Profitable 'Pay Us Or We'll Sue You For File Sharing' Scheme About To Send 30,000 More Letters

from the and-here-we-go-again dept

Remember ACS:Law? The shakedown organization that appears to have taken over where Davenport Lyons left off (including using some of the identical documents), and who has "partnered" with DigiProtect, the company that gleefully admits that it purposely puts files on file sharing networks just to collect the IP addresses of anyone who downloads, is asking for the identifying info on 30,000 UK users. To put that in perspective, in the years long campaign by the RIAA to sue people for file sharing, they apparently requested info on about 35,000 IP addresses. Of course, when spreading such a big net, it's no surprise that tons of innocent people get caught in it. But that's really of little concern, since no real lawsuits have been filed. They're just hoping a bunch of people feel that it's easier to pay up. It's not about stopping piracy or getting people to buy -- it's about shaking people down for as much money as possible.

Filed Under: demand letters, file sharing, uk
Companies: acs law, digiprotect

Automated Copyright Settlement Letters Apparently A Lucrative Business

from the pay-up-or-we'll-sue dept

We've covered a few different stories of companies that have been involved in what certainly has a lot of similarities to extortion: sending automated letters insisting that you're violating the law, and demanding payment to prevent a lawsuit. DirecTV was one of the first companies to put a big push behind such a revenue stream, but it was eventually shot down by the courts. The RIAA, of course, has used such a program for a while. More recently, we've seen some companies in Europe experiment with similar programs. The latest is Nexicon, a former cigarette retailer that's now rebuilt itself as an automated legal threat sender, scanning BitTorrent for what it believes is infringing content, and dashing off automated legal notices, demanding payment within 10 days, and suggesting that simply paying up is a lot cheaper than even contacting a lawyer. At what point do politicians realize just how badly the system is being abused? Or do they just let this sort of activity continue?

In the meantime, it looks like ACS:Law, which is one of the organizations that's been involved in a similar settle-or-we'll-sue letter sending campaign has been outed as sending bogus letters to people who had nothing to do with the content they're alleged to have infringed upon. The most amazing thing? The companies involved seem to admit it. In a letter used by multiple firms, they note that "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." But they still want you to pay up, of course. It's guilty until proven innocent, because that's a lot more lucrative.

Filed Under: automated copyright notice, extortion
Companies: acs law, nexicon

Once Again, 'Defenders Of Copyright' Found To Have No Problem Copying Others

from the funny-stuff dept

We recently discussed UK law firm, Davenport Lyons, which had been criticized widely for running a controversial campaign supposedly to stamp out copyright infringement, but seemed a lot more like extortion to many. Basically it would contract with software companies to enforce their copyright... and would then send out a ton of demand letters (based on questionable evidence) requiring cash payments to avoid being sued. Not surprisingly, many people just paid up rather than risk getting sued -- even if they were innocent. Of course, all the controversy and negative publicity seemed to get back to the company. High profile clients like Atari dropped them. Last month, some noticed a nearly identical campaign, but this time coming from a different company called ACS Law. The only problem? A little investigating suggested that the two firms were clearly related -- with ACS using documents created by Davenport Lyons.

Things continue to get more ridiculous, as TorrentFreak noticed that an article apparently published by ACS Law was actually plagiarized from a variety of different sources, basically cut and pasted together with no credit or citations given at all. Remarkably, in some cases, articles with the exact opposite view of ACS Law were copied with paragraphs that just had an added sentence to the end which completely contradicted what the original article said.

It really is quite amusing how often those who insist they're big supporters of intellectual property and not "stealing" the works of others always seem to get caught red-handed in plagiarism and copying others' work. In the meantime, how often do we see supporters of more reasonable copyright (or no copyright) get caught doing this? Hmm?

Filed Under: copyright, plagiarism, uk
Companies: acs law, davenport lyons

Has Davenport Lyons' Copyright Shakedown Business Gone Under A New Name?

from the hunting-and-pecking dept

We've had a bunch of stories about UK law firm Davenport Lyons, who build up quite a reputation for sending "shakedown" style letters to people accused of copyright infringement. However, the letters were sent out so broadly that they were sent to many innocent people, leading to widespread claims that the whole thing was a shakedown. Rather than actually gathering evidence, the company was just making money by getting a certain percentage of recipients to pay up. Highlighting this point: the law firm never actually took anyone to court over those letters.

As the firm was exposed, it led some customers to back away, realizing the harm it was doing to its own brand. The firm hadn't made much noise on this front lately, but the folks over at TorrentFreak heard about a bunch of very similar letters going out recently and, after investigating them, noticed way too many similarities to Davenport Lyons -- including an identical customer list and the fact that a Word doc on this new firm's (ACS Law) site was created in a copy of Word registered to... Davenport Lyons.

Apparently, rather than reforming, they just decided that it would be better to try to appear as someone different and start pulling the same trick all over again.

Filed Under: copyright, shakedown, uk
Companies: acs law, davenport lyons