Personal data and other records held by ISPs on their customers are highly sensitive and as such, can only be handed over to third parties when the law requires it. In movie piracy cases, judges often order this type of disclosure after consideration but in a new case involving CenturyLink customers, customer details could already be in the hands of some extremely litigious copyright holders.

When copyright holders observe an IP address sharing unauthorized content in a BitTorrent swarm, they need to match that IP address to a real-life name and physical address if they want to take things any further.

Since there are no online resources that can reliably supply that information, copyright lawsuits – especially those aimed at extracting a cash settlement from a target – are often filed against ‘John Doe’ defendants. As such cases progress, rightsholders can request permission to obtain personal details from ISPs, which judges may agree to – or not.

However, while putting these matters before a judge is one option, another route exists. It requires no reasoned consideration by a judge as to whether such disclosure is the appropriate course of action because it bypasses the judge completely.

The rest of this article can be read on TorrentFreak.com

Source link