Petteri Pyyny
19 Feb 2004 15:29
First steps in court have been taken in Canadian high-profile P2P lawsuit, where Canadian Recording Industry Association is asking country's five biggest ISPs to hand over their subscriber details when CRIA asks them to do so.
But ISPs, especially a company called Shaw, are reluctant to do so without a court order, as they fear that such action would violate their subscribers privacy and would obviously be bad business as well. Also, CRIA is learning the hard way that identifying the correct users by IP numbers and P2P nicknames is bit tricky -- according to one of the accused ISPs, one of the three names they have been asked to hand over to CRIA didn't even have an account with the company during the alleged uploading infringement.
CRIA seeks in court a permission to force ISPs to hand over subscriber details without having to sue the alleged file sharers as "John Does" first. "Our message is for all Canadians. You've got to go off the illegal sites and stop uploading music. Everyone recognises this sort of distribution is illegal under Canadian law," CRIA's lawyer said to the press outside the courtroom today.
After all parties involved with the case had submitted their legal arguments to the court, Justice Konrad von Finckenstein adjourned the proceedings until March 12.
Source: News.com.au