American ISP flooded with identification requests

U.S. cable operator Time Warner Cable (TWC) can’t handle the number of requests for identifying internet users anymore. TWC normally receives 567 IP identification requests per month, especially from law enforcement agencies. These requests relate to issues ranging from suicide threats to child abductions to terrorist activities. TWC believes that this kind of cases take "immediate priority.".

Recently, the U.S. Copyright Group, a U.S. law firm apparently specializing in download cases, received 2094 requests to identify downloaders within one month. These requests are the result of three cases in which the U.S. Copyright Group has obtained a court order to identify the downloaders.

TWC says it can not handle such quantities of identification request. Processing the 2094 requests of the U.S. Copyright Group, will take the four employees of TWC nearly three months full-time effort. In which time TWC can not meet the normal enforcement requests, which they really want to give priority. Moreover, each request for identification will cost the provider 45 U.S. dollars.

TWC has therefore asked the court to quash the subpoena and set a limit on the number of requests it can be ordered to answer. Thereby TWC also takes the opportunity to point out to the workload this will impose on the courts: the 2094 download cases must very likely be filed in individual actions.

15 May 2010