One of the ISPs that the British recording industry tried to strong-arm into terminating customers' accounts on accusation of file-sharing has refused. In a letter to the British Phonogram Industry, Tiscali's legal department lectures the BPI on how the law works and why the "overwhelming" evidence of wrongdoing was quite underwhelming.
Webuser has more details on this, including a complaint from Tiscali that the grandstanding BPI issued a press-release about its letter before it had been reviewed at Tiscali: "A Tiscali spokeswoman described the move as a 'media ambush'. She said the BPI had '[sent] their letter to the media before we even had a chance to read it and the information they went to press with was not strictly correct'."
You have sent us a spreadsheet setting out a list of 17 IP
addresses you allege belong to Tiscali customers, whom you allege
have infringed the copyright of your members, together with the
dates and times and with which sound recording you allege that they
have done so. You have also sent us extracts of screenshots of the
shared drive of one of those customers. You state that such
evidence is "overwhelming". However, you have provided no actual
evidence in respect of 16 of the accounts. Further, you have
provided no evidence of downloading taking place nor have you
provided evidence that the shared drive was connected by the
relevant IP address at the relevant time.Similar requests we have dealt with in the past, have included such
information and, indeed, the bodies conducting those investigations
have felt that a court would consider it necessary to see such
evidence, supported by sworn statements, before being able to grant
any order.
