Thursday, May 12, 2005

Dutch Anti-Piracy Organisation Seeks IDs File-Sharers, Sues ISPs

As expected the Dutch anti-piracy organisation BREIN has taken the five biggest ISPs to court to obtain the identity of 42 of their customers, which it accuses of offering copyrighted material for upload. These 42 are the majority of the file-sharers who received a cease & desist letter through the ISPs and did not choose to settle for an average amount of 2100 euros (only eight did). This will be the first lawsuit in The Netherlands spinning from a copyright crack down on file-sharers and will test if ISPs have to hand over identifying information to aide copyright enforcement.

The ISPs' lawyer Alberdingk Thijm, of KaZaA fame, noted earlier that "a private party like BREIN has no legislative ground to obtain name and address information from providers." He refers BREIN to the possibility of criminal proceedings against the uploaders based on the alleged copyright infringement. Obviously BREIN'S director does not agree, but he will have to wait till June 6th before he can prove Alberdingk thijm wrong.
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Related Dutch ISPs forward Cease & Desist Letters
Thru webwereld [Dutch]

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