Quote:
Originally Posted by Maggy J
Provided that it's illegal downloaders that are targeted I personally have no worries about this.
|
As suggested by Kymmy, it’ll all come down to the method used. The BBC’s article is similar to the Telegraph’s. However, it’s different in emphasizing ‘suspected.’
Net firms in music pirates deal
The deal, negotiated by the government, will see hundreds of thousands of letters sent to net users suspected of illegally sharing music. 
If hundreds of thousands of letters are to be sent out, the diligence afforded to each one is likely to be very low. The BPI could:
- Connect to, and transfer enough data through, the connections belonging to each of those hundreds of thousands of subscribers, to ensure their evidence is of a sufficient level; or,
- Hoover up all the IP addresses that have been submitted to trackers, without testing the accuracy of those addresses.
If we’re into the hundreds of thousands of subscribers, I’d have to assume it’s number two. As has been mentioned here before, the paper
Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice explains why this methodology is unsound.
If one of those letters turns up on my doormat, copies are going to be sent to both Virgin Media and the BPI with a covering letter demanding a retraction. It would seem more sensible to send out a general letter to every subscriber. Even if the ‘informative letter’ lacks the claim of a specific infringement that previous letters have had, limiting a letter’s distribution would make it an implied accusation.