UK ISPs Profit From Coughing Up Customer Data

nk497 writes "ISPs in the UK are charging as much as £120 to hand customer data over to rightsholders looking for proof of piracy, according to the Federation Against Software Theft. While ISPs have to hand over log details for free in criminal cases, they are free to charge in civil cases — and can set the price. 'In 2006, we ran Operation Tracker in which we identified about 130 users who were sharing copies of a security program over the web,' said John Lovelock, chief executive of FAST. 'In the end we got about 100 names out of them, but that cost us £12,000, and that was on top of the investigative costs and the legal fees.'"

Comments

Re:GBP 85 / hr

[Dr_Barnowl]

Flamebait or not, Time Warner ISP in the states does just this, claiming they can only process one of these requests PER DAY.

Re:I hope they follow the law

[Rogerborg]

I do not quite see how does the data protection act authorise you to give the data in question.

What, you can't read the Act?

29 Crime and taxation

(1)Personal data processed for any of the following purposes--
(a)the prevention or detection of crime,
[...]

are exempt from the first data protection principle

Go on, argue that copyright infringement isn't a "crime". Then read the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988, section 107 1, (e)

107 Criminal liability for making or dealing with infringing articles,
(1)A person commits an offence who, without the licence of the copyright owner--
[...]
(e)distributes otherwise than in the course of a business to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the owner of the copyright
an article which is, and which he knows or has reason to believe is, an infringing copy of a copyright work.

That's the controlling statute. The only argument to be made is whether sharing a file constitutes "distributes [...] to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the owner of the copyright".

Now, we can have an informed debate. Go ahead.