Thursday, June 16, 2005

Warner to ISPs: Content for Names

During a seminar on "online piracy" in the Netherlands last week a representative of Warner Home Entertainment made it clear that Internet Service Providers won't get movie content licensed, unless they provide the indentifying information of their customers on demand.

In a concluding panel discussion at the seminar a representative of one of the Dutch ISPs said they declined to hand over the IDs of its file-sharing customers to anti-piracy organisation BREIN to protect their privacy. Warner Home Video's Ruud Lamers responded that as long a the providers stick to this opinion they don't have to expect any content from the major players. That is, Warner does not want to be confronted with "anonymous" IP addresses in case of copyright enforcement, and puts the delivery of identifying information as a condition for licensing deals!

This threat came a week before BREIN took five ISPs to court today to obtain the identities behind the IP addresses of 42 file-shares. The ISPs requested a procedure on the merits instead of today's normal summary proceeding. Whatever will be decided, a final outcome is yet unclear, especially since the ISPs have counter-sued BREIN themselves. In the meantime apparently no movie content for them till they stop to protect their customers' privacy.
- - -
Thru Solv [Dutch]

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home