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The industry's main umbrella group, the BPI, has written to Tiscali and Cable & Wireless, owner of Bulldog, in what it describes as a 'significant development' in its campaign against 'illegal filesharing', allowing it to deal with a greater volume of cases more quickly and efficiently. Previously it has pursued alleged file sharers individually, with some success.

'We have demonstrated in the courts that unauthorised filesharing is against the law,' said BPI chairman Peter Jamieson, although no alleged file sharer has yet faced a trial. 'We have said for months that it is unacceptable for ISPs to turn a blind eye to industrial-scale copyright

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infringement. We are providing Tiscali and Cable & Wireless with unequivocal evidence of copyright infringement via their services. It is now up to them to put their house in order and pull the plug on these people.'

The BPI says that it has identified 17 Tiscali IP addresses and 42 Cable & Wireless IP addresses that have been used to upload 'significant quantities' of music for which the copyright is owned by BPI members. The information was gathered by using the filesharing networks themselves to identify the unique IP address for the Internet account being used to make music file available for others to download. Only the ISP knows to which individual the IP address belongs.

'Both Tiscali and Cable & Wireless state in their terms of use for subscribers that Internet accounts should not be used for copyright infringement,' said BPI general counsel Roz Groome. 'We now invite them to enforce their own terms of use.'

Tiscali said that it would respect the privacy of its customers.

'Tiscali has received the letter from the BPI today and we will be dealing with the request in the normal manner,' it said in a statement. 'Within the framework of the Data Protection Act and our terms and conditions, we do not release customer data without the correct legal process of a Court Order.'