Legal Question in Technology Law in United Kingdom

Login info sharing inferred from logins from different IP addresses

The situation is that my friend was a member of a certain website which provided adult videos for download . He had paid a healthy amount of money for subscription to this website. Now , the administrator of the website has banned my friend from the website on the grounds that logins to the forum of the site were made from 14 different IP addresses. My friend claims that he has a dynamic IP address which changes every time he connects . Now , is it possible for the administrator to blame my friend , saying that he had distributed his login information amongst many others , based of logins to the forum from different IP addresses ? Is it possible for the administrator to demand more money( 14 times the subscription amount , based on 14 different logins from different IP's) from my friend on the basis that he has supposedly given his login info to others ? Does the administrator have any legal basis on which he can create a case against my friend and extort money ?


Asked on 1/17/08, 6:56 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Jeremy Malcolm iLaw

Re: Login info sharing inferred from logins from different IP addresses

It depends.

If there is no reasonable basis to dispute that the IP addresses were dynamically allocated, then this would not provide grounds for termination of the account unless there was something in the terms and conditions of the site when he signed up that warned him about that. This may have been in the small print, but the user needs to have been notified in some way that logging on from different IP addresses would be in breach of the terms of service.

However on the other hand, this would differ if there is a legitimate factual dispute about whether the IP addresses were really from a dynamic pool or whether they were from different ISPs. If they were from a range of different ISPs, then a court would probably decide on the balance of probabilities that this indicates that the login details were shared, which would be a breach of the terms of use of the site.

Your friend's best bet is to ask them to verify where the IP addresses have come from, and if they are all from the same ISP (or maybe two ISPs - eg. work and home) then the Web site would not be acting legally in terminating his access.

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Answered on 1/17/08, 9:15 pm


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