News:BT seeks moratorium on internet piracy cases

By Jonathan Fildes Technology reporter, BBC News

BT is seeking a moratorium on legal applications to obtain details of its customers who are alleged to have illegally shared files online.

The firm outlined its stance following a high-profile data breach at London law firm ACS:Law last week.

The leak saw thousands of customers' details from various ISPs - including BT-owned PlusNet - published online.

BT said that it wanted a temporary halt on all new and existing applications until a "test case" could be heard.

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Comment: As you know, file sharing is common on line. This may have effects from innocent users sharing what they created, to unscrupulous people who attempt to obtain copyright material and sell it for profit. We are not concerned with people sharing family photos or a child's kindergarten pictures here. Those cases involving original or copyrighted work involving great effort and those that are unique and of a high standard are individual works difficult or impossible to replace.

For example, as an author, I worked for years to complete a novel (now published on line at Return by John Durham). Could you imagine my sense of betrayal to discover someone had copied it and was selling the work on his own site claiming he or she had the right to do so? If that happened, I would feel betrayed, used and preyed upon by such a person. How would you react to such treatment?