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UK High Court Orders ISPs to Identify File-sharers

Posted by michael on from the icu dept.

securitas writes "The BBC reports that the British High Court has ordered Internet service providers (ISPs) to divulge the identities of 28 customers accused of music file-sharing to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the UK equivalent of the RIAA. The court order issued by Mr Justice Blackburne is a big victory for the BPI and its umbrella oranization, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), especially after recent setbacks in Canada (CRIA) and the USA. Blackburne is quoted as saying, 'On the face of it this appears to be a powerful case of copyright infringement.' The ISPs have 14 days to comply with the court order. More coverage at the Guardian/Reuters and the Register."

5 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Different here? by Chuck+Bucket · · Score: 4, Insightful

    when push comes to shove, will it turn out this way here too? This really changes things if ISPs are going to have to police their users. This should cause ISP rates to go up as well, which is bad for everyone.

    CB$#@*(

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    1. Re:Different here? by julesh · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I know when I worked at an ISP (admittedly several years ago), the policy was basically to give the authorities anything they wanted, with or without an actual court order.

      Authorities, sure. An industry association of record labels? I would hope they wouldn't.

  2. Good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You know what, you can spare all of your music should be free hippy bullshit, if these were the 14 biggest file sharers out of a population of fifty million plus British internet users, then so be it. It's not like anybody can say that they didn't know it was illegal, that they didn't know they were violating international copyright laws.

  3. Re:/dev/null by grub · · Score: 4, Insightful


    That would make it rather difficult to nail crackers & spammers on their network. What would happen in the case of a billing dispute?

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    Trolling is a art,
  4. Pay those starving artists to front the campaigns! by garcia · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "They are uploading music on a massive scale, effectively stealing the livelihoods of thousands of artists and the people who invest in them."

    Yet they chose Brittany Spears to be the front-person for the anti-pirating campaign. How about paying some of those starving artists to play frontman instead?