Sky Broadband customers have been warned by the company that they are likely to receive letters from a company demanding that they pay out money for illegally downloaded porn films – even if they have downloaded no such films.
Golden Eye International will be sending out letters after successfully applying for a court order against Sky, with thousands expected to be mailed out to users of the company’s broadband Internet service. As part of the court order, Sky were required to hand over IP addresses which Golden Eye deemed to have been involved with downloading the films, though Sky have not stated that recipients of the letters have to pay the money they allegedly owe.
A portion of the letter sent out by Sky reads:
“A company called Golden Eye International, which owns rights to several copyrighted films, has claimed that a number of Sky Broadband customers engaged in unlawful file sharing of some of its films.
“In support of these claims Golden Eye International says it has gathered evidence of individual broadband accounts (identified online by unique numbers called IP addresses) from which it claims the file sharing took place.”
While Golden Eye is informing customers that they will now have to pay damages, in reality it will be difficult for them to obtain this money outside of taking individual users to court, where they would struggle to find proof of wrongdoing outside of an admittance of guilt or by inspecting users’ hard drives, as noted by lawyer Michael Coyle. The main takeaway from this controversy is actually how easy it has been for a third-party company to obtain IP addresses from an ISP, which is not the fault of Sky given that they were being compliant with UK law, but a problem with the judicial system in general.
With Golden Eye now effectively being legally able to threaten users to pay up money by virtue of their own independent “findings” that said users have illegally downloaded their films, it is very likely that in among the thousands who have received these letters will be those who are unaware of the situation, and who will inevitably pay up what Golden Eye believes they are owed – even if the users haven’t downloaded the films they’ve been accused of doing.
