British ISP O2 was ordered by the Chancery Division of the British High Court to hand over the customer details belonging to a portion of 9,124 IP addresses. These addresses supposedly used BitTorrent clients to illegally download porn created by the British Ben Dover Productions and 12 smaller porn copyright holders.

The claim for all 13 production companies was made by a copyright holding company called Golden Eye International Ltd. Lindsay Honey, co-founder of Ben Dover productions, happens to be a 50 percent owner. A consumer rights watchdog, Consumer Focus, represented the intended defendants (the so-far anonymous users of the 9,124 IP addresses).

The Honourable Mr Justice Arnold rejected the claims of infringement made by the 12 smaller production companies, in part because he thought the partnership between Golden Eye and the other claimants existed only to make money off the High Court's litigation. The Justice noted accepting the partnership between the smaller 12 companies "would be tantamount to the court sanctioning the sale of the Intended Defendants' privacy and data protection rights to the highest bidder."

Golden Eye primarily exists to hold copyright ownership and seek litigation against peer-to-peer file sharing networks. The company's home page reads, "If you are reading this, then more than likely you have infringed our rights already."

Golden Eye compiled the list of the more than 9,000 IP addresses it claims have illegally downloaded its copyrighted material. With the 12 smaller production companies' claims thrown out, however, Golden Eye will be sending letters only to those O2 customers that may have illegally downloaded Ben Dover Productions films—likely a much smaller pool of potential defendants.

Golden Eye demanded the right to ask for £700 per illegal downloader, but the High Court refused. The court decided Golden Eye must allow O2 customers the opportunity to show they have not committed copyright infringement. If they indeed illegally downloaded Ben Dover Productions' porn, remittance for infringement would be negotiated on a defendant-by-defendant basis.

O2 is one of the six largest ISPs in the UK, run by Telefonica UK Ltd. Golden Eye hoped that if they could not demand £700 per infringing IP address, O2 would throttle the user's traffic. However, Consumer Focus successfully argued that since the bill payer or subscriber may not be responsible for the infringement, such an award would be considered unfair.

The BBC reports that "in a similar speculative invoicing case two years ago ACS Law sent out around 20,000 letters... But the cases unraveled as they came to court."