A court order requiring Sky Broadband to hand over customer names and addresses has been granted as part of an ongoing case against the ISP in the UK.
The case in question is titled TCYK LLP v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd. TCKY is short for ‘The Company You Keep’, and is a well-known ‘copyright troll’ in the US.
Copyright trolling is essentially the practice of monitoring file-sharing sites for possible copyright breaches and then demanding money from the offenders to avoid prosecution.
TCKY has filed numerous cases in the US and it looks like they are about to start doing the same in the UK. It started monitoring BitTorrent traffic in the UK in 2014 and claims to have evidence of Sky customers illegally sharing files through the network.
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Sky has started to distribute letters to subscribers explaining the situation:
Sky could be criticized for not outwardly trying to maintain privacy of subscribers, but it has covered itself to an extent by forewarning customers of TCYK’s intentions.
The letter goes on to say that customers should examine any correspondence from TCYK carefully. If they didn’t knowingly download or share anything illegally, they should not be liable to pay TCYK any compensation.
Sky subscribers who receive a letter from TCYK LLC can contact the Citizens Advice Bureau or a solicitor for guidance on how to proceed.
➤ Sky will hand over customer data in movie piracy case [via TorrentFreak]
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