Over 2,000 Accused O2 'Porn Pirates' To Receive Copyright Infringement Letters
2,845 O2 UK customers will receive a letter from porn makers Ben Dover Productions demanding payment over claims of copyright infringement.
Over the next few months from August, select O2 customers are to be targeted over a High Court order enabling Golden Eye, acting on behalf of Ben Dover to pursue these accused infringers. First their network goes down (with some rather funny social media response), now the customers are going to receive a rather embarassing letter about their downloads of pornography? Can't help but feel sorry for the people in that respect.
The extent of this mass spree of legal document postage was meant to be on a much bigger scale before: 9,000 customers were to be sent these letters across other UK ISPs. But the High Court made rulings that limited these aspects, and requested that the wording of said letter was also softened.Only O2 customers will be targeted initially, after a High Court ruling extended only to one ISP. Originally up to 9,000 customers were to be sent letters demanding payment, but this was reduced and the wording of the letters to be sent was also softened.
The letter can be read here. It details information about the court order, acts that have been infringed, contact details for the Citizens Advice bureau, and a formal demand for a reply in writing within 28 days.
The initial request was for £700 from each and every user for infringement of their copyrighted property; but a further ruling requested that each case be determined individually.
While we do not condone copyright infringement, this may not be exactly the best way to go around settling claims, in a rather bullying manner towards people who could possibly be innocent. If anybody does receive one, either let us know via the contact page, or at least make sure you do your homework on the situation, as highly specialised legal advice in regards to something such as this is hard to come by, and a minefield of 'wrong things to say.'
Jason England
