Bill wrote:
A previous posting here referred to another instance of this sort of
thing, but the discussion wandered a bit.

A friend of a friend received a letter from Sky like this

http://tinyurl.com/od8n9qq

relating to the downloading of a film in April 2013.

Um, no. Relating to sharing a film.


The subsequent letter from the company behind this asks them to agree to
pay "a sum of money as compensation to the claimant for the losses", and
doesn't give any hint as to the sum to be claimed.

They are given 28 days to respond. I suspect it is no coincidence that it
was sent out at the beginning of school summer holidays, and the friend
was indeed on holiday when it arrived.

I am surprised that Sky has given out the name and address of the
subscriber even if they have failed in their defence of the court order.
If I had received the letter, I would have immediately asked Sky to
provide me with their records relating to that IP address on the date in
question. Would this be a good thing to suggest to this subscriber?

The film in question can be rented for the monthly Netflix subscription
or free during the trial period.

No-one remembers downloading this film, and they are not aware of using
torrents to download. They have checked their router and they believe it
has the standard default password. An adjacent house is rented to students.

Do they have a static IP address? I often wonder how they trace
downloads/uploads done via accounts that don't have fixed IP addresses.

Tim