E.U. To Movie, Music Pirates: Take What You Like

Want to hoover up a copy of Cloverfield via a P2P "filesharing" network? Remember the fate of poor Jammie Thomas, and think carefully about where you want to break the law. Our suggestion: Get yourself on a plane to Spain.

That's because the European Union's top court has ruled that Euro telcos aren't required to cough up the names and addresses of customers who use the Web to trade music and movies.

The ruling stems from a case where Spain's Telefonica SA refused to hand over information about customers using KaZaA to Promusicae, a Spanish nonprofit group of film and music producers. But while telcos can't get their hands on customer data right now, that doesn't mean they won't in the future. The court suggested that individual EU countries could introduce their own rules which give the telcos those rights.