US judge Harold Baker has denied a rights holder access to identity data of  ISP subscribers  whose IP addresses were identified as being associated with “illegal” file sharing. The judge said “there is no way to identify whether the computer used to commit a particular offence belonged to the subscriber, or to somebody else using that internet connection”.

In the UK court ruling against ACS Law the judge stated that the use of IP addresses as evidence was “untested”. This is now not the case (although obviously the test case was not in the UK).  Moreover this totally undermines the basic foundation of the Digital Economy Act and the three strikes system being introduced by the government to try and reduce unlawful copyright infringement.

I guess it may yet go to appeal in the USA but you would think that the body of evidence against the Digital Economy Act’s position is surely growing. Unfortunately the DEAct was fueled by emotion and not evidence.