In the High Court today, UK ISPs BT and Plusnet refused to hand over subscriber data to lawyers acting for independent record label, Ministry of Sound. Their objections followed the catastrophic subscriber data leak from ACS:Law two weeks ago. The hearing was adjourned until January 2011.
Two of the UK’s leading Internet service providers are teaming up to challenge the Digital Economy Act. TalkTalk and BT say they want the High Court to examine whether the Act, which was rushed through before the recent general election, was passed without going through the correct parliamentary procedures.
A UK music industry group claims that it has given an ISP evidence that thousands of its customers are pirating music but it has done nothing to stop them. Since February the BPI has harvested the IP addresses of 100,000 BT Broadband customers but is now labeling the ISP’s lack of action against them as “shameful.”
As the UK file-sharing debate reaches fever pitch, with opinionated artists being shipped in by the bus load to condemn it, inevitably attention is turning to the costs associated with trying to end it. According to a boss at ISP BT, not only are the government’s plans doomed to fail, but could end up costing ISPs a staggering £1m a day.
Earlier this year Ireland’s RIAA, IRMA, and the country’s largest ISP, Eircom, reached private agreement to implement 3 strikes and disconnections for alleged pirates. At concerns that this would place Eircom at a competitive disadvantage, part of the deal would see IRMA go after Ireland’s other ISPs too. IRMA kept their promise.
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