Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

16 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$#@*(

    --
    free ipod and free gmail!
    1. Re:Different here? by eln · · Score: 5, Informative

      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. I think most ISPs work on such slim margins that they can't really afford to try and fight a legal battle over their users' right to privacy when faced with subpoenas like this.

      Having a court give sanction to the violation of privacy involved like this when it actually is challenged just makes ISPs far more likely everywhere else to keep handing over records whenever anyone asks for them.

  2. British Pornographic Industry by spikiermonkey · · Score: 4, Funny

    For a moment i thought it was the British Pornographic Industry. If the porn industry starts suing people internet would be obselete for me. :(

    --
    "Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much." -Walter Lippmann
  3. Damn! by holzp · · Score: 4, Funny

    There go all the Benny Hill rips from Emule!

  4. 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.

  5. ISPs here assured me file sharing is fine! by PtrToNull · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When I signed up for my 512 kb/s ADSL in Kuwait, I asked the ISP salesman specifically if I might have any problems with file sharing.

    He said it's perfectly fine with the compnay policies, and even suggested a few P2P clients that he liked!

  6. Why KEEP records? by WCMI92 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It seems to me that keeping detailed logs of your users is just a big legal headache.

    One of my clients was once interested in installing detailed internet monitoring and logging (so as to see who is wasting time on the web). They lost interest rapidly when I pointed out that they could be compelled to provide it in court should someone sue.

    SurfControl and the other Big Brother ware makers never include that in the copy.

    Here's what I'd do: You need to keep certain logs so you can know if there is an intrusion, DoS, etc, but program your logs to automatically erase every week. That means that there will never be more than THE CURRENT WEEK's worth of data that could be subpoened.

    Of course, I'm sure if ISP's start doing THAT the RIAA will just get Congress to pass laws that make us all retain ALL logs for all time...

    --
    Corporatism != Free Market
    1. Re:Why KEEP records? by julesh · · Score: 4, Informative

      I believe British ISPs are now legally required to keep this information, which is a serious PITA for them. The ISPA complained and complained about the terabytes of storage they would need... but I don't recall the government ever relenting.

  7. 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?

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  8. 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?

  9. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  10. Its time to just open up your wireless router by L7_ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you have an open WAN for anonymous people to connect to the internet over, can the owner of the router (and ISP connection) be held responsible for sharing files over said connection?

  11. This isn't scary. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Compared to the next step, I mean. How do you identify filesharers when they do it secretly and not via some dumbass gnutella/fasttrack/etc that lets everyone in the world know exactly what you're doing?

    Well, you don't. You just suspect everyone whose traffic stats look abnormal. Sure, the hell will freeze before ISPs are going to provide this data for free. So what happens? A new law...

  12. sad by compro01 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    seems that Cananda is the only country to have the sense to tell the music industry to shove it...

    --
    upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
  13. Re:/dev/null by julesh · · Score: 4, Informative

    Because of the law discussed in this article.

  14. Anyone Know the IPs ? by anat0010 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Anyone have the full disposition ? What IP addresses are the BPI asking to divulge the identity of ?
    Not that I'm worried or anything.