The hypocritical law firm – who were recently shown to be copyright infringers themselves – partner with Swiss anti-piracy tracking company Logistep (and another company DigiProtect) in order to demand settlements of around £665. However, time and time again there have been allegations against individuals who have absolutely no idea why they are being accused of copyright infringement.

Last year, in the most prominent case of mistaken identity and when Davenport Lyons were working with porn companies, they incorrectly accused a retired 64 year-old man of sharing the hardcore movie ‘Euro Domination 5′ via BitTorrent. The man received an apology and the demands for money ended.

Eventually the actions of Davenport Lyons, Logistep and DigiProtect attracted the attention of consumer group Which? who made a complaint to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Although that action is still ongoing, Davenport decided – at least on the surface – to withdraw from the business.

But of course, ACS:Law were waiting in the wings and they are now conducting business with Logistep in much the same fashion. Unfortunately for them, Which? is now on their case too.

In their most recent print edition, Which? published an article which casts an even darker shadow over the issue. They say they have been contacted by 20 individuals who say they have no knowledge of the games in question – Dream Pinball 3D and Two Worlds.

Which? quoted hospital ward clerk Deborah Hughes who said: “It’s distressing to receive such a letter. I’ve never heard of this game and I’ve no idea how to share it. I’ve searched my computer but it’s not there.”

Of even greater concern and embarrassment to ACS:Law are the accusations they leveled at Colin Dixon, Technology Director at a UK software developer. “My wife and I are middle aged (51 and 49) and work from home, and the computers here are owned by our employer, and are strictly controlled for pirated software – that’s my job!”

Which? also spoke with the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) about the issue. They replied: “We’re not convinced of the efficacy of the software and not confident in its ability to identify users.”

Up to now, this hasn’t worried Logistep, DigiProtect, Davenport Lyons or ACS:Law since they say in their claims letters: “We do not claim that your computer was used to commit the infringing act (although we do not exclude this possibility), nor do we claim that you downloaded our client’s work. Our claim is that your Internet connection was used to make our client’s work available via one or more P2P networks. The file may not, therefore, be on your computer.”

So, in a nutshell, they admit that the people named in their letters may not have carried out any infringement. Absolutely priceless.

Neither ACS:Law nor Davenport Lyons have ever won a contested case against a UK file-sharer, despite all their bluster. Hundreds of people are “let off” after simply digging in their heels, denying the accusations and refusing to pay.

Thanks Hickster

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Italy, which has seen its fair share of misery inflicted by Logistep and its partners Peppermint Jam, now has reason to be optimistic that these cynical, profit-motivated operations can be dampened down.

Although anyone with a basic knowledge of the Internet could come to the same conclusion given 30 seconds in a quiet room, the Tribunale Ordinario di Roma has now ruled that an IP address alone does not identify an infringer. According to a Punto Informatico report, on this basis the court kicked out a complaint against an individual accused of copyright infringement.

The District Attorney and judge said that the mere ownership of a connection from where an infringement took place is not sufficient to establish the identity of an infringer or liability of a defendant, especially since other people could have committed the alleged infringement.

In the UK right now, as many as 5,000 or more Internet bill payers are receiving letters through their doors from lawyers ACS:Law claiming that their Internet connection has been used to commit copyright infringement. TorrentFreak is in contact with many letter recipients and we are convinced that many people are being wrongfully accused for a multitude of reasons. Interestingly ACS:Law say that they do not necessarily claim that the bill payer committed the infringement, yet they still make threats and demand settlements for around £600 from that very individual.

They do this because they do not know and cannot prove who carried out the infringement, and simply hope that the bill payer feels responsible for what has happened and pays the settlement.

If it wasn’t clear before to some, it should be pretty clear now. As far as evidence goes, an IP address alone does not identify an infringer, merely a connection, and in the absence of additional evidence – such as that collected following an examination of the alleged infringer’s PC – it means little on its own.

Thank you Italy for your common sense.

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It’s taken a while but according to a TSR report the Federal Administrative Court (TAF) has come to a decision, one which sees it overrule the Federal Data Protection commissioner’s decision of 2008.

The court said that the monitoring and data harvesting activities conducted by Logistep raise privacy concerns, since the individuals it monitors have no idea what data is being harvested and stored about them.

However, despite these worries the court decided that privacy concerns are trumped by the needs of the anti-piracy company, noting that a legal basis is not required for them to operate, since they operate exclusively in the private sphere.

The court said that the end justifies the means, since there are few other ways to deal with this type of online piracy. It would not be acceptable to turn a blind eye and allow people engaging in Internet piracy to avoid legal action, it said.

Logistep had (or still has) a partnership with lawyers Davenport Lyons and are currently working with lawyers ACS:Law to monitor and ultimately send threatening letters to alleged file-sharers in the UK. This decision by the court has no bearing on the UK cases, since it refers only to the monitoring of the Swiss public.

The verdict can be challenged within thirty days.

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Recently their efforts to make money from alleged pirates was picked up by the mainstream press, because an elderly couple was incorrectly accused by them of pirating an Atari game, Test Drive Unlimited. It is of course a stereotype to think that people over fifty don’t play games, but with the help of consumer magazine, Which? Computing, the lawyers were forced to drop the case.

If anything, this suggests that the evidence they gather for use against alleged sharers is not as strong as it should be. In fact, this is not the first time that a case has dropped before it went to court. Apparently, the lawyers that represent the various copyright holders will only make their case when they have a sure win – that is, when the defendants fail to show up. Others who dig in their heels and refuse to pay learn that the consequences aren’t nearly as bad as the law firm would have everyone believe.

Meanwhile, thousands of UK citizens are receiving letters in which they are accused of downloading music, games or more recently, adult entertainment. In these letters, they are asked to pay a few hundred pounds, or else they are threatened with the prospect of being dragged through court, where the fine – if the law firm is to be believed – will be multiplied several times over.

There aren’t any precise figure on how many alleged pirates have paid up, but based on earlier comments from the law firm itself, it’s believed to be between 40 and 60%. It’s not unthinkable that some copyright owners are making more from this type of pirate-chasing than they do from sales of their actual products. Quite an innovative business model actually, especially since in many cases it guarantees a revenue stream for sub-standard products that otherwise simply wouldn’t sell.

But now, according to The Register, computer game manufacturer Atari has had enough, as they have canceled their collaboration with Davenport Lyons and Logistep. Exactly why is open to speculation, but it is difficult to find a single positive article about the activities of these companies, particularly when recent and rather more potentially embarrassing actions are taken into consideration. It’s not surprising that they choose to distance themselves from the operation.

In a comment to El Reg, Atari said that it will “always retain and reserve the right to protect our intellectual property from illegal copying and piracy.” An interesting comment, since cashing in on alleged piracy happens after the offense, and has nothing to do with protection. However, this statement seems more of an attempt to show that this withdrawal doesn’t indicate that Atari is going soft on piracy.

Of course, copyright holders have every right to protect their material, or even make up for the losses they claim to suffer. Whether it is the right thing to do is questionable though, especially when the tactics are as aggressive as they are in these cases.

The complete lack of transparency in respect of the evidence gathering techniques just makes matters worse, and every negative aspect is compounded when people like Simon Davies of Privacy International speak about facets of the operation in very unfavorable terms. “This is appalling, it breaches a number of fundamental human rights,” he said. “They risk bringing the law into disrepute – just because lawyers can do something it doesn’t mean that they should.”

A great example of where copyright has gone wrong has emerged recently. In a leaked contract between DigiProtect (copyright protection outfit) and Evil Angel (content producer), the copyright was actually transferred in order for DigiProtect to make it available on filesharing networks.

“LICENSOR grants DIGIPROTECT the exclusive right to make the movies listed in Appendix 1 worldwide available to the public via remote computer networks, so-called peer-2-peer and internet file sharing networks such as e-Donkey, Kazaa, Bitorrent, etc. for the duration of this agreement.”

So, DigiProtect makes the files available to cash in on the people who attempt to download the files, but not to protect their intellectual property in a way copyright law was put in place for. In fact, this has nothing to do with copyright protection, they are simply exploiting the system. Probably a good thing that Atari got out before it all falls apart.

The question now is how are the other publishers feeling now that Atari has had enough? Since they are based in the UK, the focus now falls on CodeMasters, who are still pursuing people over Colin McRae Dirt, but does the return on the project cancel out the mountains of bad PR it generates? Time will tell.

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Let’s get something clear. The defendant, Isabella Barwinska, didn’t turn up in court – that’s according to Simon Perry over at Digital Lifestyles: “The text [in the article] was from the official comment that I received from Davenport’s PR company Bell Pottinger,” he told us. And here it is:

The initial default judgment was made against her was at the London County Court on 27 May. Subsequently the Patents County Court in London handed down damages of £6,086.56 plus costs and disbursements of £10,000.

For those still unconvinced, this Channel4 news report states clearly that Miss Isabella Barwinska, the recipient of this huge penalty, did not defend herself, she did not respond to letters and her side of the story has never been heard. Thankfully, not every news outlet fell for the ‘landmark victory’ line.

Just in case this still isn’t clear (please forgive me for this reiteration but it’s vital): It was impossible for her to win her case so this defeat (default judgment) means little for the other people facing these accusations who actually have a defense.

Davenport Lyons picked on six individuals who didn’t mount a defense, and so far, they have default judgments from four of them at least. Many of those that responded and denied the claims, just as we previously reported, have been left alone.

It seems likely that yesterday’s announcement that Davenport Lyons will now go after 25,000 other alleged sharers was perfectly and deliberately timed to ride on the momentum from the news of this ‘landmark’ win, which in reality, was the legal equivalent of shooting a dead fish in a barrel.

Evidence and Damages

So what do Davenport have in their evidence arsenal? Well, not enough to take on someone who is prepared to defend themselves, or so it seems. Also, how do they calculate these crazy damages? Well, they claim damages of whatever they like and with no-one there to challenge them, its simple to get stupid amounts awarded. TorrentFreak has received information which lay everything bare and of course, we share it with our readers.

Let’s start with what Davenport Lyons don’t know, because their highly controversial (1, 2, 3, 4) anti-piracy tracking company Logistep can’t tell them:

Davenport doesn’t know if the defendant copied the work to his hard drive or allowed someone else to do it for him. They have no idea (and admit it) how many times the game was uploaded to 3rd parties on P2P networks, or even if it was at all.

They admit to not knowing how long the defendant made the work available and actually admit that it may have been only made available for a second, which is interesting since we have seen documents where Davenport claim that Logistep download a full copy of each game in every case. At the time, we thought that to be completely unfeasible and it now seems that was indeed the case. This adds weight to the theory that Logistep didn’t even verify that the file offered for download was the actual file in question.

Based on information provided by Logistep, they say they can prove one second of ‘making available’. However, they multiply this out to a whole day of ‘making available’ for the purposes of damages calculation, while insisting on the one download = one lost sale argument. Interestingly, defendants don’t have to be seeders to get logged since Davenport state that by default, every downloader is also an uploader, a mistake we have reported on before.

Davenport’s damages formula

The calculation for damages is entirely based on the data provided Logistep after they recorded users sharing Dream Pinball 3D during the monitoring period between 24th September 2006 and 6th November 2006, a period of 43 days.

The calculation for damages is made as follows:

(A) Estimated number of days file was uploaded by the Defendant x (B) Estimated number of downloaders Defendant made game available to per day x (C) Profit lost per download = total damages

It is assumed by Davenport that one download equals one lost sale.

In the case of Dream Pinball 3D, Logistep monitored for a total of 42 days (1 day of the 43 was discounted on database issues), gathering around 22,500 IP addresses. Logistep logged all the countries of people in the swarm and added up all the IP addresses over the monitoring period. It then singled out the IP addresses located in the UK (around 800), but when Davenport went to court to force the ISPs to hand over the details of the alleged sharers, they discovered that due to dynamic IP addresses, less than half were ‘unique’ users. This means that all the headlines of Davenport nailing 800 so-called pinball pirates were actually inflated by 100%.

Interestingly, it’s also been revealed that some ISPs couldn’t supply the information Davenport asked for, so these cases were dropped.

As only around 50% of the IP addresses were unique, for the purpose of damages calculation the number of IP addresses collected during the monitoring period was cut in half. This amount is then divided by the number of days monitored (42) to get the number of daily downloaders. It is claimed that the profit lost on each game is 10 Euros.

So the formula for calculating damages is: Estimated total days file was uploaded by the defendant multiplied by the average number of downloaders defendant (could have) made work available to per day, multiplied by the profit it claims to have lost on each download (10 euros). Note that the first two variables are estimates, not backed by any evidence. It’s unclear whether or not a user logged for multiple ’seconds’ on multiple dates would incur more damages, but the size of the damages element awarded against Miss Barwinska – more than £6000 ($12,000) – raises a few questions.

The final claim is for the damages, plus interest, plus costs, which can come to around £16,000 ($32,000) if you don’t bother to defend yourself, as Miss Barwinska has discovered.

For all the other recipients of these letters, little has changed as a result of this default judgment. None of the evidence has even been contested in court, which considering its nature is probably a good thing – for Davenport at least.

Andrew Murray, senior lecturer in Law at the London School of Economics earlier referred to Davenport’s tactics as “bullying“. Now it seems that the people Davenport picked on for these cases never tried to defend themselves, the word “bully” seems more appropriate than ever.

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Now, thanks to a Gulli investigation, the existence of a prototype anti-p2p management system has been revealed, which seems to be being developed for Logistep to more effectively manage its growing offensive against alleged file-sharers. Gulli received a tipoff to visit the site at eparken.com which although appeared incomplete, seemed to be fairly operational.

Headed with a Logistep banner and entitled ‘Logistep Data Management Tool’, one could be forgiven for linking the tool with the anti-piracy company of the same name. However, just to be certain, Gulli dug a little deeper, checking the WHOIS record of the site which revealed the registrant as Joly Nkondo Zacharie, at ‘Händelstraße 25′ in Karlsruhe. A German subsidiary of the Swiss-based Logistep is reported at the same address. Searches on ‘Händelstraße 25′ connect to both Logistep and Joly Nkondo Zacharie, who has his name present in the eparken.com WHOIS. The connection to Logistep seems unavoidable.

The site, since taken down but available in limited form via Google’s cache, appears to offer management facilities for those chasing alleged copyright infringers, including accommodation to reduce ‘fines’ and payment periods if the accused digs in his heels when confronted.

Additional features of the system include being able to sort alleged infringers in the database by location and their corresponding ISPs. It is also possible to sort by the number of users who have actually paid up following threats. In the ‘Call Center’ section could be found receipts for payment of ‘fines’ and the ability to change the terms of the compensation demands.

Logistep is absolutely adamant that it runs its operations in a completely flawless manner, using systems that produce 100% perfect results so it is of some interest that this online system has been developed with WYSIWYG Web Builder, which will be seen as some as a very unprofessional way to create a website.

Calls to the administrators of eparken.com for clarification have gone unanswered.

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Lawyer Elizabeth Martin had been demanding 400 Euros from hundreds of thousands of file-sharers who Logistep say had been infringing the rights of software company Techland, on their game ‘Call of Juarez’.

In her letters she warned alleged file-sharers that should it be necessary to take anyone to court, the costs would be substantial. File-sharers were also led to believe that should they be found guilty, they would not only be responsible for their own costs, but those of the other side – with an indication that the decision against them would mount to “hundreds of thousands of euros”.

Of course, none of these letters are complete without some threats and intimidation. Elizabeth Martin – just like the UK’s Davenport Lyons – finishes up with with a threat totally disproportionate to any petty copyright offense. “If you are not able to pay the damages ordered by the court, our client will seek to gain the amount by the sale of your goods”.

This wording is very similar to other letters received all across Europe, including those received from UK lawyers Davenport Lyons, who are also working with Logistep in exactly the same manner. Their version is “In the event that you were not able to pay whatever sums the court may direct, our client would have no option but to take steps to enforce the debt against your property.”

Unfortunately for Elizabeth Martin, it’s not just the general public who are disgusted by her actions. She has been the subject of a Conseil de l’Ordre du Barreau de Paris disciplinary investigation – and subsequent condemnation – by none other than her own peers. How embarrassing.

The disciplinary board decided that “By choosing to reproduce aggressive foreign methods, intended to force payments, the interested party also violated [the code] which specifies that the lawyer cannot unfairly represent a situation or seriousness of threat.”

In addition, the lawyer also violated the code by cashing payments into a private account, not the usual dedicated litigation account, known as a ‘Carpa’. Martin also refused to reveal how many payments had been received from file-sharers.

For these serious breaches, Elizabeth Martin was ordered by the disciplinary board to suspend her activities as a lawyer for 6 months. Furthermore, she was banned from belonging to the National Council of the Bars (CNB) and other such professional associations for a period of 10 years.

Thanks to Ganza

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Right across Europe, Swiss anti-piracy tracking outfit Logistep has been gathering information about alleged file-sharers and selling it to copyright holders. They then use the information to make a business out of threatening legal action against file-sharers in order to get cash ‘compensation’.

Currently there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of people in the UK being threatened due to the data Logistep gathered for the Two Worlds, Dream Pinball 3D and Colin McRae cases. Across Europe, Logistep has tracked tens of thousands of P2P users, hammering Germany and Italy in particular.

In January 2008, on the back of a European Union statement that IP addresses should be regarded as personal data, it was declared that Logistep breached Swiss privacy laws when it spied on P2P users. It was ordered to stop collecting data about them.

Now, in what could be the beginning of the end for Logistep, the ‘Garante della Privacy’ – the Italian organization for data protection and privacy – has declared that Logistep has been acting illegally by spying on P2P users without their permission. In summary, the decision is based on the following points, all related to privacy breaches:

1. It is illegal for a private company such as Logistep to monitor the activities of P2P users on the Internet.

2. The use of P2P software is limited to communication with other P2P clients for the purposes of sharing files. Such software cannot be used for monitoring P2P users.

3. It is illegal to monitor users without their permission. None was requested, nor granted.

In conclusion, the Garante della Privacy has ordered Logistep to delete the data they collected about Italian P2P users by 31st March 2008, as it was gathered illegally.

This news will come as a huge relief for Italian P2P users as they have been aggressively targeted by Logistep. Many thousands of users received threatening letters demanding payments for up to 400 Euros, some of them for sharing a single song.

Now that it’s been decided that Logistep itself was committing the offenses (in many locales, data protection offenses are criminal in nature), it will remain to be seen if people have any chance of getting their payments back, or intend to take legal action themselves against Logistep for a breach of their privacy.

Those affected by this on-going saga in Germany and the UK will take encouragement from this decision. One guy involved in the UK Dream Pinball 3D case told TorrentFreak: “There is no way I’m paying now, 100%. Two countries have said that Logistep are breaching privacy laws so i’m going to take my chances. See you in court boys!”

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Currently there are hundreds of people in the UK being threatened due to the data Logistep gathered for the Two Worlds, Dream Pinball 3D and Colin McRae cases. Having heard nothing for 12 months after receiving their initial threats through the post, people accused of sharing the pinball game are now being threatened again – and some are getting more worried that this isn’t going to go away. Or is it?

We mentioned in a previous article how P2P tracking companies are seen by some to be breaching privacy laws. It seems Logistep has come to the attention of the data protection commissioner in Switzerland (EDÖB -Eidgenössische Datenschutz- und Öffentlichkeitsbeauftragte). He believes there is a problem with Logistep handling personal data, when it’s far from clear that the person being spied on has even committed an offense.

TorrentFreak spoke to Christian Solmecke, a lawyer defending five hundred file sharers in Germany, for more details. He told us: “In my eyes we have a similar problem here in Germany. The data protection commissioner is of the opinion, that collecting data (which is against telecommunications secrecy laws in Switzerland) is only allowed in the context of a criminal prosecution and not in private [civil] law.”

Lawyers Davenport Lyons acting for the copyright holders in the UK show the court ‘evidence’ from Logistep, saying they need it for a criminal case, so that they can obtain a court order. Once they have the order to force the ISP to hand over the alleged file-sharer’s personal details, they pursue a purely civil action to get compensation.

So what happens next? Christian told us: “The EDÖB suggests that Logistep should stop collecting data about P2P users. Logistep now has 30 days to comply, otherwise the EDÖB will bring the case to the Federal Administrative Court of Switzerland.”

Adding further momentum to the IP address/privacy issue, the European Union’s data privacy regulators said on Monday that IP addresses should be considered personal data. Germany’s data protection commissioner, Peter Scharr, told a European Parliament hearing on data protection that when an individual is identified by his IP address “then it has to be regarded as personal data.”

A court in the UK would no doubt be interested in the questionable legality surrounding the data harvesting carried out by Logistep, should a UK file-sharer in these cases ever see a court room. Up to now, there’s not been much more activity, other than threatening letters. However, Davenport Lyons has implied it gained a court ‘victory’ on December 17th following ‘Final Warning’ letters it sent to people in the ‘pinball’ case recently. However, this appears to be a ‘victory’ against someone who just didn’t bother to turn up in court. Some precedent.

Christian Solmecke works as a lawyer in Germany at the Cologne Chambers of Lawyers Wilde & Beuger.

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We are delighted to reveal that Logistep’s European tour is not running as smoothly as they would like. Bullied file-sharers have stood up, made a noise and governments – and the Courts – are listening and taking strong action.

Italy

A few months ago, Peppermint Jam (a German record company) and Techland (a Polish videogame company) recruited Logistep to help them carry out a massive anti-P2P campaign in Italy. As usual, they offered guarantees to ISP’s of the accused that their monitoring software is flawless in its data gathering and using a relatively unknown law firm from northern Italy, sent out 3636 threatening letters to P2P users who they accused of breaching their copyrights.

Each recipient was sent a ‘pay up or else’ letter demanding around 330 € for the SINGLE downloaded song and a signed declaration that they would never download any copyrighted material ever again.

Many people got very scared by these demands and paid up, not realizing that paying up would be seen as a clear admission of guilt. However, as the news circulated, national media got involved and so did others – consumer and civil rights associations, up to and including the government.

On July 18th, Rome’s Law Court dealt a massive blow to the Logistep business model when it approved a petition by two important Italian ISP’s (Wind & Telecom Italia) to keep their customer’s personal data secret when approached by companies who tracked their customers using the Logistep software.

The Court decided that the Logistep software violated the privacy of those monitored so the information cannot be used in a lawsuit. In Italy, it is only permissible to breach the privacy of electronic communications in extremely important cases. P2P file-sharing, it has been decided, is not important enough to be included.

According to privacy laws, a private citizen or a company can only harvest personal information to defend their rights in Court and this is only allowed if the harvesting has been done in a legitimate way and if the contender (in this case Peppermint Jam and Techland) have already succeeded in obtaining the data. Clearly in these cases, they had not obtained all of the information as they were requesting some from the ISP’s.

This is a major defeat for those who attempt to enforce copyright in Italy. The Court appears to have established that those who conduct private investigations on P2P networks are doing so illegally and have no legal standing to demand customers private information from their ISPs. If they cannot get the information from ISPs, this means they have no address to send their threatening letters to. No threatening letter means no-one is bullied into paying up extortionate amounts of money whilst being denied a fair hearing.

France

A press release dated 7 July 2007 brought the good news to French P2P users accused of downloading the ‘Call of Juarez’ from Polish publisher ‘Techland’. Through their Parisian lawyer, Techland managed to obtain the names and home addresses of those it accused and sent out their usual threatening letters, this time demanding 400 € to leave their victims alone.

However, after complaints by lawyers and French ISPs, the orders which made it possible for Techland to obtain P2P users identities and home addresses were withdrawn. Essentially, France agrees with the Italian stance that electronic privacy is far more important than anti-piracy activities.

According to the press release, “The processing of data in personal matter relating to suspected infringements or real supposes that a preliminary authorization of the CNIL (Data-processing National Commission and Freedom) is necessary.” Techland did not gain such approval to monitor French internet users.

Additionally, it appears the Court was not happy that citizens were not allowed to exercise their rights as the French legal system allows as they were denied “a contradictory procedure making it possible all the interested parties to be represented in front of the judge within the framework of the use of a peer to peer software”. In other words, people were denied a fair trial but for those who have already paid their seemingly illegal 400 € fine, all is not lost. The cancellation of the orders for Techland to obtain private information means that the accused can now exercise their legal rights to a proper hearing with the possibility of getting their money back.

In future, any businesses or individuals wishing to breach standard privacy laws to monitor file-sharers on the internet, must first get their activities sanctioned by a judge.

UK

Although there has been no comprehensive legal review of Logistep’s actions in the UK, if they continue along the same road, it’s just a matter of time. According to a user on Slyck Forums, the Government-run and highly respected UK Trading Standards has declared claims against UK citizens as “very shakey” as lawyers “offer no evidence that the game was ever on your hard drive” and they accept that “there is no proof that you, or your computer were involved in offering the game for download.” Without such critical evidence, it’s staggering that lawyers have the nerve to even accuse people and clearly, a Court case is the very last thing they want – that’s why they rely on the bullying tactics.

The German courts have had enough of Logistep and their partners, as have the Italians and the French. With UK Trading Standards stating that cases against UK citizens are ‘very shakey’, things are looking bad for the Logistep business model.

Add to that the statement last week from the Advocate General to the European Court of Justice declaring that EU law does not allow Internet Service Providers to be forced to reveal the personal details of people accused of file sharing, it seems defeat for Logistep and their partners may be just around the corner.

We would like to thank Max Marino for his invaluable input to the Italian section

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