Information Law Possum (discontinued)

Something that’s probably even more worrying about the Tankafritt insurance is that the company could probably facilitate the work of the “anti-piracy” agents paid by the music industry who check which users (or IP addresses) up- and download most songs in order to sue them: As a lawyer who advises the music industry, I’d try to convince the competent court to order Tankafritt to disclose the names of its customers to the industry or to public prosecutors. This might not be impossible, as Tankafritt’s customers all engage in illegal file sharing — that’s why they get the insurance. Thus, they could focus on file sharers who are insured, which would not onlyaccelerate the breakdown of the system in a very efficient way, but also save the industry a lot of money they presently spend on searching for large-scale file sharers on the internet.

So, with the present positive anti-filesharing laws, offering an insurance for file sharers is a very very bad idea – at least as bad as the present positive law.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 at 4:05 am and is filed under copyright, privacy.