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Voltage’s motion to compel TekSavvy to hand over the identities is set to be heard Jan. 14 and the ISP said as long as it can provide its customers with adequate notice, it will not oppose the motion.

“Voltage will then take that information and contact those customers and say, ‘We’ve sued you. We’re going to demand a certain amount of money to settle this lawsuit, and if you don’t, then we’re going to go to court,’ ” intellectual property lawyer David Fewer said in an interview.

Mr. Fewer is the director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, which filed a letter with the court saying it will seek intervener status in the case.

“The customers are faced with a terrible dilemma of either paying the settlement demand or risking being sued and incurring the legal cost of fighting,” he said. “For people who like certainty and don’t like stress and figure it’s going to cost them one way or the other, Voltage is betting that the easy way out is to pay the settlement fee.”

Through a forensic software investigation conducted by Montreal-based Canipre Inc. over two months from Sept. 1 to Oct. 30, Voltage says it singled out BitTorrent transactions related to its copyrighted works associated with more than 2,000 Internet protocol addresses belonging to TekSavvy customers.

TekSavvy said last week it sent out about 1,100 warning notices as some customers had more than one IP address associated with their account.

In court Monday, Nicholas McHaffie, a lawyer for the ISP, said the company had tried to ensure all customers associated with those IP addresses were alerted to their potential involvement in the court case.