Like many others, ‘copyright troll’ Digiprotect include many defendants in their lawsuits that don’t live in the jurisdiction the cases are filed.

The courts are not all happy with this, and many cases have been dismissed for this very reason.

The Judge for Digiprotect USA Corporation v. Does 1-266 went even further and actually slapped Digiprotect on the wrist with a tiny fine.

He awarded the ISPs Comcast and Time Warner Cable $45 per IP address lookup for these wrongfully sued defendants, and asked Digiprotect to stop suing people that live elsewhere..

To use Texas attorney Robert Cashman’s words:

“The court has in effect said, “DO NOT SUE PEOPLE WHO DO NOT LIVE IN NEW YORK IN OUR NEW YORK COURTS!”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

This idea has been copied from German and UK lawyers who’ve made millions with this pay-up-or-else scheme at relatively low cost. In the UK, however, the tide is slowly turning as judges are increasingly taking the side of the accused. In the US we now see a similar pattern emerging.

Last month, the US Copyright Group (USCG) dropped thousands of alleged BitTorrent file-sharers from the Far Cry case because of a lack of jurisdiction. Although these cases can be refiled in other jurisdictions, it seriously limits the profitability of the law firm’s business model.

And today there is another victory for hundreds of BitTorrent users who were sued by the company DigiProtect, the poster child of the “pay up or else” scheme. DigiProtect is not a copyright holder in the true sense of the word, but simply licenses films and music for peer-to-peer distribution. A license to sue, basically.

Attorney Robert Cashman of Cashman Law Firm just informed us that DigiProtect’s case against 266 alleged file-sharers has pretty much ended. Cashman, who represents one of the defendants accused of sharing ‘Anal Fanatic’, told us that the case was ‘orally’ dismissed by Judge Thomas Griesa.

“I do not know on what grounds it was dismissed, but from what I heard, the judge was upset about the jurisdiction issues and the improper joinder issues with the case,” Cashman told TorrentFreak.

The reason for the dismissal is not yet formally known since the paperwork has yet to be filed. Once this happens more information should be available on the grounds of the dismissal, which will then be official. It is beyond doubt, however, that this development represents yet another setback for the mass-settlement lawsuits that have been filed across the US.

The second mass lawsuit that was filed by DigiProtect is also in trouble. In this case 240 alleged BitTorrent users were sued. However, there are signs that this one, which is appointed to another judge, will not be dismissed just yet.

“I’ve heard that the other case is also in jeopardy because of the improper joinder and improper jurisdiction issues, but my contact did not seem to think it was going to be dismissed outright like the original one,” Cashman said. He advises anyone who’s involved in the case to not sign any settlement agreements yet.

Behind the scenes there are a lot of dirty tricks being played out. Comcast even got involved as the company felt it was being pressured by DigiProtect to hand over subscriber info with deadlines they could not possibly meet. In addition, Cashman told us that DigiProtect continued to pursue settlements after the case was already orally dismissed.

“As a side ethical issue, knowing the case was orally dismissed, DigiProtect’s attorney continued to solicit settlement agreements. It appears based on one of the settlement offers copied to me that he contacted my client directly in violation of the ethics rules.”

“I have already let the court know about Britton Payne’s settlement offers post-dismissal, and have forwarded a redacted copy of the settlement documents to Judge Griesa’s chambers for his review,” Cashman added.

All in all it looks like the once so profitable business model is getting quite a bit of resistance in the US as well as the UK. Although we don’t think it’s going to end soon, the ongoing troubles will at least make sensible copyright holders think twice before they enter this PR nightmare.

DigiProtect on the other hand has little to lose. The company’s sole purpose seems to be to exploit the copyrights of others by suing users of file-sharing networks. They are copyright parasites in the truest sense of the word, and a prime example of how copyright – which was invented to protect makers of creative works – is being abused.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Representing Media C.A.T, a kind of ‘front company’ for movie companies involved in so-called “pay up or else” or “speculative invoicing” schemes, ACS:Law managed to squeeze an impressive number of errors into the proceedings and the result was that in all 8 cases, default judgments were denied.

Now it appears that another ACS:Law case has been heard in court, this time against an alleged file-sharer called Mr Billington.

“Following our phone call today regarding the claim form I have received from yourselves [on behalf of] ACS:Law, I apologise for the belated reply as on the claim form there is no mention of timescale, or a acknowledge service form for me to respond to, which I believe should have been included,” Mr Billington wrote in a letter to the clerk of the court.

Judge Birss QC, who also handled last month’s cases, noted that in Mr Billington’s case the claim appeared to have been issued without including a response pack, i.e the necessary paperwork which enables the defendant to put his side of the story.

“My last correspondence on 1st November to ACS Law was advising them that I have not infringed any copyright, I refuted the claim in that, they have an IP address, which they claim relates to my computer,” continued Mr Billington.

“Firstly I have 5 computers so I do not know which one they refer to. Also I am not the sole user of the computers. I asked them for further evidence of this alleged infringement. I then receive the said claim form.”

The defendant then went on to explain that since he had been receiving “threatening letters from ACS Law demanding monies” he believed he had been the victim of “some sort of scam”.

However, rather than deal with the case, the Judge did something interesting.

In October the Patents County Court implemented new procedures designed to streamline intellectual property disputes. To this end, the court conducted a review of ACS:Law/Media C.A.T cases in the system. They found 27, which included the 8 from the previous hearing and this new one involving Mr Billington.

“Some of the cases are defended but the court file in most of the 27 cases consists of little more than a claim form,” wrote the Judge, noting that all cases are broadly similar. He added:

“In the circumstances I have decided to take an unusual course and to exercise the court’s power to make orders of its own initiative under CPR Part 3 rule 3.3(1). The order I will make is an order to convene a hearing for directions in this case and in all the parallel Media C.A.T. Limited cases in the Patents County Court files at the moment.”

So, the hearing of all outstanding ACS:Law cases will take place on Monday 17th January 2011 before Judge Birss QC who has the power to decide how these cases will be dealt with. Considering his comments from the previous cases, that Media C.A.T is not even the rights holder of the movies in question, potentially all of the cases could be dismissed.

Should this come to pass, this could be a pivotal point in the overall ‘speculative invoicing’ scene in the UK.

There are loud but unconfirmed reports that ACS:Law are no longer instructed to act for rightsholder DigiProtect in similar cases. If both they and Media C.A.T are put out of the picture, ACS:Law have no more significant anti-filesharing clients left and if it’s true that damaged reputations are directly linked to the prospect of gaining more customers, that gap won’t be filled any time soon.

Furthermore, it has been confirmed that lawyers Gallant MacMillan no longer represent Ministry of Sound in chasing alleged file-sharers. Couple that with comments from CEO Lohan Presencer that their latest court application “makes no economic sense” and it’s clear that it’s hardly full-steam ahead for them either.

Another interesting issue that appeared again in Mr Billington’s case is ACS:Law’s ability to keep making mistakes. In addition to the catalog of errors from last month, in the case detailed above ACS:Law managed to get the defendant’s name wrong. Allan Billington does not exist. There is, however, an Aaron Billington at the address in question.

While a transposed forename might seem fairly trivial here, consider the implications of a transposed IP address – the only evidence on which ACS:Law rely. For example, TorrentFreak’s IP address is 208.100.11.174 – transposing the last three digits of that IP connects readers not to file-sharing news, but to a gender reassignment clinic.

The important thing now is that the court will notify all 27 individuals of the January hearing and give them a chance to respond. They must respond, it is absolutely crucial. Anyone in receipt of one of these court claims (claim numbers here) can contact us here at tips@torrentfreak.com for completely free and confidential advice.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

What first seemed to be a relatively effective and profitable way to turn piracy into a healthy revenue stream, is rapidly turning into a nightmare for the anti-piracy lawyers and their partners.

To add to the growing problems and difficulties for the US Copyright Group (USCG), a class action lawsuit has now been filed by the alleged file-sharers. The accusations put forward in the 96 page complaint are not mild, and could potentially put an end to this and similar cases in the United States.

The class action lawsuit is targeting all the parties involved in the Far Cry pay-up-or-else scheme. It was was filed on behalf of one of those accused, Dmitriy Shirokov, but includes others who were included in the Far Cry case.

“This is a class action brought by Plaintiff, on behalf of himself and 4,576 other similarly-situated victims of settlement fraud and extortion,” the lengthy complaint starts. The tables are turned this time with USCG, law firm Dunlap, Grub and Weaver (DGW) and Far Cry copyright holder Achte/Neunte in the defendant’s seats.

The complaint goes on to describe the practices of the anti-piracy lawyers as “lucrative trade in monetizing copyright infringement allegations,” and carefully dissects the operation and the numerous offenses that were allegedly committed by the lawyers and their partners.

In total, the alleged BitTorrent users are seeking relief based on 25 counts including extortion, fraudulent omissions, mail fraud, wire fraud, computer fraud and abuse, racketeering, fraud upon the court, abuse of process, fraud on the Copyright Office, copyright misuse, unjust enrichment and consumer protection violations.

One of the most prominent allegations against the law firm is that the copyright of Far Cry was registered at the Copyright Office after the movie was published, and after many of the alleged sharers were caught. It is claimed that the copyright registration was “intentionally obtained under false pretenses” and subsequently used to back up “baseless threats in the demand letters.”

“The Letters falsely claim that the law allows Achte to seek extraordinary forms of relief, namely statutory damages and attorney’s fees, for infringing Achte’s copyright for the motion picture Far Cry, despite fatal defects in its copyright registration and the express provisions of the Copyright Act,” the complaint reads.

This then leads to the following allegations of fraud, extortion and related offenses.

“The Letters sent to the proposed Class are predicated on fraud—upon Plaintiff and the proposed Class, and upon the ISPs, the United States Copyright Office, and the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.”

“DGW and its fellow Defendants are directly involved in perpetrating, conspiring to commit, and/or aiding and abetting this massive scheme of fraud, extortion, abuse of
process, fraud upon the court, copyright misuse, and misappropriation of funds.”

Another key issue is that DGW threatened to sue each and every individual they targeted, but that this would be practically impossible to achieve with the small team of attorneys they have. Also, they specifically stated to clients that cash settlement is what they are after.

“DGW does not genuinely intend to pursue most, if any, of these thousands of claims to trial. Operating through its alias USCG, DGW advertises its copyright business model to prospective clients in the film industry stating one overriding goal: to “obtain settlement”—not judgments, which would require litigating and proving its allegations,” the complaint reads.

“With only thirteen attorneys on staff, DGW has issued a volume of demand letters that far surpasses its ability to litigate this volume of claims case by case. USCG tells prospective clients that civil prosecution of copyright claims has not been “practical,” in light of the financial status of individual infringers.”

The above is just the introduction of the complaint, which then continues with dozens of pages discussing the legal background, eventually concluding that DGW’s revenue model is not based on upholding copyright law, but that it capitalizes on fear and aims to intimidate. DGW extorted thousands of infringers by perpetrating fraud on the U.S. Copyright Office, the complaint alleges.

“Fraud has infected each stage of Defendants’ actions since that false registration, tainting their complaints, subpoenas, coercive demand Letters and websites.”

The conclusions lead to numerous allegations and eventually a long list of 25 counts for relief. The plaintiffs demand a jury trial and are seeking a wide range of damages as well as restitution and reimbursement of the money plaintiffs have spent on the extortion scheme thus far.

Among other things, the plaintiffs further seek dismissal of all court actions brought on by the anti-piracy lawyers, an injunctive relief to stop the scheme, and an injunctive relief to stop the identities of the proposed plaintiffs being revealed.

The above is just a selection from a complaint that may very well crush the future of USCG’s pay-up-or-else scheme in the United States. If anything, the lawyers and the other defendants have some serious explaining to do.

In recent months, USCG’s scheme has been copied by various other law firms, protecting a wide variety of copyright holders. Just last week the German based copyright profiteers Digiprotect launched their first two cases in the United States, and many more are likely to follow, unless a court speaks out against this type of creative use of the legal system.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The case, which turned out to be something of a damp squib, was the metaphorical head-on-a-pike the company needed to kick-start a new scheme.

The plan was simple enough. Capture IP-addresses of alleged file-sharers, discover their identities through the courts and send them letters demanding money to make non-existent court cases and huge fines go away. Profit.

However, with the help of online forums and consumer groups like Which? and BeingThreatened.com, letter recipients mounted an impressive fight back. Instead of continuing ahead unhindered, Davenport Lyons found themselves the subject of a Solicitors Regulatory Authority investigation. The SRA later referred the case to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

That hearing will go ahead in May next year, but thanks to papers seen by the Solicitors Journal, today we have a sneak preview of the claims being made against partners David Gore and Brian Miller.

According to the SRA, Gore and Miller – who have since left the company – were responsible for litigating against thousands of Internet users they claim were illegal file-sharers, even though they were aware that they had no reliable evidence to support their claims.

“Each of the respondents knew that in conducting generic campaigns against those identified as IP holders whose IP numeric had been used for downloading or uploading of material that they might in such generic campaigns be targeting people innocent of any copyright breach,” says the SRA’s statement.

Interestingly, although Davenport Lyons and their copyright-holding partners in this business such as Topware, DigiProtect, CodeMasters, Reality Pump, Techland and Atari were all in these schemes together and knew precisely how they operate, the SRA has decided that Gore and Miller put the interests of Davenport Lyons before the interests of their clients.

By sending out letters to people they knew could be innocent, Gore and Miller disregarded the harm their actions could have on their clients’ reputations. This constituted a breach of the Solicitors Code of Conduct say the SRA. For those familiar with how these schemes operate, the irony here is overwhelming.

Furthermore, as has become apparent in recent months through various leaked documents, around 20 to 35% of letter recipients paid Davenport Lyons the money they asked for. The SRA claims that Gore and Miller encouraged litigation in order to secure revenue for their company.

Referring to a letter Davenport Lyons sent to one of its clients where it was discussed how money would be shared, the SRA statement says: “The reference to ‘revenue share’ indicates that the respondents were regarding the scheme which they were operating as a revenue generating scheme.”

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal hearing will go ahead in May 2011 and will last for 7 days. ACS:Law owner Andrew Crossley will be watching more closely than most – the date when he has to face the Tribunal is yet to be decided.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Aside from a lot of personal stuff, regular passwords, PayPal details and private pictures, the emails also shed a whole new light on the effectiveness of the letters of claim that are being sent out to thousands of BitTorrent users and how the recouped money was divided.

The table below details how many letters were sent out to file-sharers over the last two years per client, and how effective these claims were. In total, 11,367 have been sent out. In 40% of the cases the respondents never replied, and another 30% disputed their claim. This means that on average 30% of the accused file-sharers chose to settle by paying between £350 and £700 per infringement allegation.

The recouped money is generally divided between three parties. The law firm, the copyright holder and the monitoring company that provided IP addresses of alleged infringers. The shares differ between the various clients, but as can be seen in the table below the law firm always gets a significant portion of the money – between 37.5% and 52.5%.

So how much money has been made thus far by the parties involved? Previously we could only take ACS:Law owner Andrew Crossley’s word for it. In April this year he used The Law Society Gazette to announce that he had “recovered close to £1m for my clients” but unfortunately he can now be seen to have been economical with the truth.

Using figures now available though the email leak, we can see that by 28 April 2010 around $1m (£636,758.22) had been paid by the victims.

In everything that we’ve seen thus far it is clear that the sole motivation of the legal action has been to generate as much money as possible. Documents in the leak show ACS:Law admitting that they asked for a settlement of £495 in order to break the ‘psychological’ £500 barrier to maximize revenues.

It is needless to say that ACS:Law’s operation has proven to be quite profitable. However, it is doubtful that this will last. Aside from the information that has come out thus far, the leaked emails contain several bits of information that could put the unfortunate law firm out of business. More on that later.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Notably, the German-based outfit refused to tell the BBC the names of its clients, but this is to be expected. Part of the DigiProtect service is to shield the brand image of its clients by taking all the adverse publicity these campaigns generate by taking it on their own chin. However, despite putting themselves front and center for criticism, it doesn’t actually play out like that.

It is ACS:Law, the tiny one-lawyer UK law firm who do the ‘dirty work’ for DigiProtect, which gets all the attention. Unlike lawyers Davenport Lyons and more recently Tilly Bailey & Irvine who withdrew from this business due to the damage it was causing to their reputations, ACS:Law don’t care about the negative publicity. Considering the huge amounts of money they’re bringing in, some might consider their defiance understandable.

But perhaps ACS:Law should stop for a moment and think about the damage being done to the reputation of their profession and to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA), the body charged with the task of ensuring the law business in the UK isn’t brought into disrepute. As we will now reveal, the toll is considerable.

During the debates about the Digital Economy Bill in the House of Lords, repeated mentions were made that the appropriate route of complaint for recipients of demands relating to filesharing accusations is via complaints to the appropriate legal authorities. Comments along these lines were made by Lord Young, despite his department having received a number of complaints from individuals stating they had exhausted all their options.

It was therefore surprising that the following comment was made on record during these debates: (Lord Young – 20 Jan 10)

“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.”

As a result of this claim, which he knew to be untrue, John Fletcher (working with Beingthreatened.com) discovered that the total number of complaints to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA) could be found using a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which the SRA voluntarily honor.

An FOIA request was made and the results are astonishing.

By the end of December 2009, a full month before Lord Young claimed “nobody had referred [ACS:Law and Davenport Lyons] to the regulatory bodies”, more than 247 individual complaints had in fact been made to the SRA.

At the answering of the FOIA request, nearly 300 complaints had been made against a total of three law firms. Of these, 14 complaints are recorded as having been resolved in one case file, which would have pertained to Davenport Lyons and 3 complaints at the time of the request were against Tilly Bailey and Irvine. So what about the rest?

As of 22 March 2010, a staggering 283 of these complaints related to the activities of ACS:Law.

Together, the individual complaints made against mainly ACS:Law (and to a much lesser extent Tilly Bailey & Irvine and Davenport Lyons) over the past two years dwarfs the levels of SRA complaints relating to any other area of intellectual property law in the UK.

Furthermore, in September 2009, complaints against ACS:Law topped out at over 16% of the 500 complaints made in total to the SRA for the whole month.

But there is a serious problem. The SRA is there to serve the public by ensuring that disreputable lawyers are quickly kept in check, and to this end they have to adhere to timeliness targets.

The information published by the Office of the Legal Services Complaint Commissioner (OLSCC) in their annual report has set the following timeliness targets for the SRA and the Legal Complaints Service (LCS):

Timeliness Target T1 – 6 Month Closures: The Legal Complaints Service to investigate and conclude at least 87% of cases within 6 months of receipt.

Timeliness Target T2 – 12 Month Closures: The Legal Complaints Service to investigate and conclude 100% of cases within 12 months, apart from in exceptional circumstances.

The Freedom of Information request referred to above discovered that of the 14 complaints made regarding the activity of Davenport Lyons:

· Only 7% of cases were closed within 6 months of receipt (against the target of 87%).

· 29% of cases were closed within 12 months of receipt.

This means that a huge 64% of all complaints failed to meet targets T1 and T2, yet no explanation has been given by the SRA as to the exceptional circumstances preventing these complaints being resolved quicker.

We can also see from the FOIA request that the complaints against ACS:Law appear to be following exactly the same pattern.

In this case the complaints have not yet been concluded, but at the time of writing 51% of complaints have already passed beyond the 6 month target (according to target less than 13% should have done so). We are also less than two months from the first complaints against ACS:Law also exceeding the 12 month target.

To our knowledge no complainant has been kept up to date on the timeliness of their complaints nor given any indication of their progress. This appears to be completely unacceptable, especially given the continued failing to meet targets.

Sadly, the office that set the targets is due to have closed on the 31st March, and therefore is no longer in a position to uphold them, but those who have made complaints should persist as they deserve and have a right to be heard.

Those affected should take their cases to the Office of the Legal Services Ombudsman and the Ministry of Justice to ask why these timeliness targets have not been adhered to and why there has been no communication as to the progress of their complaint.

One could perhaps conclude that the reasons for the delays are obvious. Due to the activities of ACS:Law, DigiProtect and their faceless, entirely non-UK clients, the systems of the SRA have been entirely overwhelmed. This means that not only do recipients of these letters get a poor service from the SRA, but quite possibly complainants in other areas of law.

But despite these huge and growing problems, Andrew Crossley from ACS:Law is absolutely defiant that he will continue to operate this scheme in the UK. His claim that his number one priority is protecting copyright is increasingly falling on deaf ears, particularly when he revealed recently that in the last 11 months alone he had collected £1 million from letter recipients.

The cost to the legal profession overall, however, can’t be measured in terms of money. Some things have greater value.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

A ruling by a court in Frankfurt on January 29th could now have put DigiProtect’s “Turn Piracy Into Profit” mass-warning business model into jeopardy.

An individual was sent a letter by the lawyer Udo Kornmeier on behalf of DigiProtect. The letter contained accusations of illicit file-sharing including a customary cash payment demand of around 651 euros to cover legal costs based on an infringement claim of 10,000 euros. It was accompanied by a demand to pay a further 150 euros in order to acquire a license from the copyright holder for the material downloaded.

While the file-sharer didn’t contest the 150 euro license fee, he refused to pay the 651 euros legal bill. DigiProtect’s lawyers countered with an offer for him to pay 450 euros plus the 150 euros license fee. Again the file-sharer rejected the offer.

DigiProtect then went on to sue the man for 651.80 euros and the case went to court.

In court the judge asked DigiProtect and its lawyers to open up their books to show what legal costs were actually incurred (and paid) to perform legal actions against the file-sharer and send him the letters. Both DigiProtect and their lawyer refused to submit the information.

During the hearing the judge discovered that the relationship between DigiProtect and its lawyers was covered by an agreement similar to the one it had previously with lawyers Davenport Lyons for their UK operations. The details of that arrangement were leaked out last year by a disgruntled insider and revealed some embarrassing truths about the operation.

DigiProtect and its German lawyer refused to allow the agreement between them to be shown in court which meant that the true costs of pursuing the file-sharer remained unproven.

The judge said that even if DigiProtect had paid 651.80 euros to its lawyers to pursue the file-sharer, these cannot be considered as involuntary damages since DigiProtect paid this fee to its lawyer voluntarily. Therefore the only involuntary damages in this case was the 150 euros rights holder licensing fee.

Due to this lack of transparency, the judge decided that the file-sharer did not have to pay DigiProtect the claimed 651.80 euros legal action costs, only the 150 euros licensing fee.

Clearly, if the lawyers can’t get their sizable share of the spoils in this “Turn Piracy Into Profit” operation, the whole business plan falls down. There was certainly no profit to be made from this file-sharer – time will tell if this effect ripples on to other cases.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

James Bench from BeingThreatened, a consumer group dedicated to helping those wrongfully accused by this law firm and their partners (such as Germany-based DigiProtect), told TorrentFreak that people are starting to receive them this week. A small number have arrived to date, fittingly by the cheapest and most unreliable regular postage method available in the UK – 2nd class.

“So far the unreliability of the evidence appears not to have been addressed,” Bench explains. “100% of victims contacting BeingThreatened as a result of this new batch state they did not commit or authorise any copyright infringement of the work they are accused of sharing.”

Indeed, the unreliability of the evidence presented as part of these threatening letters has been raised yet again, this time by the Lords involved in the Digital Economy Bill debate.

Following on from his earlier criticism, on Monday Lord Lucas noted that the firm making these accusations are “not nice people to fall foul of,” they are “not nice to deal with,” and later adding “the methods that they use to extract money are not nice.”

Lord Lucas went on to explain that ACS:Law had “been kind enough” to write to him in person, but went on to criticize the evidence their allegations are based on.

Noting that the evidence is provided by foreign companies that do not disclose the methodology used to obtain it, Lord Lucas observed: “It may well have been obtained against data protection rules – that is certainly the conclusion that the Swiss and French authorities seem to have reached.”

Describing the allegations as “totally impenetrable,” Lord Lucas said that upon receiving these letters telling account holders that they have to pay money, people have no way of disproving what they are accused of.

“I think most of their [ACS:Law's] income comes from people who just pay,” he said. “I am not aware that there have been many court cases at the end of this because of the element of bluff.”

To be more precise, ACS:Law have never taken anyone to court on file-sharing allegations, even though they threaten to.

Of course, the “bluffing” strategy can work two ways. Those who refuse to pay, admit nothing and stand their ground against any wrongful allegations, can also find that they come out on top.

So, how does a complete novice in legal matters stand up to these threats and summon the courage to do so in the face of these “totally impenetrable” allegations?

Simple. All they have to do is grab a copy of the ‘Speculative Invoicing Handbook’ just released by BeingThreatened under a Creative Commons License.

If you have been sent a letter demanding cash for an alleged copyright infringement, do nothing until you have read this handbook cover to cover – it is 100% free, absolutely comprehensive and could save you hundreds of pounds.

It can be downloaded here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Their scheme has attracted much negative press, even provoking statements from Members of the House of Lords in the UK.

“Of late, we have seen a proliferation of lawyers’ letters, acting for the pornography industry, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, pointed out, often against innocent people asserting copyright claims and threatening court action,” said Lord Clement-Jones recently.

Now there has been a surprising “Christmas update” from ACS:Law. Referencing earlier legal threats they made to thousands of individuals in the UK (you’ve been caught file-sharing, we can prove it, and if you don’t pay up we’re taking you to court), the law firm has announced that it will drop many of its cases.

As Christmas approaches, here at ACS Law we have been working hard dealing with our file sharing projects. We have been reviewing all cases which are currently open, and a good number of these cases have been dropped, where we do not either consider litigation to be a viable option or to be beneficial to our clients.

So, despite the “forensic” standard proof the company claims to hold on individuals, it appears that, as we’ve said many times here on TorrentFreak, this scheme is all about money. If individuals have no money to pay, ACS:Law cannot get blood from a stone.

Furthermore, when trying to force others to pay up who may actually have the money, faced with holding a single IP address as evidence and absolutely no way of identifying a specific individual sitting at a keyboard and conducting or authorizing the actual infringement, they have little choice but to back down.

James Bench, who works with Being Threatened, a consumer group which offers resources to individuals who are targeted by ACS:Law, says that those accused are becoming increasingly empowered by the knowledge currently available.

“Recently leaked documents exposed the inner workings of the process, dubbed by some ‘speculative invoicing,’ showing that claims are assigned a ‘litigation rating’,” he told TorrentFreak.

“Factors affecting the rating tended not to be based on the evidence supporting the claim but on the appointment of legal representation, technical ‘savvy’ and the finances of the client – or lack thereof,” he added.

So does this mean that ACS:Law will be backing down completely? Hardly. The law firm says that following the court orders they obtained in November, more threatening ‘pay up or else’ letters will be sent out in January 2010.

Anyone receiving a letter from ACS:Law should refrain from replying to the company until they have spoken to the support team at BeingThreatened.com, who will give completely free advice.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.