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.

But it seems that their reign of terror is finally over and as a result of an investigation, the Solicitors Regulatory Authority has referred the case to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for a hearing next May. ACS:Law principle lawyer, Andrew Crossley, is also facing the same fate, so he will be watching the results of the case very closely.

There has been a great deal of adverse publicity of late about file sharing lawyers, ACS:Law, following a catastrophic leak of documents relating to dubious business practices involving alleged filesharing cases, but now Davenport Lyons are the subject of fresh file sharing scandal following a leak of documents.

The lawyers were the first to make big business out of sending pay-up-or-else letters to people accused of alleged file sharing and over the last few years they have made a fortune conducting generic schemes designed to frighten people into paying hefty fines in order to make phantom court cases go away. Unfortunately for them, evidence now proves that the firm of anti piracy lawyers knew all along that the evidence they were using to threaten people was mostly unreliable and would never stand up in court.

Anti piracy firm, ACS:Law, has hardly been out of the headlines in recent times. First they came into the public eye following months of speculative invoicing against alleged file sharers; next their website was attacked by angry activists as a result of their dubious anti piracy business practices; and finally, when they tried to bring a number of cases to court in an attempt to further their speculative invoicing business empire, their scheme was exposed as full of legal flaws, much to the derision of the judge in charge at the time.

In the wake of his last disastrous appearance at the Patents County Court in the UK, Andrew Crossley, boss of ACS:Law announced his was quitting the anti piracy business. However, most people didn’t take him all that seriously, so when a further announcement came this week that ACS:Law and its partner in crime, MediaCAT had both closed their businesses down completely, it was something of a surprise to all familiar with the case.

But given ACS:Law and MediaCAT could be facing an action for “wasted costs”, plus Andrew Crossley has a solicitors disciplinary hearing to look forward to, the damage limitation exercise might be too late.

After seeing their insurance rates rise from 15,000 to a crippling 120,000 following the disastrous leak of confidential information on to the Internet, it is no wonder that solicitor Andrew Crossley , owner of ACS:Law, has decided to call it a day. In the last few months, Andrew Crossley has faced an ever-increasing barrage of criticism from the public, consumer bodies, and finally the courts.

This week, ACS:Law was back in court yet again, along with its anti piracy partner, MediaCAT, in the hope that it could persuade the judge to discontinue the 26 file sharing cases currently making their way through the judicial system at the Patents County Court in the UK. Both parties are fully aware that if the cases are withdrawn, ACS:Law can continue sending ‘pay up or else’ letters to extract more money.

But since the judge was apparently even less amused at the extent of the shenanigans displayed by ACS:Law, Andrew Crossley has apparently decided to throw the towel in and call it a day. However, he still has the disciplinary hearing to face in a few weeks, so his woes are not completely over.

Andrew Crossley, principle solicitor of much maligned anti piracy firm, ACS:Law, has announced that he is quitting the anti piracy business for good. After months of bad publicity and a few well-publicised media leaks of sensitive material, Andrew Crossley and ACS:Law have become the butt of many a joke on the Internetand beyond.

ACS:Law was a pioneer of the ‘pay up or else’ letters sent to innocent broadband customers in the hope of extracting money for alleged file sharing abuses. Many people paid up in the belief that they would be taken to court, but a few fought back and some of those cases WERE taken to court.

This week, in a culmination of a series of file sharing cases brought before a judge at the Patents County Court in the UK, once again ACS:Law faced a volley of criticism from the judge over a series of problematic issues. ACS:Law and its partner, MediaCAT, were hoping to have the final 26 cases discontinued, but the judge recognised that this was only being done so that the pair could resume their threatening letters. After more criticism, Andrew Crossley announced he was quitting for good.

In the wake of months of adverse publicity, Andrew Crossley, the man at the helm of ACS:Law, has apparently decided to close the doors on his much criticised anti piracy business for good.

Only a week ago, ACS:Law and Andrew Crossley faced another barrage of criticism from the judge at the centre of twenty seven cases brought against alleged file sharers. Judge Birss was heavily critical of the many deep flaws in the process that sought to make money out of accusing mostly innocent people of file sharing music and movie files on the Internetknown in the business as “speculative invoicing”. Judge Birss will be announcing his ruling on the ACS:Law cases next week, so the results should be very interesting for all concerned.

ACS:Law and its partner in crime, MediaCAT, have come under increasing fire in recent months for their scare tactics designed to frighten people into paying fines by threatening them with legal action based on unsubstantiated claims of illegal file sharing of copyright protected material. And given that Andrew Crossley is facing a solicitors disciplinary hearing imminently, it seems unlikely that any other firms will decide to pick up where ACS:Law and MediaCAT have left off.

Alleged file sharers can finally rest easy in the wake of the news that anti piracy firm, ACS:Law, has decided to call it a day and close down their business activities for good. Along with MediaCAT, ACS:Law’s partner in the much criticised “speculative invoicing” business, Andrew Crossely has not only ceased all of his file sharing related activities, he has also completely shut his law firm down as of 31 January 2011.

This surprise announcement comes hot on the heels of the last disastrous court appearance from Andrew Crossley. The judge who presided over the twenty seven cases against alleged file sharers brought to the Patents County Court by ACS:Law and MediaCAT was immensely critical of the way the two businesses had handled the whole affair and they now facing an application from the court for “wasted costs”.

Since ACS:Law is not a limited company, it is extremely likely that Andrew Crossley will now face claims for costs from the defendants of the various file sharing claims brought by ACS:Law and MediaCAT. And since he will be personally liable for any costs, it could prove disastrous for the man who thought he could make millions on the back of speculative invoicing.

After ACS:Law spent rather a long time in the headlines recently following a disastrous leak of embarrassing documents from their website, anyone would assume that the firm would be keeping a low profile and perhaps changing their modus operandi to one that did not include persecuting innocent people.

But no, Andrew Crossley has once again caught the eye of the media after his firm tried to take eight defendants accused of downloading movies and music from file sharing sites such as Ares 2011, to court.

Mr Crossley probably thought he could get away with asking for default judgements on all eight cases, and pocketing the money as a result, but thankfully for British justice, common sense prevailed and the judge at the Patents County Court Office refused to grant default judgements due to the particulars of claim being defective on a number of grounds-in at least two of the cases, the judge could find no actual evidence that proceedings had even been served against the defendants.

ACS:Law was left red faced yet again. Hopefully this will discourage Andrew Crossley from pursuing more file sharing cases against those accused of downloading files from Ares 2011 and other file sharing sites.

Despite being a legal act in Spanish Law, a non-profit blog has been taken down by WordPress following a complaint from the Spanish Reproduction Rights Centre, CEDRO. The blog owner used his blog to report on Amazon Kindle news and apparently made the mistake of posting a link to an unauthorized Spanish copy of Ken Follet’s e-book, Fall of Giants, which the publisher had failed to translate into a Spanish Kindle version, although they had said it was ok for people to convert other e-versions.

CEDRO saw the link and made a complaint to the blog owner, but instead of contacting him directly via his publicly available email address, they posted a “comment” instead. When the blog owner failed to react, CEDRO issued a DMCA notice to WordPress, who immediately reacted by taking down the blog.

The blog owner is not surprisingly very upset about this turn of events as he fails to see he has done anything wrong. If CEDRO had contacted him in a proper manner, he would have removed the link, but instead they overreacted and his blog has been blocked. And to add insult to injury, the link did not even function!

In a further effort by rights holders to stop illegal file sharing, Hollywood backed anti piracy outfit VAP is trying to force Internet Service Provider UPC to block its customer’s access to a movie-streaming portal, Kino.to. If VAP succeeds in its battle, this could pave the way for further blockades against notorious file sharing sites.

UPC has a branch in Ireland and this recently hit the headlines when the Irish music industry tried to force the ISP to introduce the 3 strikes rule against alleged file sharers. However, they are not the ISP to face increasing pressure from the music and movie industry seeking to stop people accessing websites where they can download and share music and video files.

Internet Service Providers in Austria were also approached by VAP in an attempt to encourage further anti piracy co-operation, but they refused on the basis that they felt the attempt to block access had no legitimate grounds. As far as they were concerned, the music and movie industry should be looking at ways to maximise their income via new and innovative business models instead of costly court cases against file sharers.

Whether the music and movie industry takes any notice remains to be seen.