14 DAY TRIAL // Back in May, the French anti-piracy company Trident Media Guard (TGM), that was supposed to help Hadopi apply the three-strike policy, has been found leaking sensitive data related to the operation. Now, the Commission Nationale de l’informatique et des Libertés(CNIL) reviewed their security infrastructure and gave them thumbs up on continuing their activities as before the incident.
TorrentFreak reveals that CNIL reported TGM's progress as being satisfactory, allowing them to relink online with Hadopi, as so far the anti-piracy group was forced to communicate with the French authority via DVDs sent through the postal system.
Now that they're off the hook, rights holders might be held responsible as they were in charge of supervising TGM and as it turns out, they were not respecting the security measures they imposed themselves.
“In France, before rights holders can collect IP addresses of infringing users, they have to ask and obtain an approval from the CNIL,” Numerama’s Guillaume Champeau said.
“But it appears TMG did not abide by all of these requirements, and even the rights holders organizations did not. For instance, they said they would audit TMG every quarter, which they didn’t.”
Since IP addresses may have been leaked, endangering their holders, the four organizations, SCPP, SPPF, ALPA and SACEM/SDRM, might be blamed for any unfortunate results.
“As these rights organizations are the ones who where directly in touch with the CNIL, as they are legally speaking ‘in charge of the collection’ of the IP addresses, they are the ones who may be found in violation of their pre-approval promises,” Champeau added.
The French authorities' initiative might be applauded for trying to put a stop to piracy, but as it turns out, it's not as easy as it sounds. In such operations all the parties involved need to be highly cautious on every move they make to prevent unfortunate situations from developing.