[justinlink]

Comcast has only recently started fighting back against this one law firm (Prenda) because they were not promptly paying Comcast's fee for handing over subscriber information.

Comcast charges $45 per IP address for civil cases. Prenda was late with payments in another case and the dispute even made the court docket. Comcast said to the court they discussed payment terms with Duffy (Prenda's main counsel) and resolved their differences.

I do not know if Prenda ever ended up paying Comcast, but Comcast's refusal to comply to me seem more rooted in the costs to their legal department than to protecting their customers.

Comcast had no problem giving out thousands of customer's information for two years to these black mailers until recently. The merits of the case have never changed. They sue people in favorable jurisdictions and only Comcast could have stepped forward with the contact information and fought that with real evidence.

Kudos to Comcast, but don't consider them for sainthood yet.

[jdp23]

Thanks for the background. When I first saw that Comcast was doing the right thing here, my head almost exploded. Now I understand :)

[hbhanu]

Haha, I did a doubletake, too - the background definitely helped.

[ars]

A reputation is a hard thing to shake isn't it. Even if they do something good, please will look for other reasons for everything you do.

[danielsiders]

can someone find a citation for this?

[justinlink]

Here's a document which speaks of the payment and the problems Comcast was having:

http://ia600806.us.archive.org/25/items/gov.uscourts.dcd.152...

On February 2, 2012, AF Holdings served the Subpoena on Comcast. Fourteen days later, on February 16, 2012, Comcast objected to the Subpoena on four separate grounds: inadequate time for compliance, inadequate assurance of payment, improper joinder and lack of personal jurisdiction. After a good faith meet-and-confer conference on the same day, Comcast agreed to withdraw its objection regarding assurance of payment, but indicated it would stand on its remaining objections.

--- It's more recent, so they also raised other issues other than non-payment. The inadequate time issue is relating to staffing while joinder and lack of jurisdiction, I do commend comcast for fighting.