Abstract:
This article examines whether internet service providers are under any duty to disclose the names of subscribers whose accounts can be shown to be associated with infringing activity. This question involves tension between the economic interests of copyright owners/licensees, the privacy interests of internet users and the economic interests of the internet service provider. This tension in turn raises age-old problems of balance and proportionality between privacy, confidentiality and other competing rights and freedoms as well as the interests of society at large. The article concludes by briefly touching on privacy areas from outside of copyright and the Internet: including the increasingly important area of biomedical privacy.