20 Net users accused of piracy, innocent

[admin]

Which? Computer magazine in the UK conducted a study interviewing people who have been accused of pirating video games, and 20 of them said that they've never even heard of the games they were accused of pirating.

The way it works is that an anti-piracy company gets an IP address for someone they suspect of being a pirate, and then a court order is used to get the ISP to reveal the identity of the person who owns the IP address. The problem is that the IP address can be faked easily, and there is no way to ensure that the anti-piracy company isn't making up IPs themselves, since the more IPs they get, the more money they earn from studios. None of it is an open process, and there's no room for appeal.

And this isn't the first time that mistaken identity has occurred either.

More info about the Which? magazine study here in this BBC article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8129261.stm