Woman wins court order to stop explicit photos being shared online The orders were granted by Mr Justice Ramsey in the Technology and Construction Court last month, following a three-year battle, allowing the claimant's lawyers to find websites hosting the photos alongside her name and order them to stop doing so. Experts say the judgement could have "far-reaching" consequences in the attempt to bring social media users across Europe within the reach of the law. The judge ruled: "I consider that non-disclosure of the identity of the Claimant is therefore necessary to protect the interests of that Claimant. In such circumstances on the basis of the matters set out in the evidence and pleading I consider that this is an appropriate case for the court to grant relief both in relation to a breach of the Claimant's right to privacy and also a breach of the provisions of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. This is a case where the Claimant is entitled to an interim injunction to prevent the distribution of the digital photographic images, either by conventional downloading from a site or by downloading by the use of the BitTorrent Protocol. The judgement, highlighted by the UK Human Rights Blog, states that while at university in June 2008 the woman, referred to only as AMP, either lost her mobile or had it stolen, and reported it to police. The phone contained digital images of the Claimant which had been taken in or about August 2007 using the digital camera on that phone. These digital images included images of an explicit sexual nature which were taken for the personal use of her boyfriend at the time. The Claimant is alone in the photos and her face is clearly visible. The phone also contained other digital images of her family and friends. Soon after her phone went missing, these photos were uploaded to a file-sharing website and she was "informed by strangers on Facebook that the images had been uploaded and that her name and Facebook profile had been attached to them." She complained and the images were taken down in about August 2008, but around the same time she was contacted on Facebook by a man who "threatened to expose her identity and to post the images widely online and tell her friends about the images if she did not add him as a friend." In addition, "her father's business public relations team were contacted and allegedly threatened and blackmailed about some images but it was not specified that the images were of her." Later that year the photographs were placed on a Swedish file-sharing website, and went to "the top of the list of search engine searches for her name." Her lawyers used US law to remove some of these links, but went to the High Court because of the particular problems posed by the "peer-to-peer" form of file-sharing called BitTorrent. Under this technology, which is harder for authorities to stop than individual websites that host illegal files themselves, internet users who download files in turn become uploaders or "seeders" of a piece of the file, so that others can then access it when they are online. Experts told the court that if they also downloaded the files, they would be able to identify the unique IP Address of every computer that is helping to share the images and then contact their broadband provider to find their name and address. If enough of the "seeders" were contacted and ordered to stop their account being used, it would become harder for anyone to download the pictures. As a result, the woman brought the claim against "persons unknown," so a forensic computer company instructed by her lawyers could track down anyone hosting the files. It is said that anyone in the EU could be bound by the order. The judge agreed that the woman had a "reasonable expectation of privacy" with regard to her photos under the Human Rights Act, while those sharing them did not enjoy the right to freedom of expression. He also said the dissemination of the pictures amounted to a breach of the Protection from Harassment Act, and that she should be granted anonymity in order to protect her privacy and avoid further harassment. Andrew Murray, Professor of Law at the LSE who was involved in the case, wrote on his blog that the case "provides a new approach to the regulation of online content for individuals" and could show that "content on BitTorrent may just be regulatable after all."