Judge Not Amused By ACS:Law Stunts; Forcing Cases To Continue

from the be-fair-warned-us-copyright-group dept

The saga of ACS:Law and its mass P2P user shakedown campaign continues. Despite claiming to have shut down completely in an attempt to avoid any possible sanctions for its disastrous strategy, the judge is forcing the cases to continue, saying that ACS:Law and its partner MediaCAT cannot just drop the cases in an attempt to "avoid public scrutiny." The judge clearly sees the shakedown scam for what it is:

I cannot imagine a system better designed to create disincentives to test the issues in court.... Why take cases to court and test the assertions when one can just write more letters and collect payments from a proportion of the recipients?

The judge appears to have also slammed ACS:Law and Andrew Crossley for claiming that one reason for dropping the cases were that necessary documents were in storage and they didn't want to retrieve them. The judge saw through that excuse:

"If true, it is extraordinary," said the ruling. "A party who keeps key documents which are cited in the particulars of claim in storage is not a party anxious to progress their claim in court."

Once again, those firms in the US copying this strategy should probably take note of what's happening over in the UK.

Filed Under: copyright, pre-settlement, uk
Companies: acs:law, mediacat

With ACS:Law And MediaCAT Shutting Down, What Does It Mean For US Copyright Group?

from the brothers-in-arms dept

ACS:Law wasn't the first law firm to try the "send tons of 'pre-settlement' letters to people we accuse of file sharing in hopes they just pay up," business model. In fact, ACS:Law got all of its initial paperwork from another law firm, Davenport Lyons, who was trying to get out of that business. However, ACS:Law was the firm that really got much of the attention over the past few years. Just about a year ago, that business model finally jumped to the US, initially from an outfit called US Copyright Group, which was really an operation run by a tiny DC law firm called Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver along with an online monitoring company. However, with the latest news that ACS:Law and its online monitoring company MediaCAT have completely gone out of business -- perhaps in a weak attempt to avoid sanctions for their disastrous attempt to finally bring some cases to court, it makes me wonder if this is a precursor of things to come for US Copyright Group/DGW. It certainly looks like DGW has been a bit more careful with its strategy than ACS:Law (where it really seemed like Andrew Crossley got in way over his head), but it certainly should be a warning sign to all those law firms who think this sort of shakedown play is easy money.

Filed Under: pre-settlement, uk, us
Companies: acs:law, dunlap grubb & weaver, mediacat, us copyright group