Be Respectfully Rejects BPI Invitation

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So the deal between the BPI and six of our largest ISPs yesterday turned our comments section red hot with many of you (rightfully) frustrated, disappointed and just plain furious. This should put something of a smile back on your face...

Be Unlimited, which is fast becoming something of a people's champion, has stepped into the breach to proclaim it has politely declined the BPI's membership offer and will not be divulging any user details unless instructed directly by legal court order. Here's what Oli White, Be's Head of Marketing, had to say:

Be welcomes today’s announcement form the BPI that ISPs should engage in communicating the issue of illegal file-sharing to their customers. As Be grows its member base we are getting an increasing number of requests from 3rd parties for information about members who they believe have infringed their copyright or other intellectual property rights. Be has a policy of making it clear to our members of how Be deals with these requests.

Under circumstances when a Court Order is served on Be, which requires us to supply information about member activity, we will comply with the Order and pass the relevant contact information to the rights holder (and in accordance with our Privacy and cookie policy). In this case under most circumstance we will not inform the member that this has occurred as this may compromise the investigation related to the Court Order.

Can't say fairer than that: protect the customer to the max and forewarn them of BPI investigation up until the point the law forbids them. How will the BPI react? Well, issuing thousands of individual court orders may seem like a powerful way to get its point across but in reality doing it (and getting each approved) is a laborious and time consuming process so the appeal is likely to wane quickly. Instead expect the BPI to come back at Be a few months down the line. Before that it will hope to gather the momentum to make its proposals harder to ignore.

Simultaneously expect thousands of customers to switch over to Be while waving two fingers (one if you're American, but UK based) in the direction of BSkyB, BT Retail, Carphone Warehouse, Orange, Tiscali and Virgin Media.

Kudos Be, kudos.

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