single individual<\/a>.  Now, obviously, many of us agree with this general point, and we&#8217;ve brought that up time and time again in the past when lawsuits insisted that a single IP address was enough to identify a user.  And, given that France now has its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20091022\/1420596643.shtml\">three strikes<\/a> law which <i>will<\/i> be based in large part on entertainment companies indicating a single IP address as evidence of infringement, this might seem like a good ruling.  But in this case, there&#8217;s another side to it which is important.  The <b>reason<\/b> why the court ruled that an IP address doesn&#8217;t identify an individual, is to say that it <b>is not a privacy violation<\/b> to get someone&#8217;s IP address.<\/p>\n<p>This isn&#8217;t a new issue.  We discussed a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20090708\/1323075488.shtml\">similar case<\/a> before, and I actually think, on the whole, it&#8217;s correct.  An IP address shouldn&#8217;t be considered private information directly, since it doesn&#8217;t identify a individual and you effectively have to give it out just to use the internet.  But for people who argue that revealing IP addresses is a violation of confidential information, they might not like this ruling very much.  On the whole, though, I think in the long run it&#8217;s better to have a world where the courts recognize that an IP address does not identify a user, even if it means that IP addresses aren&#8217;t considered private info.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100225\/0004518296.shtml\">Permalink<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100225\/0004518296.shtml#comments\">Comments<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/article.php?sid=20100225\/0004518296&#038;op=sharethis\">Email This Story<\/a><br \/>\n <br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/click.phdo?s=038dcffc104f4b5e695b286242aff1f2&#038;p=1\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: 0;\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/img.phdo?s=038dcffc104f4b5e695b286242aff1f2&#038;p=1\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" style=\"display:none\" src=\"http:\/\/a.rfihub.com\/eus.gif?eui=2225\"\/><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.techdirt.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?a=z38Ti3Uargo:CsHbiTDxzWk:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?i=z38Ti3Uargo:CsHbiTDxzWk:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.techdirt.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?a=z38Ti3Uargo:CsHbiTDxzWk:c-S6u7MTCTE\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?d=c-S6u7MTCTE\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/techdirt\/feed\/~4\/z38Ti3Uargo\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Scott points us to the news that a French court has ruled that an IP address is not enough to identify a single individual. Now, obviously, many of us agree with this general point, and we&#8217;ve brought that up time and time again in the past when lawsuits insisted that a single IP address [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-368581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}