Lawyers ACS:Law in the UK are now into their second year of threatening alleged pirates with legal action. Since they don’t have a good case when people deny their allegations, for some time now the firm has been sending out questionnaires which allow people to build a case against themselves. As a UK consumer magazine is pointing out, people don’t have to play this game.
A sex shop company owned by one of Britain’s richest men has been revealed as a client of controversial anti-piracy lawyers ACS:Law. Following an objection against a license renewal for one of its premises, the owning company complained that it was the target of a national campaign, and later withdrew its application and closed down the shop.
Today, anti-piracy group DigiProtect are again quoted by the BBC as having no regrets about their controversial campaign file-sharing hunt in the UK. Nevertheless, their actions don’t come without cost. Their lawyers, ACS:Law, have had more than 280 official complaints filed against them with the UK legal regulatory body, dwarfing all comers in the IP sector.
A British law firm, which only recently entered the file-sharing settlement letters business, has withdrawn due to masses of bad publicity. Tilly Bailey & Irvine, who tried to rewrite history on its Wikipedia page to remove its connection to this work, say that they fear the rest of their business could be damaged.
As the practice of hunting down alleged file-sharers and then issuing legal threats in order to force money out of them gathers pace, questions are continually raised over the quality of the technical systems used to gather the evidence. According to information on a rent-a-coder site, such a system was bought in 2008 for between $250 and $750.
ACS:Law have been making news headlines damaging to their reputation ever since they started sending out thousands of threatening letters to alleged file-sharers in the UK. Now they are threatening to sue Slyck.com, one of the Internet’s oldest file-sharing forums, because they don’t like what members have written about them.
After mountains of controversy built up in the wake of the ‘pay up or else’ letters sent to thousands of alleged file-sharers, one would think other lawyers might be put off following the same track, but not so. Tilly Bailey & Irvine are the new kids on the block and have just been labeled by a Lord as an “embarrassment to the rest of the creative rights industry.”
This week the condemnation of file-sharing “legal blackmail” lawyers ACS:Law has been widespread, with extremely harsh words coming from the country’s House of Lords. Despite this the law firm are unrepentant and say they will persist with their campaign. It is, however, possible to immunize your family from this growing threat.
Several UK Lords have criticized the practices of law firms that send out warning letters to alleged copyright infringers demanding big payments. These schemes have been labeled a scam, and the lawyers operating them accused of “harassment, bullying and intrusion” and “legal blackmail” in the House of Lords.
A new wave of cash demands connected with allegations of illicit file-sharing are being received this week. In response, consumer group BeingThreatened has produced the most informative handbook ever created, empowering those wrongfully accused to refute the claims against them and hold onto their hard-earned cash.
