On Tuesday 24 January the Irish High Court made an order requiring three ISPs to hand over the personal details of 49 alleged file-sharers. This decision follows a similar decision in July 2005, and was made by the same judge (Kelly J.) in essentially identical terms, including an undertaking that the information would only be used for the purpose of litigation. The judge did, however, specify that the plaintiffs could, if they wished, also pass this information to the authorities for criminal prosecution, describing file sharing as "a modern form of thieving".

Digital Rights Ireland wrote to the parties in advance seeking to have two issues brought to the attention of the court: whether users should be notified of the application and given a chance to respond, and whether the use of the US-based MediaSentry was in breach of national data protection laws (as was held in the Dutch decision in Brein). However, not all of these issues were raised in court, and the decision of the court does not address these points.

Full details of the hearing and the decision of the court (25.01.2006)
http://www.digitalrights.ie/2006/01/25/isps-ordered-to-hand-over-user-...

ISPs ordered to disclose customer details (25.01.2006)
http://enn.ie/news.html?code=9665363

EDRI-gram : Two opposing court verdicts on file-sharers (14.07.2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.14/p2p

(Contribution by TJ McIntyre, Digital Rights Ireland)