UK ISPs Profit From Coughing Up Customer Data 59
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.'"
someone always profits (Score:4, Interesting)
someone always profits from coughing up data, especialy customer data
Re:GBP 85 / hr (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:someone always profits (Score:2, Interesting)
Good for them (Score:3, Interesting)
FAST has very dubious practices to get people to cough up to join their little group 'we offer a reward for copied software your employees may report to us, if you pay us, we'll let you know that we've had a report and let you get legit before we set the attack lawyers onto you". Anything to gouge them of some of their dubiously gained monies is great by me.
That advice about never talk to a cop because they'll twist it around somehow to ensnare you, even (probably) if you're innocent? They've got nothing on these jokers.
Re:someone always profits (Score:3, Interesting)
But this is a good thing, if anything it should be more expensive (and the customer should get a cut, if we lived in a fair world) as to discourage the activity.
Re:I hope they follow the law (Score:4, Interesting)
On that subject, everyone's favourite UK-based law firm ACS:Law are being investigated by the ICO [bbc.co.uk] over the data that was leaked when 4chan carried out their DDOS.
Turns out that in addition to all the internal documents, letters and other crap on their webserver they also had a load of Sky broadband subscriber information in plaintext on there; I quote "You rarely find an aspect where almost every aspect of the Data Protection Act (DPA) has been breached, but this is one of them," said Mr Davies [of Privacy International]".