Filesharing fiasco
Dance powerhouse Ministry of Sound has abandoned its plan to send warning letters to thousands of BT broadband customers, after the provider allegedly deleted customer details.
The Ministry of Sound signalled it would pursue around 2,500 BT broadband customers suspected of illegally downloading its music last month, however it now claims that BT has deleted the details it needs, The Guardian reported.
BT had reportedly agreed to keep hold of the personal details of 20,000 its customers so the Ministry of Sound could pursue them, but the record label said BT has "failed to preserve" the data.
Under the label's instruction, law firm Gallant Macmillan went to the high court in a bid to get hold of customer details but the court stalled the case, which happened just after the high profile ACS:Law debacle. BT was granted an injunction protecting its customers' details until the Ministry of Sound could prove its accusations of illegal filesharing had ‘some basis'.
The Ministry of Sounds reportedly claimed Gallant Macmillan and DigiRights had collected over 150,000 UK IP addresses that they believed had poached music without paying.
The label's chief exec, Lohan Presencer, told the Guardian: "It is very disappointing that BT decided not to preserve the identities of the illegal uploaders. Given that less than 20 percent of the names remain and BT costs have soared from a few thousand pounds to several hundred thousand pounds, it makes no economic sense to continue with this application. We are more determined than ever to go after internet users who illegally upload our copyrighted material."
The company will reportedly be making more applications for information from ISPs.
A spokesperson from BT told the newspaper:"We're surprised at this claim since we provided a similar number of customer details to comply with a court order earlier this year for Ministry of Sound and there was no suggestion then that this was a problem for them.
"All such information is automatically deleted from our systems after 90 days in accordance with our data retention policy; the Ministry of Sound and its solicitors are well aware of this. Upon request from Ministry of Sound we saved as much of the specific data sought as we reasonably could and any not preserved must have been too old. Our door remains open to Ministry of Sound and any other rights holder who wants to enforce their rights in a fair way through an established legal process."
BT is believed to have plans to write to ACS:Law and Gallant Macmillan to agree a new approach to granted court orders and that any rights holders seeking customer details would have to follow this approach.
"The safeguards we aim to establish via the court are on the security of data handling, a threshold for providing a customer's details based on a minimum number of separate incidents, the tone of contact with broadband subscribers and a reasonable approach to financial compensation sought," BT's spokesperson reportedly added.
BT is no doubt keen to clean up the process of passing customer details over to law firms after it admitted to surrendering unencrypted personal data to ACS:Law in September. It is not known whether the company will be hit with a fine for breaching the Data Protection Act.
