Razorback website

Following recent events in France and Germany, it turned out that a Swiss company named Logistep AG, situated in Steinhausen (Switzerland), would be carrying out a collection of personal data through the Internet in a preventive way, massive and apparently in all illegality.

This situation was revealed in France by the website http://www.ratiatum.com. Several worried internet users would have posted messages there to report they had received a “menacing” letter from a Parisian lawyer. These users would have downloaded the game “Call of Juarez (CoJ)”, belonging to the Polish company Techland and edited by the French company Focus.

Techland’s lawyer demands 400 euros of compensation to avoid any legal proceedings for a game that costs 30 euros on stores. 5,079 letters like this were sent in France.

As part of the statements made at Ratiatum and of the documents in our possession, it shows up that the Swiss company Logistep AG is the one in the origin of these data-collecting. This company is also active in Germany since 2005, where more than 20,000 of such letters have been addressed for several softwares. To this day, the lawyers in charge of the prosecution in Germany would have sued only a few of these Internet users (less than 10) among the 20,000 letters sent, whereas a great number of users refuse to pay.

Our measure goes not against the eligible party, because we cannot reproach them for wanting to punish the potential counterfeiters, but we object to the methods used and cast on doubts, with detailed argumentation (reserved to the Officer), the legality of such monitoring of the Internet users.

In summary, our analysis reveals the following key elements:
- The violation of the copyright law does not allow the setting up of such monitoring, because neither the LSCPT nor the LPD allow it;
- The system used to do the watch can identify more than 2 million downloads (said to be illegal) a day!
- In their website they mention a continual monitoring of forums and chat rooms, which points out an infiltration of FTPs;
- Logistep AG would preventively collect IP addresses and would subsequently contact the eligible party, this method being apparently a preventive monitoring;
- These data are exported abroad without any respect to the LPD;
- Several French Internet users object to the fact of having downloaded CoJ, whereas other claim they have only downloaded the free demo version. We ask ourselves serious questions about the good functioning of the application used by Logistep AG, even if it has been examined by a German professor.

Several questions have been brought up and would demand an examination of the Officer in charge of the data protection, who should act quickly, seen the gravity of the turned-up events.

In Switzerland, the monitoring of the Internet is entrusted to the Federal Police, which is the only one being allowed to proceed to the watching over the peer-to-peer networks (P2P). Their assignment is clear and can by no means be contested, and it stops at the borders of our country. The monitoring is regulated and procedures of precise identification are used.

But allowing a private company to carry out a massive supervising of the Internet without a strict legal framework, and without assuring that the laws relating to data protection are scrupulously respected, would be like opening Pandora’s box. Because there is no doubt that, if we do not do anything about it, we will see companies specialized in monitoring the Internet spring like flowers in our ground, companies that will have clear field to undertake their activity far beyond our borders.

In a similar case, but carried out from American and Norwegian territories, we have registered a complaint in Switzerland in the beginning of the year. It seemed essential to us not to accept a foreign interference on the monitoring of the Swiss citizens for the acts they commit in Switzerland.

We are thus looking forward to read the Officer’s answer about the case Logistep AG, and that of the Cantonal court of Valais, in charge of our penal complaint in examination.

Association Razorback

PS: All questions must be addressed to sfanti@terraincognita.ch