Second ISP undermines file sharing law

Swedish telecom operator Tele2 announced on Monday it will erase data identifying their customers, a decision police claim may complicate their efforts to track down those who share copyrighted material illegally over the internet.

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"We will erase the IP addresses after they have been used for our internal use, starting today," Niclas Palmstierna, Tele2's managing director for Sweden, told AFP.

An IP address is a unique number that is used to identify each sender or receiver of information that is sent across the Internet.

Sweden recently adopted a new law April 1st, inspired by an EU directive on intellectual property, that allows authorities to request the identity of users suspected of downloading pirated material.

The move by Tele2 follows a similar policy introduced by Bahnhof, a smaller Swedish Internet firm, which said it would not reveal users' IP addresses.

A high-ranking police official told the TT news agency that this could have a serious impact on their bid to crack down on Internet pirates.

"In certain cases, this will make an investigation impossible," said Stefan Kronkvist, the head of Swedish police's internet crime unit.

Tele2 is one of Sweden's main telecom providers and counts 600,000 people among its Internet clients.

Internet piracy has become a hotly-debated subject in Sweden since the four founders of the file sharing site, The Pirate Bay, were sentenced to a year in prison on April 17th.