Time Warner Cable tries to put brakes on massive piracy case
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
If it takes a couple of hours to review the paperwork, access the logs, verify the results and write a report then $45 looks pretty cheap.
We receive many requests for data with only one full time staff in the position to provide the information. To mitigate such requests coming in we have a similar paywall to TWCs - 50$/hr involved. We also require that the request be submitted in writing. Typically there's a handful of hoops to jump through with one of the university's general council, signing various forms and getting information to the right people. The paywall combined with the have-to-talk-to-a-lawyer before any requests are resolved dropped the number from a few dozen to one or two a month.
That's an interesting piece of information. If TW can delay things long enough, all the evidence will be gone.
This should be a fun case to watch.
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The problem is that finding a way to increase the cost of initiating legal kungfu would be from the start itself subject to a crippling ambush.
I don't think bartl's suggestion would quite work, precisely because the ROI is so heavily tilted: lawyers will simply find some way of mitigating it.
Then they should be allowed to charge that amount (or, say, rounded to $50 per case) to the people who request it, no matter who it is. If it's the Justice Department, then it should come from their budget, law enforcement is not the responsibility of individual companies, unless it's them that are being accused.