Exclusive: Be welcomes BPI campaign, but won’t give out user details

[The Feedster]

O2-owned ISP Be has spoken to TechRadar of its support for today's announcement of anti-piracy measures by the BPI - but warned it won't be giving out user information lightly.

Oli White, the company's Head of Marketing, told us that it was only right that ISPs should "engage in communicating the issue of illegal file-sharing to their customers."

However, he warned that third parties won't be able to glean information from them without due legal process. "We are getting an increasing number of requests for information about members who [third parties] believe have infringed their copyright or other intellectual property rights," explains White.

The ISP has clear guidelines on how it deals with such requests, specifically that 'requesters' need a Court Order to glean user information from the company.

"To keep members informed of what's going on in most circumstances we will try to contact the member in question to make them aware that we have had a request from the rights holder," adds White.

So far so nice, but when a Court Order is served, Be says it's not able to be so communicative with its customer. "Under circumstances when a Court Order is served on Be, which requires us to supply information about member activity, we will comply with the Order and pass the relevant contact information to the rights holder," White says.

However, in this instance Be admits that it won't tell the member this has occurred as doing so would, most likely "compromise the investigation related to the Court Order."

Ah, the wave of a lawyer's wand.

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