UK ISPs To Hand Over Thousands of File Sharers' Data

Death Metal Maniac sends along a link from TorrentFreak on the latest development in game developer Topwear's battle against file sharers in the UK. "US game developer Topware Interactive, the people behind the now infamous Dream Pinball affair, are about to turn up the heat. Operating through London lawyers Davenport Lyons, they have managed to convince the High Court to send out an order demanding that ISPs in the UK start to hand over the details of several thousand alleged pirates ... BT, one of the UK's largest ISPs ..., confirmed it had been ordered to hand over details of alleged copyright infringing file-sharers ... Virgin Media was a little more slippery in its response but reading between the lines it seems obvious they are involved too."

Comments

Hard to pin down

[gotw]

IANAL, but consider that the majority of BTs home DSL equipment ships with WEP, often 40 bit WEP, enabled by default. Would this in itself be grounds enough to plausibly deny that the traffic came from the person paying for the box? Not to mention she sheer, massive, embarrassing level of negligence on the part of BT.

Re:Hard to pin down

[Spy der Mann]

According to them that's no excuse. You're responsible for your own equipment.

How can you f***ing be responsible for something you don't even know how it works? We do know, but what do the poor joe-users know? And why do manufacturers don't use a much stronger encryption so that only the users' machines will be able to access the network?

What we're dealing with is corporate negligence, and as usual, they blame the end user.

Re:Hard to pin down

[gotw]

I'm not accusing BT of negligence for not catching the pirates. I'm accusing BT of negligence because they are supplying their users with broken, easily compromised security when much better alternatives are available using the exact same hardware.

Re:Hard to pin down

[You ain't seen me!]

According to them that's no excuse. You're responsible for your own equipment.

When you receive broadband equipment under a contract, you are told in the small print that the equipment remains the property of the ISP - they can't have it both ways.

Land of the free

[ilovesymbian]

I'm glad I live in the US. Even though some ISPs cower in fear, most of them give us enough freedom to do what we want. We truly live in the land of the free!

Re:Land of the free

[sakdoctor]

Is that some sarcasm; it's impossible to tell?

Perhaps in the UK they (we? ex-pat here), haven't had the sue happy lawyers going after every man and his dog yet. But perhaps this is the beginning.

Re:Land of the free

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, in the US, the ISPs are free to hand over that data without bothering the court.

And if the FISA debacle has taught us anything, it's that they're more than happy to hand over data without worrying about minor little details like "due process."

Fortunately there's an election coming up, and you can vote for change! Wait, both sides claim they're for change? And both sides support warrantless wiretaps and telecom immunity?

Well, damn. If only there were another option, a third option...

Re:Land of the free

[tiananmen tank man]

Interesting but False.

From an USAToday story [1], "Among the big telecommunications companies, only Qwest has refused to help the NSA, the sources said. According to multiple sources, Qwest declined to participate because it was uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants."

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

Re:Land of the free

[tonyray]

As an ISP in the US, we've been asked many times to hand over information wholesale to the FBI. Such warrants are not inforceable and we always ask them what it is they really want. Then they tell us specifically what they are looking for and we tell them if we have the data. If we do, they issue another warrant, signed by a judge, and they get the data. We narrow the FBI request down to the point that it identifies a single account. If it can't be narrowed to a singe account, the data would be worthless to them in court and they don't ask further.

No need to worry

[elrous0]

They don't want to sue you or arrest you for file sharing. They're throwing you a party with cake and just want to know how to reach you to let you know about your party. Just stay where you are. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for the party.

I can't wait

[WormholeFiend]

for everyone to panic when the authorities start looking at online data storage services...

Dear media companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop trying to sell single TV episodes for $2. If the price was $0.25 or $0.50 to rent it (i.e. view it once or twice, delete 48 hours after first viewing), I'd be a huge customer.

Stop trying to sell downloadable versions of movies for the same price as a DVD. If I purchase and download a movie, it's already costing me my limited monthly bandwidth and hard drive space that I paid for. If the movie sells for $20 on DVD, sell the downloadable version for $10. After all, I'm missing the extras, too.

Stop limiting sales to a single country, the internet is world-wide. I don't care who owns what and who's under exclusive contrats with which stations. It's your mess, figure it out.

Stop trying to put DRM which limit the usefulness of the media we want to buy. I don't want to watch movies and TV shows on my computer and I don't want to be tied to Microsoft-only hardware/software.

Do people want your content? Yes, otherwise they wouldn't pirate it. Do people want to pay for your content? Yes, if the price, format and limits are reasonable. Find the balance and it'll work itself out.

I, for one, won't bother with P2P and torrents if it only cost $0.99 for a tune I want. It's easier and faster to buy it from the iTunes Music Store. Their TV shows and movies, however, are too expensive.

Re:What affair?

[jambox]

http://torrentfreak.com/youre-caught-downloading-dream-pinball-settle-now-or-go-broke/

Re:The really scary part is...

[Nursie]

They've won a few cases.

Well, let me put that a little more realistically. The defendant didn't even bother to turn up so they got a default judgement in a few cases.
And they crowed about a record £16000 award for their dumb pinball game a little while ago. Thing is, the lady they won that judgement against had not only not showed up in court, and not replied to any of their letters, but had actually moved house between the alleged infringement and the date the letters were sent. She was never even informed there was action against her. So the ruling isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Their damage calculations are laughable too. We don't really have punitive damaged in the UK. You might be able to get them laughed out of court by saying "yes, I downloaded over a torrent network. They sell for £5, I downloaded one copy and (as a good torrent citizen) uploaded 110%, meaning their damages are exactly £10.50."

I don't know exactly what would happen then, but usually that sort of thing should be in the small claims court, not the grown-up court, and legal expenses wouldn't be covered in the judgement there.

At that amount it's a waste of the court's time.

Sir Alan Sugar should be arrested at once!

[Joce640k]

Alan Sugar got rich by making a HiFi with twin cassette units. If you didn't have one yourself, you knew somebody who did. Suddenly *everybody* could copy tapes easily (and at double speed!)

Home taping was rampant. I knew people with tens of thousands of tapes in their room.

The record business didn't die then, in fact their boom years came long afterwards.

How come Alan Sugar got a knighthood but these days we're throwing away all due process over the exact same "crime".

Re:no

[bigstrat2003]

democrats are not supporting it.

Obama's vote in the Senate record suggests otherwise.

but obama and his group had to vote for the bill...

The claim of cowards and liars throughout history. Obama voted for telecom immunity, and has shown what sort of man he is. Sad that you're too taken in by his lies to realize it.