Comcast sued for disclosing customer info

Comcast, the top U.S. cable TV network operator, is being sued by a
Seattle-area woman for disclosing her name and contact information, court
records showed Thursday.

In a lawsuit filed in King County, Wash., Dawnell Leadbetter said that she
was contacted by a debt collection agency in January and told to pay a
$4,500 for downloading copyright-protected music or face a lawsuit for
hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Leadbetter, a mother of two teenage children, was a customer of Comcast's
high-speed Internet access service.

The company, Settlement Support Center, based in Washington state, was
using information that the Recording Industry of Association of America had
obtained in a Philadelphia lawsuit over the illegal sharing of digital
music files, said Lory Lybeck, the lawyer representing Leadbetter.


But no court authorized Comcast to release names and addresses of its
customers, or notified his client that her information had been given to an
outside party, Lybeck said.

"Comcast should respect the rights of privacy who pay them monthly bills,"
Lybeck said.


The RIAA has filed thousands of lawsuits since September and settled
several hundred for about $3,000 each. (Reuters)
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Mol