12 years ago, talking about piracy isn’t incriminating so why do the big movie companies need their info? So they can potentially intimidate them for more info they potentially don’t have?
Really no idea why that timeline. In 2010 I got an email from whatever ISP I was using at the time politely asking me to stop torrenting music. They basically said, hey we see you're doing this, please stop or you can't have internet through us anymore. That is when I learned what vpns and tor browser's are for.
Seems absolutely bonkers that any corporation would be digging back that far for media pirates. Absolute waste of time.
They might be looking for something specific. Like they are investigating an individual, or network of individuals, and this is just a piece of that investigation. I doubt they are asking for this to randomly look for opportunities to charge people with a crime related to piracy.
If only we had legal avenues to obtain information from private companies.... Oh well.
If you have a valid reason to investigate people, then you can get a fucking warrant. If your investigation isn't into an actual criminal act, then maybe you don't really need that data so bad.
The time it would take to ask for these specific users and the research needed wouldnt amount to the number they would bring in if this would just be a shake down, I would guess you are right