BSA loses claim for search warrant against domain name seller

The BSA brought its case in Sweden with a view to making Maximiliam Andersen pull the plug on unscrupulous users of his service. The kickme.to service allows members to use a free, short URL which they can point to wherever they host their web site. It is popular with those operating warez sites (those offering downloads of software which has been stripped of its copyright protection) which are often forced to frequently change ISP.

Andersen argues that his service does not host any content – it merely provides domain names. Nor does it provide a search facility for users to find specific content.

The court action was taken in the names of BSA members Adobe, Macromedia, Autodesk and Microsoft.

On his site, Andersen writes:

“What BSA is after is to ban our domain name service from the internet, just because we have developed a technology to let the public get free short domain names. Why don’t they care about the actual content stored on the homepages of other hosts, not under our control? Hosts that that actually commit a crime by having unauthorised software on their hard drives?”

The request for a warrant asked the court for permission to search for CDs, business agreements, orders, invoices and correspondence between suppliers and customers. The BSA members argued that “by having the service, Maximiliam Andersen makes it possible and makes it easier to download and sell copies of the [BSA members’] software.”

The court denied the request for a warrant even though kickme.to is promoted on warez sites. The court wrote that this cannot in itself be assumed to be copyright infringement of the software.