Ares Connect

Followers of the ACS:Law file sharing cases recently heard at the Patents County Office in the UK would have been delighted to read Judge Birss’s comprehensive annihilation of Andrew Crossley’s law practice. The 17,000 word judgement was delivered on Wednesday 9th February and managed to criticise just about every aspect of the ill-thought out ACS:Law copyright infringement cases brought against alleged file sharers as a result of the much maligned “speculative invoicing” campaign.

Judge Birss criticised all aspects of the case, from basic errors, to misrepresentation and factual flaws, and indeed, it seems that ACS:Law and its partner, MediaCAT managed to do very little that was right throughout the whole debacle.

However, more interesting were the comments made by the judge with regard to the monitoring of IP addresses, and specifically whether this actually established if an offence had even taken place. As such, many feel that the ACS:Law judgement could have far reaching repercussions on the new Digital Economy Act designed to clamp down on alleged file sharing over the Internet. And indeed, the DEA is now the subject of a judicial review next month, so once again, we await the results with interest.

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