The public prosecutor in Portugal is an official body charged with pursuing prospective criminal offenders to court for crimes committed there. Refusals can be scrutinized and overruled by the competent court. Courts and law enforcement have been very generous in helping bodies like ACAPOR to collect income for its members, if the infringement is substantiated. Bodies like ACAPOR always consider to shift respective work to legal enforcement. Without having examined the case, this may be sitting behind the prosecutor's refusal.

Based on copyright, upper courts in Europe are very clear in holding a person seen as the owner of a machine using a specific IP address fully responsible for what is allocated to this machine in terms of civil as well as public and criminal law. SPs are obliged to take part in respective investigations on simple request by a claimant.

In such regions, SPs expressively advise private customers to be careful with access rights and to control strictly users as well as use extent. This is publicly known and enforced against any traceable holder of the IP address, whose only excuse is to indicate the real offender.