topic Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!! in Plusnet Feedback

Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

davethir — Fri, 07 May 2010 08:02:56 GMT

Plusnet will (to be fair, so will every other ISP except TalkTalk) give your personal details to the law company ACS Law, when presented with a court order. Now this may sound correct but these court orders have been granted to enable ACS Law to take the people to court, but to date not one person has been taken to court!!. What they use them for is to send out letters informing the user that their IP address has been used to upload copyright material to the internet, they then demand a large amount of money to settle out of court. It doesnot matter wether the user has done the deed or not, they are not interested, they will just move on to the next person if the user declines to pay. To date they state they have collected £1 million plus. very little of the money goes to the artist and most ends up in the hands of ACS Law or Digiprotect (the company who own the copyright). Plus net (and most other ISPs) has provided thousands of personal details to this company, on the understanding that they will use the details to take the user to court, not just send out threatening letters. As stated earlier NOT ONE PERSON HAS BEEN TAKEN TO COURT, on the court order it states that ACS Law must provide PlusNet with a list of people who have been prosecuted within 6 months.
Why has Plusnet not contacted ACS Law to find out how many of their customers have been prosecuted as stated on the Court order. If they get the answer ZERO will they stop giving personal details to these "Scammers"
I have contacted PlusNet with regard to this issue on their main site, but got no answer.

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

Mand — Fri, 07 May 2010 08:47:15 GMT

Hi there,
This was discussed fairly recently here.

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

davethir — Fri, 07 May 2010 09:17:44 GMT

No, you have misread my post....
the post you pointed to goes way off topic and is next to useless.
What i want to know is WHY HAS PLUSNET NOT ASKED ACS Law WHY THEY ARE STILL ISSUING NOTICES WHEN IT CLEARLY STATES ON THE NPO (Norwich Pharmacal Order) THAT THEY MUST PROVIDE PLUSNET WITH THE FACTS REGARDING HOW MANY PLUS NET SUBSCRIBERS HAVE BEEN TAKEN TO COURT.
As I understand it, NOT ONE HAS BEEN TAKEN TO COURT.
I have contacted plusnet previously and received the same "Stonewall" reply please research this and explain why Plusnet still give out our personal details inorder to allow this "Law" firm to threaten innocent (As every one is until proven different) people with bills for large amounts of money.
Please note i have been a loyal subscriber to FORCE9 for the last 10 years (Part of Plusnet).

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

Mand — Fri, 07 May 2010 09:46:50 GMT

TBH I'm not a legal expert, and I'm not aware of 'NPO', but I can advise that we will only give the information we are required to by a court order.
Yes the previous discussion went off topic, but our response hasn't changed.

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

davethir — Fri, 07 May 2010 10:26:14 GMT

NPO is the abbrieviation for "Norwich Pharmacal Order" this is the correct name for the "Court order" you have received.
At the risk of sounding like i am repeating myself...
Please ask your legal department to contact ACS Law (as they have the right to do as stated on the "Court order") and ask them how many of their customers have been taken to court. I assure you the answer will be ZERO. In light of this why are Plusnet still giving our personal/PRIVATE details to ACS Law to enable them to perpetuate this scam! (I call this a scam as it was referred to as such by Lord Clement-Jones in the house of Lords on 18 jan 10.
>

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

mrmarkus1981 — Fri, 07 May 2010 10:38:18 GMT

I was not aware of this point and am also interested in Plusnets response

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

Mand — Fri, 07 May 2010 11:02:25 GMT

I've asked the question for you.

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

davethir — Fri, 07 May 2010 11:09:33 GMT

Thanks,
I look forward to the answer with interest.
you may want to pass on the following http://www.gillhams.com/dictionary/556.cfm to your law dept as it is a definition of a Norwich pharmacal order.
and states that "The person seeking the court order must have a genuine intention of commencing proceedings."

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

davethir — Mon, 10 May 2010 11:50:10 GMT

Hello,
I was wondering how you were getting on with your legal department and the question you asked them on Friday?

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

Lurker — Mon, 10 May 2010 13:17:37 GMT

Just because PN has the right to ask for some more details, it doesn't excuse them from complying with a lawfully issued court order.
Since they are going to comply anyway, why would then have any interest in what the details are to be used for.
The real issue is that courts are granting these orders - you can't blame companies from complying with the courts though.

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

jelv — Mon, 10 May 2010 13:41:35 GMT

Plusnet has a duty of care to it's users to ensure that information it is handing over as a result of a court order is being used in an appropriate many (and in accordance with the stated purpose presented by the plaintiff when the order was made).
If it is not being used correctly then Plusnet should go back to the court.
I rather think the court would take a very dim view of it being used solely to blackmail people and not with the genuine intention of bringing prosecutions.

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

davethir — Wed, 12 May 2010 11:44:49 GMT

I am still waiting for an answer to my post from Plusnet, and am very disapointed at the time the Mods have taken to ask a simple question to their Law Dept. I am enclosing an abridged copy of the Court order showing the paragraph referring to the disclosure of the amount of prosecutions taken.

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

dvorak — Wed, 12 May 2010 11:47:13 GMT

Please note that mods and PN are different people, mods are customers like yourself.
The question to the relevant department was put by PN staff, which was probably the right thing to do.

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

Strat — Wed, 12 May 2010 11:48:22 GMT

The Moderators are just customers like yourself and have no special insight into or influence over the daily workings of Plusnet.
Adie got in before me

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

davethir — Wed, 12 May 2010 11:48:32 GMT

In case anyone is interested i am enclosing the full version of the Court order

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

davethir — Wed, 12 May 2010 11:50:24 GMT

Thanks for the information from the 2 moderators, yes i did indeed mean the PlusNet team not the Moderators, sorry for the wrong statement

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

VileReynard — Wed, 12 May 2010 12:44:10 GMT

Do Plusnet have any policy on whether they challenge court orders - or do they just roll over and help any old scammer?

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

scootie — Wed, 12 May 2010 12:46:37 GMT

even thoe PN dont have to action this request just because they can request the info, i would like to see PN do this on behalf of the internet nation so that end users can see the stats on what cases are taken to court vs those that are scaremongered into coughing up money.
we pay are monthly bills (even when you mess are invoices up) how about doing us a favour and request the data we want to see yet are selfs are not legaly able to put an application in for are selfs

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

David_W — Wed, 12 May 2010 19:03:42 GMT

I'm also interested in what the PN chaps have to say about this, but, I found a loop-hole!
"Such disclosure shall be in an editable electronic text format by way of Microsoft Excel file saved in an encrypted form to a compact disk(sic), or any other digital media"
Ok, PN *have* to encrypt the data, the court order says so, it says nothing about providing a facility to decrypt the information, so basically PN have to send an encrypted document which the other side doesn't have to have the ability to read. Furthermore, any other digital media, I think saving it as an Excel file on an Atari ST floppy disc would be nice, although what really classifies it as digital media? PN could stick it on a tape roll for an ancient machine that is no longer available to buy, unless you have several hundred thousand quid handy, and a machine to break the encryption.
That's the way I'd do it, I'd be following the letter of the court order, and of course, charge the applicant the reasonable costs of buying the tape machine to put the encrypted excel file on to.

Re: Plusnet will give your personal details to ACS Law with not informing you!!

bobpullen — Wed, 12 May 2010 19:08:58 GMT

Quote from: davethir
I am still waiting for an answer to my post from Plusnet...

We have asked the question however answers to things like this can take some time to formulate. Anything with legal implications needs to be run via the necessary channels and this often requires having to involve BT's legal department.
We will keep pushing for a response but at the moment I'm afraid we haven't a definitive answer for you