Photo Credit: Vienna, Austria, by Carrie Borden
A defendant who pleaded guilty to planning the attack on Taylor Swift’s Vienna concert in 2024 lost a privacy lawsuit against Disney this week.
An Austrian man identified as Beran A., who was convicted of planning a thwarted attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna in 2024, lost a privacy lawsuit against Disney on Wednesday. The man had sued the beloved media giant over his parents’ home being shown briefly in the docu-series “Taylor Swift: The End of an Era.”
An episode of the series that first aired in December last year showed Beran’s parents’ home in a town just an hour’s drive from Vienna. The house was shown for a matter of seconds, and Beran was not identified by name. Beran subsequently sued Disney over the invasion of his family’s privacy.
But Judge Nicole Baczak noted that Beran did not live at the home and that home addresses in general are not granted “the highest level” of legal protection. The widespread reporting of his name in the news was also inconsequential, per the ruling.
“He doesn’t live there. He hasn’t lived there for two years,” the judge wrote, adding that there was no chance of him living there again in the near future, given his sentence.
Beran has been in custody since his arrest in August 2024. He was sentenced in May to 15 years in prison. He did not attend the hour-long trial, but his lawyer said he would appeal the decision.
Notably, since Beran’s sentencing in May, the segment of the show that showed his parents’ home has been removed. “Taylor Swift: The End of an Era” is still available to stream on Disney+.
Beran A. was found guilty of numerous terrorism-related charges, including attempting to illegally purchase weapons and following instructions laid out in a video entitled “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom” to produce explosives. The planned attack on the Vienna concert resulted in the cancellation of all of Swift’s tour dates there due to an abundance of caution.