Please observe site rules on posting.

External links need to be approved by Admin.

As far as I understand it, those links have previously been approved by the site owner (and posted previously in multiple threads).

They're hardly links to phishing sites. And definitely not irrelevent.

Icy1, people have already pointed you in the direction of the other thread on CAG.

Generally, the advice given from anyone with any legal training has been (if you didn't do it) to reply and deny.

Just a thought, but I'd advise anyone going to their Doctors claiming stress unless they are 100% genuine. For some life insurances, etc, you may find the premium going up somewhat or being refused, etc, if your medical record states you have been treated under a Doctor for stress.

 

Am not going to disclose how I know this for obvious reasons (this is a public forum, if you can read it so can ACS!), but food for thought.

Yes, I would advise against trolling for a doctors letter / similar unless you're 100% actually affected and completely genuine.

Being stressed out over something doesn't necessarily mean you have a clinical problem.

Heads up guys!

 

Just had a text from my wife - she has received a reply to our 1st Letter of Denial this morning.

 

As expected, this is another ACS Template letter, stating that they do not accept *our* Templete Letter , and giving us 7 days to explain how our personal circumstances allowed my wife to let her internet connect be used for sharing files (which it most certainly was NOT!).

 

Of possible interest, is that she is saying they have enclosed a 'Questionairre' for her to complete, which I believe is a new tactic?

 

Not at home til tonight, so haven't had sight of this as yet - will report back later...

 

Rob

 

NB - Which? Computing are coming to see us next week, to take photos and details for their upcoming feature

Interesting. The questionnaire does sound new. I have PMed you.

i too have one of these letters accusing me of a file i have never heard of let alone have on my pc! (done a full scan and search)

 

i think the whole thing is a disgrace and something needs to be done, i feel stressed with this and its costing me money at work searching for info/help on these guys!

 

I will be writing a firm LOD, when will something be done or are they going to get away with doing this!

The digital economy bill is currently passing through the house of lords and ACS have been mentioned several times. See a previously post of mine for more information on how to write to a Lord and let them know your vies on the matter. If you click my user name you should be able to get to a list of all my posts. I shan't repost the post as I'm starting to feel like a right spammer

ok so what should i do write a letter of denial and see what happens

What you do is up to you, but there is a lot of help in the links I have posted above.

I won't spam them again, it's getting a little repetitive and I don't want the mods to get annoyed

Flyyyte, thank you very much for the reply ive put the letter in a safe place and am not going to think about it anymore cheers i ow you a beer

Scooby, I'm afraid Flyyte is dead wrong. All sorts of organisations send out all sorts of correspondence second class and they assume, since the royal mail delivery rate is very high, that you received the document. Cheap it may be, but it's not unreasonable or unusual.

Court claims have to be sent first class, or by another method which gets there the next working day, to be counted as being served (according to Rule 6.3 of the CPR) but these aren't court documents. This is a pre action letter of claim according to the Civil proceedure rules.

According to section 7 of those rules, you should reply to the letter. Now, of course, these rules aren't compulsory but in the INCREDIBLY unlikley event of it ever getting to court, poor pre action conduct could count against you.

Sorry, mods I will stop spamming now. I need to get some work done.

Theoretically speaking would it not be some form of entrapment if they seed the files, someone subsequently downloads them and then they try and prosecute you for it? - Just a thought...

Entrapment is not a concept in British law, and the only thing that comes close are rules which govern how agents of the state behave. Digiprotect are not agents of the state and this is a civil matter so those rules don't apply.

You could argue that if they distribute the files they give implied licence, which is similar to what you're getting at but there is zero evidence that this has happened in this case. They simply don't need to.

Hi, everyone.

I think if we've shown anything during the last few pages of, it's that we can have quite a potent voice when we can be bothered to use it. Several of the Lords are well aware of the level this scheme of Terence and Andy's is at. For some superb youTube footage of the lords in action see here: YouTube - acsflaw1's Channel

It appears from letter sent by ACS:law themselves that they are angling to become an operator of the scheme when the three strikes legislation (The Digital Economy Bill) becomes enacted and they would like to have the power to send their nastygrams to anyone unlucky enough to be caught in their way.

This cannot happen.

The digital economy bill is next discussed on Wednesday, for the penultimate time at committee stage.

If you are a recipient of a letter from ACS:law WRITE TO A LORD TODAY. PARTICULARLY if you have complained to the SRA and not heard anything as of yet. In fact, even if you have not had a letter - write to them anyway.

If you have previously written to a lord and they have not spoken up, politely write to them and as them why not. If a lord has spoken in support, then write and thank them. Lords Lucas and Clement-Jones have been particularly good.

Click on the big text for a link to writetothem. IT IS AS EASY AS FILLING IN A FORM. Type in the name of the Lord you are interested in writing to in the "interested in my topic" box and let rip. Send your letter to at least two, but a MAXIMUM of 4 lords.

Here is a list of lords who have already spoken (and you therefore need to write to):

• High Priority
  
• Lord young of norwood green (Lab)
  
• Lord de Mauley (Cons)
  
• Earl Attlee (cons)
  
• Baroness Howe of Idlicote (N/a)
  
• Baroness Byford (Cons)
  
• Lord Wade of Chorlton (Cons)
  
• Baroness Hayman (Lab)
  
• Lord Maxton (labour)
  
• Viscount Bridgeman (Cons)
  
• Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LibDem)
  
• Lord Triesman (Lab)
  
• Lord Birt (N/A)
  
• Lord Whitty (Lab)
  
• Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)
  
• Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)
  
• Baroness Buscombe (Cons)
  
• Lord Steel of Aikwood (LibDem)
  
• Lord Puttnam (Lab)
  
• Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (N/A)
  
• Lord Mayhew of Twysden (Cons)
  
• Lord Mackay of clashfern (Cons)
  

• Lower Priority (already aware)
  
• The Earl of Erroll (N/A)
  
• Lord Lucas (Cons)
  
• Lord Clement-Jones (libDem)
  
• Lord Razzall (LibDem)
  
• Lord Howard of Rising (Cons)
  
• Lord Mandelson (Lab)
  

Finally, please bear in mind that after the house of lords comes the house of commons. We will need to write to our MPs soon. Or, even better - get an appointment and speak to them in person. The system is different here in that you can only lobby your own MP to speak out on your behalf. Be prepared, keep your Lord letter hanging around ready to adapt to whatever amendments are voted in by the lords.

Is the following true?

 

 

File sharing claims update (ACS Law Website - Accessed 10:17 hrs, 01 02 2010)

 

"Cases involving the infringement of copyright are held in the Patents Court in London, and as they are automatically assigned to the multi-track system, we are able to claim our client's legal costs should we succeed in court. Should you now wish to settle, please contact us early in the New Year."

 

Are they saying that if they take you to court, it won't be the County Court, rather it will go straight to the multi track?

Yes.

Past experience is (and they say on their website somewhere) they will claim for around £3k if they issue a court claim.

It's the lead Technology story too, lets hope the noose is solwly tightening around Mr Crossley's neck.

 

'I'm not afraid of a court case' he says, bring it on then, why the delay ?

 

Andy

Some very inept question dodging / publicity from Crossley there. Nobody is accusing him of being scared of court.

It would be a wee bit of a handicap for a solicitor to be scared of court.

Silly man.

I received a letter from ACS:LAW in the past few days regarding an alledged offense of making available one track. I have no knowledge of this track or even this artist. I don't use P2P, it was on a prior ISP and was almost a year ago.

 

I must admit I haven't trawled through 88 pages on this matter, but can anyone provide any advice other than replying denying this wild and unfounded accusation?

Unfortunateley you are going to have to put some effort in to reading up on the matter and informing yourself. Besides, there is not much more to say other than reply and deny.

Good man!!

 

...Although, on re-reading your original post, I'm not entirely sure exactly where you would stand, seeing as you are saying that you actually made an attempt to download the stuff they say you did?

 

Anybody alse able to advise on this

Well, this is potentially quite interesting. The offence they are accusing you of is the distribution of the file in question. Not the download or the "attempted" download.

Generally they state that they download a chunk of the file from the target in order to avoid the problem which leads to them sending letters to printers. Their thinking is if they receive a chunk of the file, then you're not a printer or being spoofed.

In this case, if what the original poster is saying is correct then it looks as though they are telling porkies. Bear in mind that Digirights (who do the monitoring on behalf of digiprotect) apparently use a modified version of the software that Logistep use.

The logistep software has sent letters to users using "no upload" clients and hence it is impossible that they could have distributed any of the file. That shows you the fallibility of this software.

We know that having your wireless hijacked / hacked is not even slightly the only way these schmucks could have mucked up.

If you could drop me a line at penumbra (at) beingthreatened.com or PM me with further details that would be much appreciated. The guys from ACS monitor this forum very closely so I wouldn't advise giving any more detail on your case in public.

Erm "proof on the balance of probabilities" as required in a civil case is still proof. It is merely a lower standard of proof than the "beyond reasonable doubt" standard used in a criminal case. The point remains they they have to prove your guilt, you do not have to prove your innocence.

Well, this is just semantics. As long as we're singing from the same hymn sheet.

Personally I wouldn't go near the words prove or proven in a civil situation which is why I use show.

The burden of proof is of course on ACS in this situation.

The court order is genuine. The evidence that they used to get it is highly dubious.

 

As things stand, they have to prove in a court of law that you downloaded the alleged file. That will be difficult for them to do, as the hard drive doesn't even exist any more. You should do the same as I advised above, send a single letter of denial, and then ignore all future threats unless they issue court papers.

 

An even if you did know for certain that the file had, in fact, been downloaded, they would only be entitled to their actual losses. I doubt they could quantify £6, let alone £600.

No, not prove. This is a civil case. They have to convince a judge that, on the balance of probabilities (i.e. convince a judge 51%) you did it, or are at least are responsible for it. Otherwise, good advice.

Also, they are also accusing you of distributing the file, not downloading it. When people in the past have tried to submit their hard drive for examination, this has been refused as it is "irrelevant to their case".

They have evidence your connection was used, but not who was using your connection at the time. This on it's own is probably not enough but to find out you have to take it to court which, they never have.

As Huff&Puff says, they will also only be able to claim for actual damages which they will have issues arguing for more than a few pounds. However, again, it all depends on the judge and your legal representation.

Don't worry - nobody has yet gotten that far. They have not even come close to a contested case in court.

The only concrete example of court claims that have been issued (basically one up from a letter of claim - still not a court case) have involved people who have used nicknames on public forums which are linked to their real name somewhere who have then proceeded to either confess openly to sharing the material online, or frequent file sharing forums.

Hi Rob, send a letter of denial stating that you will vigorously defend any action that they take. Then sit back and ignore everything else that they send, unless they issue court papers (there is more chance of being struck by lightning). They will threaten all sorts, it's just part of how the [problem] works, so you need to be prepared for that.

This is excellent advice, rob.

Reply and deny. There is a guide out there on another site, beingthreatened.com. That also contains a lot of background info on this scheme.

Anyone else who has received one of these letters, if you have chance please fill in my statistics form. No personal information is captured, just info about the infringement. It cannot be linked to you in any way.

The information will be published as a report and also used to campaign the Lords, MPs etc. There's some very interesting trends cropping up.

What happened to the MediaCat application that was put to the courts?

Jeebus, mr curious.

MediaCAT letters have gone out and are appearing.

I think the statutory obligation on ISPs is six months. Anything over that is optional.

What do the latest batch of demands claim is being shared?

The usual mix of porn, music and games. Some of the infringement dates go back over 18 months, despite ACS / Digiprotect only asking for the details this December just gone.

With ACS activites now coming to light and being labelled bogus in the House Of Lords, what are the chances of those indiviuals who have already paid up through fear or not really knowing what they are doing now launching a claim to get ACS to refund the monies paid to them due to their bully tactics and lies?

Very slim, I should imagine. They will argue that people who paid up have in effect admitted doing the deed and I would think you're looking at quite an expensive court case to get your money back, with no promise of victory.

If you've the money for such a court case, then you probably wouldn't be worried about paying up £500 to any muppet who comes along.

It would appear that ACS Law have given up the fight with ONE OF those who defended thmselves but unfortunately still made enough from those too scared or unable to defend themselves to justify another round of thousands of demands from different people for the same thing.

Fixed that for ya.

Unfortunately it's the same old same old. ACS' random outcome generator ticks on.

In other news, the lords who are currently debating this seem well aware of the situation and are trying hard to change the digital economy bill to stop ACS in their tracks.

Lord Clement jones has been particularly vociferous:

My Lords, I support the amendment....: 20 Jan 2010: House of Lords debates (TheyWorkForYou.com)

My Lords, I support the amendment. Whether or not it stands up legally, it is a good peg on which to hang a short debate about the activities of this operation, ACS Law. Like many noble Lords, I have had an enormous postbag about the activities of this law firm. It is easy to say "of certain law firms", but this is the only one that I have been written to about. That is the interesting aspect of this.

ACS seems to specialise in picking up bogus copyright claims and then harassing innocent householders and demanding £500, £650 or whatever-a round sum, in any event-in order to settle. Some people have been fighting off this firm's claims for several years. One letter says that a close friend of the writer's has been the target of regular bullying by ACS Law since September 2007 for alleged illegal file-sharing and currently has no means by which to prove his innocence, and so on; I could go through a whole series of letters on the subject. Someone has written eight letters to protest their innocence and answer the questions but the case has yet to be dropped. Someone has been asked how old their daughter is and what games console she has, when they have only a Nintendo DS.

This amount of intrusion is unacceptable. If someone has a claim, they need to issue a summons and go to court; but this bullying, which never results in a court action that can be tested, is the worst kind of harassment. This is only too common. Even though the Government may not favour this particular way of dealing with it, I hope that in some creative way, whether by direction, by ministerial statement or by some other mechanism, they can deter bodies such as ACS Law from engaging in this kind of activity.

 

Lord Young of Norwood Green said:

My Lords, I am not sure how the...: 20 Jan 2010: House of Lords debates (TheyWorkForYou.com)

The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said that these actions are appalling and unacceptable, but nobody has referred them to any of the regulatory bodies. I find that strange. We are saying that we have had thousands of these cases yet nobody has said that this law firm is acting in a totally unacceptable way. I should have thought that the legal regulatory bodies would by now have been involved and I am puzzled why they have not been.

Particularly if you have complained to the SRA, ICO or anyone else and they haven't done anything yet.

To do this, go to writetothem.com/lords and type the name of the lord in the "Find a lord interested in my topic box" and click on the top result (it will be the lord you searched for).

Lords Young, Clement Jones and Lucas are a good place to start. Generally only lords who have already spoken continue to debate during comittee stages so for your convenience, here is a list of all lords so far to have spoken on the bill:

• Lord Clement-Jones (libDem)
  
• Lord young of norwood green (Lab)
  
• Lord Lucas (Cons)
  
• Earl Attlee (cons)
  
• Lord Howard of Rising (Cons)
  
• Lord Mandelson (Lab)
  
• Baroness Howe of Idlicote (N/a)
  
• Baroness Byford (Cons)
  
• Lord Wade of Chorlton (Cons)
  
• The Earl of Erroll (N/A)
  
• Baroness Hayman (Lab)
  
• Lord Maxton (labour)
  
• Lord Razzall (LibDem)
  
• Viscount Bridgeman (Cons)
  
• Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LibDem)
  
• Lord Triesman (Lab)
  
• Lord Birt (N/A)
  
• Lord Whitty (Lab)
  
• Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)
  
• Lord de Mauley (Cons)
  
• Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)
  
• Baroness Buscombe (Cons)
  
• Lord Steel of Aikwood (LibDem)
  
• Lord Puttnam (Lab)
  
• Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (N/A)
  
• Lord Mayhew of Twysden (Cons)
  
• Lord Mackay of clashfern (Cons)
  

As you are not represented by a single lord, as you are represented by a single MP in the house of commons, you can write to several. Feel free to write to two or three (or four). Don't mailshot the whole lot, however as this will only annoy them.

Halfords /Scooter it would be nice if you could at least inform site team/Admin about proposed meets being represented by CAG.

What's happening with ACS? I thought more demands were meant to be sent out in early January.

More demands were indeed sent out last week and have been arriving with people since Wednesday or so.

There has just been a massive filesharing defeat for copyright holders in the British Courts. I'm not sure quite how ACS Law anticipate being able to bring successful legal action against anybody (who defends) when Teeside Crown Court found Alan Ellis not guilty of an offence despite him making 100's of 1000's of pounds through his website (Oink) and provably facilitating in the sharing of more than 21,000,000 copyrighted files.

This is a right kick in the teeth for the copyright owners who still struggle to understand the legalities of file sharing (pre Mandelson anyway ).

 

From "The Times"

 

A man accused of running a sophisticated music piracy website used by more than 200,000 members was acquitted of conspiracy to defraud today.

I'm afraid this has little to do with civil copyright infringement (apart from the website he was running). He was facing criminal charges of fraud. Sorry.

As yet, no contested case from ACS:law has got anywhere near this far.

or anyone want to start one? The law really does need a shake up

Frankly you'd be better off replying to the consultation which closes on monday. See my earlier posts here and on slyck for details.

This puts me between a rock and a hard place... do you know how many people have been chased a second time, penumbra ? Can it be from the same rights holder or would it have to be from a different one ? In principle I'm prepared to pay up but don't want to hang myself completely.

I'm only aware of two instances of it happening so far. If you have signed the agreement they promise not to chase you for the same title, but they can chase you for other titles from the same rights holder / monitoring company.

Bear in mind you would probably have to be quite unlucky to share two different files within a monitoring period both being tracked by digiprotect / logistep. They don't have massive client lists.

Obviously, the choice is yours and there's a certain balance to be struck between "It's a fair cop guv" and "you're a bunch of *****, sling your hook".