Thousands of people in the UK, suspected of sharing music, films and games over the Internet will be pursued through the courts for damages, lawyers for entertainment companies said on Wednesday.
London-based law firm Davenport Lyons said it will apply to the High Court to force Internet service providers to release the names and addresses of 7,000 suspected file sharers.
They could be subject to civil action in the courts under Britain’s copyright laws.
David Gore, a partner at Davenport Lyons, said it has already begun proceedings against a number of people in Britain who it says have uploaded protected material to the Internet.
The firm won a case at the Patents County Court in London against a woman who shared a pinball game online. She was ordered to pay damages of 6,000 pounds and 10,000 pounds in legal costs to the game’s maker, Topware Interactive.
“Illegal file-sharing is a very serious issue resulting in millions of pounds of losses to copyright owners,” Gore said in a statement.
Record companies, film studios and games makers have stepped up attempts to curb illegal file-sharing after losing millions of pounds in revenue to online piracy.
A government-backed deal was struck last month between Britain’s six biggest Internet service providers and the entertainment industry under which file-sharers will be sent warning letters. Taking direct action against file-sharers will become an “important and effective” weapon to tackle online piracy, Gore added.
The number of people targeted by Davenport Lyons for sharing games could reach 25,000, according to a report in the Times newspaper on Wednesday. They will be offered the chance to pay 300 pounds each to settle out of court, the report added.
The first 500 who ignore the letters will face immediate legal action brought on behalf of five games developers, including Atari, Techland and Codemasters, it said.
The suspected file-sharers were identified by a Swiss forensic computer company Logistep AG. It searched for the users’ IP address, a unique number allocated to every computer that connects to the Internet.
Talk about online privacy.
If all that stuff like movies, music, games and etc would be up to the consumer to determine the price once they had listened to the music, watched the movie and ect then people would not illegally copy and share that stuff.
All that stuff may take a while to create be it software, movie, song or ect. but once it has been created it is a matter of time for those Company’s to copy the product themselves and sell it to the consumer.
Why should a particular movie or song be set at some $ amount let the consumer decide what to pay for it if it is a great product people will see value in it and pay for it.
Due to the fixed price on this products and the royalties the creators receive there is no wonder that so much crap is out there marketed towards the consumer.
If all the $ value of that stuff out there would be decided by the consumer many of this so called artist / movie stars and ect would NOT make a cent since they have NO talent at all.
Damir
Your right they wouldn’t make a cent and that is not going to work for them, so they are going to keep going after the file sharers