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A High Court in the UK has ordered the two main ISPs of the country to surrender the identities of thousands of alleged file sharers. BT, which is one of the UK’s largest ISPs has confirmed its involvement in the issue. Though they still have to confirm if they have already given the details to the High Court.
BT was absolutely stunned by the strategy game industry is adopting. Lawyers Davenport Lyons, who are working for a U.S. based Topware Interactive, have been successful in convincing the High Court to issue an order to the ISPs in the UK to handover the details of thousands of file sharers. The lawyers earlier successfully prosecuted a woman in the UK for illegal downloads and made her pay a fine of £16,000.
Confirming the news, spokesman of BT said:
I can confirm that we are among the ISPs that have been approached by Davenport Lyons requesting details of customers who are alleged to have illegally downloaded games. I can’t say whether this has happened yet
Furthermore he said:
It does seem a much more strong arm approach compared to the music industry.
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.
The other ISP involved in the issue is Virgin Media. According to the media spokesman of Virgin Media:
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.
Usually what is seen in the past is that other than a few exceptional cases, the games which are protected in these cases are the ones who are not highly rated. Piracy is certainly an issue but this is not the way it can be fixed because if this would have been the way, music industry would not be facing the issue.
The gaming industry is not appreciating the move as well. According to Peter Moore, EA sports President:
It didn’t work for the music industry.
Yes, we’ve got to find solutions. We absolutely should crack down on piracy. People put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into their content and deserve to get paid for it. It’s absolutely wrong, it is stealing.
But at the same time I think there are better solutions than chasing people for money. I’m not sure what they are, other than to build game experiences that make it more difficult for there to be any value in pirating games.
Moreover he added:
If we learned anything from the music business, they just don’t win any friends by suing their consumers.
Speaking personally, I think our industry does not want to fall foul of what happened with music.
He certainly doesn’t think that suing your customers is not a good idea. Lets hope that a peaceful solution can be reached which is fair and satisfactory.
