The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that MediaDefender has been sending cease-and-desist letters to universities, identifying the IP addresses of specific computers that are alleged to be offering copyrighted movies for download. These IP addresses usually correlate one-to-one with users.
One of the MediaDefender letters is reprinted in the Chronicle story. The letter says in part:
… we request that you immediately do the following:
1) Disable access to the individual who has engaged in the conduct described above; and 2) Terminate any and all accounts that this individual has through you.
This is not entirely consistent with the testimony given by Randy Saaf, MediaDefender’s president, at a Congressional hearing last week. Mr. Saaf’s written testimony said:
MediaDefender’s technologies only affect the networks on a macro-scale and not on a micro-scale. MediaDefender only communicates with the P2P networks on a high level and pays no attention to the individual users. We do not identify, nor target individuals.
