Atari Backs Away From Davenport Lyons, As More Innocent Threat Letters Are Uncovered

from the ain't-that-called-extortion? dept

Mon, Dec 1st 2008 11:42am — Mike Masnick

With plenty of bad publicity showing up for law firm Davenport Lyons and its ongoing campaign to shake people down with "pre-settlement" letters threatening them with copyright infringement lawsuits if they don't pay up, it appears that things aren't going quite as planned. First, the press has found more people who were apparently falsely accused by the firm -- and this time, it's an elderly couple who are quite horrified that they're being accused of downloading gay porn (this would be the same gay porn where recent reports noted that the publishers were encouraging another company to upload it to many sites, so there would be more people to accuse of pirating it).

On top of that, it appears that Atari, which had hired Davenport Lyons (and whose games were part of the original story of falsely accused people) has now stopped the anti-piracy campaign, canceled requests for identification on various IP addresses and apparently dropped Davenport Lyons in the process. It seems Atari realized that the campaign was generating an awful lot of negative publicity. Shaking down innocent people can do that, apparently.

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Filed Under: copyright, pre-settlement letters, uk
Companies: atari, davenport lyons

4 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 1 Dec 2008 @ 12:45pm

Atari still exists?
makes me wonder what happened to my old Pacman and Asteroid games.
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kirillian (profile), 1 Dec 2008 @ 12:57pm

New to the extortion game are we?
Guess it just goes to show that being accomplished extortionists like our dear friends in the *AA's requires time and experience to get it right. I feel that Atari's just jumping onto the new business model (produce crappy product and sue your customers for not paying up) before realizing the consequences and understanding just how the technique works.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Dec 2008 @ 1:12pm

Check out MAME for playing your old arcade games.
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Mr Evil, 15 Dec 2008 @ 12:54am

Davenport Lyons are scum
Davenport Lyons are a shameless company who prey on the weak. I for one will never buy another Atari game...... what happened to you Atari? Ohh yeah you became s**t and desperate.
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