AfterDawn: News

UK ISPs are handing over personal details of 'pirates'

The two large UK ISPs BT and Virgin Media have admitted they have turned over the personal details of thousands of alleged pirates after the High Court ordered them to.

The personal information was then given to Topwear Inc and their lawyers Davenport Lyons who are set to send thousands of threatening letters to those who allegedly pirated any of Topware's games.



BT admitted that they are being forced to hand over the personal details but added that they are surprised at the "strong arm" tactics of the gaming industry, even in comparison to the music industry.

“It does seem a much more strong arm approach compared to the music industry,” said a BT spokesman. “However, it is only one company pursuing a limited number of miscreants at the moment. I doubt the music industry will follow suit as the potential numbers are too great, but who knows.”

Virgin seemed upset at Topware's tactics as well, saying they prefer the "educational" route used by the music industry.

“We certainly prefer the education route we pioneered with the BPI because you can’t assume people are guilty of anything, so we don’t, we let them know of what might have happened and give information on how to ensure they enjoy legal downloads. This would definitely seem to be a very different approach from a different industry,” added a Virgin spokesperson.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 7 Sep 2008 13:31

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• 6 comments

• windsong

  Personally Im waiting for Anomos, in which we won't have to put up with bull$hit such as this.
  
  http://anomos.info/wp/index.php

  7.9.2008 14:42 #1

• DRokKer

  WTF are Topware??? never heard of them, so i sure dont need there software. they can be as aggressive as they like id fight them to the death if i got a letter.

  8.9.2008 06:45 #2

• Mik3h

  Topwear are the people who made Dream pinball or something like that, and decided to se all the file sharers because they made very little money in terms of sales.

  8.9.2008 06:56 #3

• JOHNSTARR

  Could someone break this down for me like how do the 2 isp's have this kind of information to hand over? So if I had snatched that pinball game from newsgroups or a private bit torrent tracker, they would have a record of it?
  
  I don't live in the UK but I'm just curious
  

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  8.9.2008 07:42 #4

• domie

  Originally posted by Mik3h: Topwear are the people who made Dream pinball or something like that, and decided to se all the file sharers because they made very little money in terms of sales.that is exactly it - Topwear are a crap company who could never survive on the merits of their own software.
  
  here is how the scenario has played out ...
  
  1) some people have downloaded their software via p2p because let's face it - some people download whateever there is out there without ever intending to even install it.
  
  2) davenport lyons is a team of odious leeches in London who don't have the talent to make a living out of mormal law practice. someone in their office had the idea that they could make a lot of money by accumulating statistics of all those who download software on p2p networks.
  
  3) davenport lyons then send out "feelers" to all those companies whose software has been seen downloaded on the networks and offer to "represent" them in legal attacks against the downloaders.
  
  4) none of the big companies etc can be bothered and ignore them - except for the obscure little German software company topwear which was making no money for their crappy games - so they see a quick way to improve their profits by employing davenport lyons and make both of them rich at the same time.
  
  the point is - none of this was even instigated by Topwear - it was Davenport Lyons looking to do what lawyers do best - make a quick buck for nothing - who approached the company topwear - they really are the scum of the legal profession, prostituting themselves out to the highest ( or in this case only ) bidder with the sole purpose of making money by terrorising people.

  8.9.2008 07:56 #5

• domie

  Originally posted by JOHNSTARR: Could someone break this down for me like how do the 2 isp's have this kind of information to hand over? So if I had snatched that pinball game from newsgroups or a private bit torrent tracker, they would have a record of it?
  
  I don't live in the UK but I'm just curiouswell do you know of any country in the world where the ISP doesn't have the name , address and telephone number of its customers ?
  i doubt these are newsgroups users - they will be torrent users and p2p users whose IP details are easily available for those company who specialise in tracking them down - all Davenport Lyons have to do is approach the ISP with the IP address / mac address and game over in terms of getting access to the details once they have a court order.

  8.9.2008 07:59 #6