ISPs begin fighting IP lookup requests in wake of data leak

"UK Internet providers have now banded together to challenge anti-P2P law firms who try to turn thousands of IP addresses into customer names—and a London court will hear their objections to the entire process.

"The ISPs were burned last month when a massive e-mail leak from the top anti-P2P firm in the UK, ACS Law, exposed their own spreadsheets of customer names matched to the pornographic films they allegedly downloaded. The revelation of this embarrassing (and unproven) behavior was compounded by the fact that several of the ISPs were taking no security precautions, instead e-mailing their Excel spreadsheets unencrypted and without passwords.

"PlusNet's Chief Operation Officer Richard Fletcher apologized last week to customers. "We are investigating how we came to be sending unencrypted data as we have robust systems for managing data," he said. But the blame, in his view, lies largely elsewhere: "We are extremely angry with ACS Law for allowing this to happen."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• US ISP Disconnects Alleged Pirates for 6 Months(Sep 27, 2010)
• DRM and Other Forces Overriding the Three Laws of Robotics(Aug 04, 2010)
• Digital Copywrongs(Jul 29, 2010)
• So What DMCA Exemption Requests Got Rejected?(Jul 28, 2010)
• Court: breaking DRM for a "fair use" is legal(Jul 28, 2010)
• GNU Telephony Statement on new Internet Surveillance Laws(Oct 05, 2010)
• White House IP Chief Talks Tough on Online Piracy(Sep 29, 2010)
• U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet (New York Times)(Sep 28, 2010)
• Protecting Pizza, Port and Parma�(Aug 02, 2010)