American technology news site CNET is standing by its story from earlier in the week - reported on in yesterday's CMU Daily - that US internet giant Verizon has said it is pursuing a three-strikes policy against prolific file-sharers and has disconnected some of its customers who ontinued to illegally file-share despite warnings.

As previously reported, despite distancing itself from the Recording Industry Association Of America's attempts to get US ISPs to adopt a 'graduated response' system against illegal file-sharers, a spokeswoman for Verizon, Bobbi Henson, this week confirmed that her company had started sending out warning letters to suspected infringers. CNET reported that she also revealed a handful of people who had ignored the warnings had had their net connections cut off, though that most people stopped file-sharing once they had received a written warning.

Henson subsequently backtracked on that yesterday, saying she had been misquoted by CNET and that while warning letters were being sent out by Verizon, not disconnections had as yet occurred. That would mean Verizon are on a level with many UK ISPs - who have voluntarily sent out warning letters to suspected file-sharers but so far refused to back up the warnings with the stick of net disconnection (or suspension).

Dslreports.com quote Henson as saying: "I'm not aware that we've ever terminated anyone's account for excessive consumption, although we reserve the right to do so. That part of the CNET story is wrong. I did not say 'we've cut people off'; I said we reserve the right to do so".

But CNET stand by their story, accusing Verizon of backtracking because they don't want to be seen as the one US net provider going hardline on the piracy issue, sending file-sharers fleeing to their competitors. They claim Henson definitely said "we've cut some people off" as well as "we do reserve the right to discontinue service" in a phone interview, while when asked by email for exact numbers of disconnections, Henson said "we don't give out these numbers, but I can tell you that they are small" - ie small, not non-existent.

Make of all that what you will.