Alleged UK Pirates Offered Free Legal Representation
Written by enigmax on August 25, 2008Over the last year, UK residents accused of sharing games like Dream Pinball have been threatened by lawyers Davenport Lyons. Stuck in a trap of not having enough money to defend themselves, many choose to pay compensation demands - guilty or not - fearful of a much bigger punishment if things go bad. Now a UK IP lawyer says he will defend as many people as he can - for free.
Last week, thousands of news outlets reported that a single mother, Isabella Barwinska from London, had been found guilty of uploading the game Dream Pinball. She collected a staggering £16,000 bill for her trouble. However, following a TorrentFreak report last week where we revealed that far from being a ‘landmark ruling’, Miss Barwinska actually mounted no defense, people are realizing that all may not be as it seems. Maybe it’s possible to fight back - and win. The timing couldn’t be better
According to reports, any minute now lawyers Davenport Lyons will send out up to 25,000 further ‘pay up or get sued’ letters, demanding around £300 in compensation on the back of their so-called ‘landmark ruling’. Unfortunately, those accused of infringement have had limited choices up to now. Pay around £200-£250 for a few minutes with a lawyer and maybe get him to send a solitary letter, or go it alone, maybe with limited help from the UK’s Citizens Advice service. Either way, it’s pretty much guaranteed to cost more than £300, in time and/or money.
Until now.
Michael Coyle is a Solicitor Advocate, which means he is entitled to represent clients in the High Court and has frequently done so. He is also a Director at his company Lawdit Solicitors and leads the company’s Commercial and Intellectual Property legal section. He’s says he’d like to help those file-sharers wrongly accused, so we caught up with him to find out more.
TF: Please introduce yourself Michael, and tell us about your company. What do you specialize in?
MC: Lawdit Solicitors was formed on 3 September 2001 by me, Michael Coyle. Almost seven years later we are a busy commercial law firm with close connections in Marbella and Rome. Lawdit’s team consists of five Solicitors and support staff. While Lawdit is a commercial law firm a large part of its client base is concerned with intellectual property and copyright of course.
TF: What inspired you to start the firm?
MC: I wanted a law firm which was fair and would not price anyone out of securing at the very least a right of response when either the client’s intellectual property has been infringed or they are defending a claim for intellectual property infringement.
TF: Please tell us a little about Lawdit’s track record, relevant to this matter.
MC: Over the years I have advised clients in many aspects of copyright infringement from both perspectives, i.e the rights holder and the copier. In relation to P2P there is a paucity of legal case law largely due to lack of funds and the lack of defences. We have advised a retired gentleman and a 14 year old child, both threatened with lawsuits and both issues seem to have gone away.
TF: Why do you think they have gone away?
MC: It may be because the rights holder does not wish to take the case further as they now know legal representation is in place or they do not want the publicity. We will never know. Litigation can often be described as a game of poker. You have to always show a willingness to commence a legal action even if this is not your intention. At the same time you always need to show you will defend. At the time its usual for a ‘without prejudice’ exchange of correspondence to be maintained.
TF: Let us know what first got you interested in these Davenport Lyons cases.
MC: I have some clients who watch with interest all these developments and either they let me know or we are generally very good at keeping in touch with copyright laws
TF: What is your opinion of the ’settle up now or we sue’ letters?
MC: It can make sense to ’settle up now’ if you have no defence to the claim and are almost certainly going to lose. It’s back to the poker game analogy. Will they sue? etc. It seems they will commence legal action as the recent case shows, however I would need to know more about each case. If there is no defence and you are sure that a claim will follow then perhaps a penalty is worth paying. If they have no defence and it is a case of ‘its not me guv’ then perhaps not. If you have a valid defence then you should fight it.
TF: What is your opinion on how these ‘default judgment’ cases have been selected and prosecuted and the blanket media coverage of a ‘landmark case’ ?
MC: The individual would have ample opportunity to deal with numerous letters from the Lawyers. Equally once a claim has been issued the defendant has over a month in many instances to provide a defence. So the individual really ought to deal with it as the ostrich approach is not helpful. Lawyers will generally want to shout about their success and I am no different. A default Judgement is still a win although a fairly one sided win!
TF: So what exactly are you and Lawdit offering?
MC: I think it’s important that individuals do have a voice in this matter. There will be some defendants who are infringing copyright with their use of the P2P software. But at the same time there will be others who may not be. I am willing to offer Lawdit Solicitors services as the law firm to represent these individuals. I will do so for free. Obviously we are a small firm and there may be limitations to this offer. That is 5 offers for help will not be a problem. 5000 may pose me a problem, but yes, we’re willing to be on the end of an email for sure.
TF: How would you like people to contact you, bearing in mind that at the moment there are a few hundred people receiving demands and this may increase to tens of thousands shortly, or so they say…..
MC: Email is best. I am often in court but the Blackberry is on and happy to help as much as I can email is michael.coyle[at]lawdit.co.uk.
TF: Thank you for your time.
Readers contacting Michael are strongly advised to be very clear and concise in their initial correspondence. A lot of people will be interested in this offer and Michael and his team are a limited resource. Make their job as easy as you possibly can, so they can help more effectively.
Update: Already Michael is reaching capacity. If any other law firms wish to step up to get involved, please contact us here.
Previously: Most Downloaded DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk34)
Next: 10 Most Pirated TV-Shows on BitTorrent (wk34)
30 Responses
Good Dude!
Its true what he says: “Its like a poker game”. I guess that in most cases is enought to answer them that if the dont retire the demand you will contact your lawyer and take legal actions.
One in a million… oops, we are talking about lawyers here, one in… 10 million (or more!).
Good job Mike, and god bless,
keep fighting for the little guy.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” ~ Edmund Burke
Cheers!
http://www.eZee.se
Good for him!
Although, quoting a previous comment:
“Oh great, more fearmongering.
I’m sort of noticing a pattern with TorrentFreak:
1) Fearmongering
2) Advertisement
3) Articles of how we’re winning the fight
Have the writers of this site been to conspiracy blogs recently? If so, when is TF going to publish articles on the NWO et al?” -Darryl Roberts
http://torrentfreak.com/uncovering-the-dark-side-of-p4p-080824/comment-page-1/#comment-488893
Next it will be…..
@4, Crandom
I usually don’t respond to comments like this, but hey…
We work really hard to write these articles, and I’m sorry we can’t please everyone. Keep in mind though that this is not a job for us, we invest the few hours of spare time we have in TorrentFreak, which can be quite hard at times with a staff of two regular writers.
We write about things that interest us, and hope that the readers will like it, or find it interesting as well.
Also, fearmongering and advertisement? Where do you see that? Anyway, your comments are always appreciated, and if you have more to say, or if you think you can write better articles, feel free to get in touch…
Other people may get in touch as well ;)
@4 yawn
Wow this seems to good to be true, it’s a very kind thing to do.
God Bless Him!!!
hes a bit of a legend!
I very much applaud this, very nice of you :)
At number 4, Crandom. This isn’t really advertising, in the “BUY THIS NOW” sense of the word. It’s letting people know of a free (and if you are in need of it, very useful) service.
This is a really, really great offer for those who are innocent but let’s be totally honest and say that’s not going to be many. The majority WILL have downloaded that sh1tty pinball game and haven’t got a case to fight.
This guy is a legend though for helping those innocent people who most likely can’t afford to employ a lawyer and would have had to pay £300 just to save themselves thousands in legal fees to actually prove themselves innocent.
Said by gadgit:
“The majority WILL have downloaded that sh1tty pinball game and haven’t got a case to fight.”
Judging from the number of posts on Slyck.com denying that they ever downloaded or shared Dream Pinball 3D, or any of the other games Davenport Lyons is sending people legal threat letters over, it is likely that the opposite is true. In many cases, it appears to be due to unsecured wi-fi. And some say Logistep’s methods of identifying potential infringers is even worse
than that of Media Sentry.
Good Morning,
Top of the day to you Michael Coyle.
The good work keeps getting better.
TC,
Bye.
This was so awesome for me to read, thanks Torrent Freak for good articles like this one.
Things like this seem to be a rare occurrence in the torrenting world, it’s good to see someone with some position of power that seems to “get it” and is willing to help out.
“The majority WILL have downloaded that sh1tty pinball game and haven’t got a case to fight.”
I’m sure plenty of people have downloaded it, but I’m also sure that plenty of others haven’t. Davenport Lyons doesn’t seem to be the type of group to care.
Unsecured wifi bids the question at what range does that connection become unstable therfore making it useless to a potential Wifi hijacker, hell i cant get a stable connection when the router is downstairs and the laptop is upstairs.
Davenport Lyons are taking a typical shotgun approach - blast out as many letters as possible and hope they hit some of the right people.
Even if some people have DLed the pinball game there are plenty who haven’t and they deserve the right of reply to the accusations.
Props to Michael Coyle for giving them the chance.
HA! What a guy!
It would be nice to have a guy like that in the US if worse comes to worse.
@ 15 I can hit and piggyback at least 8 in my street and only 2 are secure, well secure for the 2 minutes it takes to break their wep. Can you realy see hundreds of people downloading a shitty 8 gbp pinball game. This is just a way to extort and frighten people into paying money to nothing more than crooks. A friend of mine got a letter and he was not even in the country and his pc & router was off.
I can’t even see my next-door neighbours’ wifi.
I doubt that much wifi theft occurs - people just wouldn’t be bothered. Why not just use your own internet connection at home?
@15: Yes, I CAN see hundreds of people pirating this. People will pirate $5 DVDs and music or just anything - it’s just so much easier than buying it - then you have to go to a shop, or at least find your credit card number to buy online. That is NOT to say that everyone accused in this case did download the game.
Will Michael Coyle take on cases where people admit to downloading the game? What is currently the best strategy if you did actually do it?
You see? There are decent people in the world. Cheers to you Michael. :)
My comment is awaiting moderation? What happened there?
And the online community breathes a collective sigh of belief…
Thanks Ernesto for this important story, and than you Michael Coyle & all at LAWDIT for giving help & hope to all those wrongly accused of filesharing copyrighted materials!
I cannot believe all this BS. I guess extortion is legal for copyright holders.
@ 4, i think torrentfreak is a cool site with interesting articles. if you dont want to educate yourself could i suggest http://www.imadumbfuck.com?
That’s so awesome. Props to that man for understanding the dark side of the laws that allow these “Lawyers” to exploit our justice systems. Sounds like a good dude.
Hmm. Remember he also works for so-called copyright holders.
Playing Devil’s advocate for a second, you could suggest that Mr Coyle is in bed with a software company looking for info on potential sharers of their software.
IP logs and other harvesting techniques may be fallible, but admit your misdemeanours to Mikey boy and he’s got it there in black and white!
What better way to catch people than to offer “free legal advice” in order to gather evidence?
Mike is well respected, and the work he does through Lawdit is pretty much legendary. I would hesitate to suggest that he is jumping on any bandwagon, and those who are lucky enough to be represented by him should have no cause for regret.
Good luck guys
Oh, quick PS, hysterical crap suggesting that someone like Mike Coyle is anything other than he says he is.
can anyone clarify something for me please?
if using a p2p client with forced encryption, can ISP’s only see packet headers? if so, the payload of the packet is hidden. (torrenting freeware FTW).
european law has clarified that IP traffic is personally identifiable information, with this in mind, is the use of sandvine etc. a breach of the Data Protection Act on the part of ISP’s.
ISP’s do not own the network or the traffic. right? just the hardware?
MY POINT: if ISP’s use DPI to identify the payload of a packet, are they breaking the law?
Who are the five game developers Davenport represents?
In the Reuters article above it says Atari, Techland and Codemasters. I assume the fourth is Zuxxez Entertainment (makers of Dream Pinball). So who’s the fifth?
Any ideas what games they are targetting? Thanks.
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