Now this is a little scary. TorrentFreak is tonight reporting that lawyers in the UK have been granted court orders which “force ISPs to hand over the details of individuals who they say have been monitored sharing hardcore pornography”. According to the site, up to 30,000 individuals – as many as 25,000 BT and 5,000 customers of other ISPs – will be receiving “shock letters demanding big payments” during the coming weeks.

Last week at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, a firm called ACS:Law made applications for orders that force ISPs to hand over the names and addresses of subscribers that are claimed to have infringed their client’s rights. TorrentFreak states the orders related to around 30,000 IP addresses in relation to nearly 300 movie titles.

These aren’t the first such orders to be published – there’s plenty more reading on the topic at TorrentFreak and the website BeingThreatened (which provides advice to innocent parties receiving letters from ACS:Law).