US internet company Altice - which operates the Optimum internet and cable TV service - has hit out at Rightscorp, the anti-piracy agency employed by the record companies that have sued it for copyright infringement.
According to a legal filing made earlier this month, and now published by Torrentfreak, Altice says that Rightscorp is "a company whose business practice is to 'spam' ISPs … with thousands of notices a day to manufacture the appearance of repeat infringement by its subscribers".
Universal Music, BMG and Concord together sued Altice late last year over allegations it does not do enough to deal with copyright infringement on its networks and should therefore be held liable for that infringement. Specifically, it doesn’t do enough to deal with customers who are subject to repeated copyright notices submitted by music companies and their agents, in this case Rightscorp.
When facing lawsuits of this kind, ISPs generally take issue with the entity submitting the copyright notices, questioning the processes they use to identify apparent infringement.
To that end, Altice has demanded lots of information about how Rightscorp goes about its work. It seems the anti-piracy agency has only provided basic information so far, so the ISP is seeking a court order granting it access to everything else.
"Given that the plaintiffs’ case for infringement relies substantially if not entirely on Rightscorp’s notices”, its legal filing states, “the accuracy and reliability of Rightscorp’s systems, Rightscorp’s investigation of and supposed 'matching' of files located on Altice’s network to the plaintiffs’ works, and subsequent notices it sent to Altice ... are directly relevant to the case".