HousePlanet.DJ - Your House Music News Portal - HousePlanet Distribution

source: Bbc.co.uk

Around 15,000 suspected pirates may soon get legal letters accusing them of illegally sharing movies and games.

ACS:Law plans to send notes to the accused in the new year offering a chance to settle out of court for "several hundreds of pounds". A lawyer who has defended people who have received similar letters described it as a "scattergun approach" that would catch "innocent people".

ACS:Law said it was "unaware" of anyone who had been wrongly sent a letter. Andrew Crossley of the firm told BBC News it was acting to "eradicate" sharing of its client's products.

"We give them opportunity to enter into compromise right at the start to avoid having to deal with it [in court]," said Mr Crossley. If it went to court and the lawyers were successful, he said, damages "would run into several thousands of pounds".

But consumer group Which? said that it had heard from around 150 consumers who had been "wrongly accused" in similar cases.

"A lot are accused of downloading pornography," Jaclyn Clarabut of Which? told BBC News. "People find it distressing or embarrassing and pay up."

Others, she said, "don't want the threat of court action" hanging over them or cannot afford to pay for a lawyer and settle the claim for the lower figure.

She said that based on previous experience, "a lot of people will be surprised" by the latest wave of letters.

Michael Coyle, lawyer at Southampton based firm Lawdit, described the scheme as "having very little to do with protecting the rights of the copyright holder".

Instead, he said, it was "more to do with making money from alleging copyright infringements on a massive scale".

He has represented several hundred clients who have received letters from ACS: Law and other firms. None of his clients has ever been forced by a court to pay a fine, he said, although some clients had decided to settle out of court.

"This scattergun approach to the file sharing litigation will inevitably result in a large number of innocent parties being issued with a claim for copyright infringement."

ACS: Law are "currently under investigation" by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), but a spokesperson said it could not divulge any more details about the nature of the complaints. The Law Society has also received complaints.

Mr Crossley said his firm had been targeted by an "internet campaign" and was cooperating with the inquiries.

"It doesn't of itself indicate that I have done anything wrong," he said. "I have no qualms or concerns about what I am doing."

ACS: Law recently obtained two High Court orders that require ISPs to hand over the names and addresses of the account holders for 30,000 IP addresses, a number which can identify a computer on the internet. It is currently preparing three more. The orders were obtained on behalf of two German clients: DigiProtect and MediaCat.

Both firms are licensees of copyright work. They act on behalf of copyright holders, including various pornography studios, to pursue alleged copyright infringements. They use software to monitor file sharing networks to harvest IP addresses which are then turned over to law firms to get account details.

Read full article here...

Related Content:

• Interview: Timo Garcia talks about the cost of piracy for the producer & label  
• France approves penalties against digital net piracy
• Funkagenda talks about internet piracy & file-sharing
• Eternal damnation awaits for file-sharers
• Illegal filesharing crackdown launched by UK government