On Wed, 23 Jan 2008, Lou Katz wrote:
They are both right. If you have a dynamic IP such as most college students have, it is here-today-gone-tomorrow.
The local antipiracy organization in Sweden needed a permit to collect/handle IP+timestamp and save it in their database, as this information was regarded as personal information. Since ISPs regularily save who has an IP at what time, IP+timestamp can be used to discern at least what access port a certain IP was at, or in case of PPPoE etc, what account was used to obtain the IP that that time. I still think IP+timestamp doesn't imply what person did something, license plate information tracking is also considered personal information even though it says nothing about who drove the car at that time, and I think IP+timestamp is approximately on the same level as a car license plate when it comes to level of personal information. -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se