Birch beats back legal effort to access customer records

Birch Communications Inc. fought off an attempt by a company that seeks out copyright infringements to access information about its customers. A federal judge in Atlanta ruled in favor of Birch, quashing a subpoena by Rightscorp that would have forced Birch to release private information about customers' online activities. Rightscorp represents a variety of copyright holders and seeks out people who infringe those copyrights, usually on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. When it finds what it believes…