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In a letter to the BPI, Tiscali demands that the BPI shows more compelling evidence that unlawful behaviour has actually taken place before it will consider suspending the accounts of those concerned.

The BPI had demanded the suspension of the accounts by saying it had identified 17 Tiscali IP addresses and 42 Cable and Wireless IP addresses that had been involved in large scale downloading of copyright material. The music industry trade association also provided extracts of screenshots of the shared drive of one Tiscali customer. However, Tiscali says that this in itself is not evidence that downloading had actually taken place. Furthermore the ISP says that no evidence at all has been provided in respect of the other 16

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accounts that are alleged to have been involved in copyright theft.

However, Tiscali has contacted the subscriber with the shared drive and asked for an explanation. If no plausible reason for the contents of the shared drive is given then Tiscali says the account will be suspended.

The remaining 16 will stay as Tiscali customers unless the BPI can provide evidence to back up its claim that the case against them is 'compelling'. It is demanding that the IP addresses - which are dynamically allocated - be proven to be involved in file sharing at the time they were allocated to the accused subscribers.

In its letter to the BPI, Tiscali signs off by telling the BPI that without better evidence it will see them in court. It says, 'to disclose without a court order would put Tiscali at risk of breaching the terms and conditions of its customer agreements, and the
provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998'.

There is no love lost between Tiscali and the music industry. The Tiscali Juke Box service, which used peer-to-peer technology to stream songs between users but still paid rights to artists, was floored recently when the music industry changed tack, making unreasonable demands to strip out much of the search facilities.