Official ACS:LAW/DL letter/legal threat discussion

[randoman]

I dont have the time to trawl through the past posts so forgive me if this issue has already been raised but my or anyone elses privacy is a basic human right in this country so whether or not these procedings are civil or criminal surely an appointed authority should have been given the power to spy on peoples internet connection if any foul play was suspected as i would expect if an authorative body was listening to my phone calls or screening my mail, my question is who gave this digiprotect the right to hold this investigation in the first place and why did the courts find it acceptable?

A lot of judges/ courts are naive to this technology thing. DL tell them an IP is solid proof, they grant the order its very much a loop hole in the the UK court.

[MrFredPFL]

this may just be a question of semantics and my not understanding the question - but no one has given digiprotect or davenport-lyons permission to eavesdrop/spy on anyone's connection.

they get IP addresses, in theory, the same way you or i or anyone else can - by using the same p2p programs that filesharers use, which supply the IP address to them. the debate is whether they are accurately recording IP info or not. in any event, you or i can do the same thing - go onto most any p2p network/bittorrent tracker, and make a note of the IP addresses of people sharing files. that's how p2p works - the clients give that info out freely.

the only thing the court has done is to give them permission to obtain the (presumed) identity of the account holder that the IP address in question belonged to at the time of the alleged infringement. there is substantial debate about whether the link between those two things is definitive, but there is no eavesdropping involved.

[poorman]

I was quite shocked when i opened my post this morning to find a threatening letter from ACS:LAW for the game dream pinball 3d!

They are asking for £730 to be paid within 21 days.

I thought some of you may be interested in this, i expect there will be a lot of people getting letters from these guys!

Their Website is here for those who are interested. http://www.acs-law.org.uk/

On further inspection of this letter i noticed that the game in question is actually a nintendo Wii game, i do not own a Wii, i have never owned a Wii and nobody in this household has ever owned a Wii so why the hell would i download this game?

This is some kind of scam, no way i will pay this! i would rather go to prison than pay for something i didn't do!

[penumbra]

I was quite shocked when i opened my post this morning to find a threatening letter from ACS:LAW for the game dream pinball 3d!

They are asking for £730 to be paid within 21 days.

I thought some of you may be interested in this, i expect there will be a lot of people getting letters from these guys!

Their Website is here for those who are interested. http://www.acs-law.org.uk/

On further inspection of this letter i noticed that the game in question is actually a nintendo Wii game, i do not own a Wii, i have never owned a Wii and nobody in this household has ever owned a Wii so why the hell would i download this game?

This is some kind of scam, no way i will pay this! i would rather go to prison than pay for something i didn't do!

Wow. and they have another court order form digiprotect on their website. Dated November 2008.

There is going to be another wave of action.

Doing some checks about the domain name - I wonder if this is a Davenport Lyons spin off /subsidiary.

[Clock-watcher]

It will be interesting to see if VM give out the details for this latest scam episode due to the cloned modems knocking about.

[poorman]

It will be interesting to see if VM give out the details for this latest scam episode due to the cloned modems knocking about.

Well i'm with VM and they gave out my details...

[Clock-watcher]

It will be interesting to see if VM give out the details for this latest scam episode due to the cloned modems knocking about.

Well i'm with VM and they gave out my details...

I can't see how (VM) can have reliable IP info good enough for a court to convict anyone.

[poorman]

has anybody on here actually recieved court summons yet?

I've a good mind to write to this firm and tell them to go ahead with court precedings, rather than waste their time with further threats with their seriously flawed evidence!

[mommypro]

I have also received a letter from ACS:LAW this mornig. It requests £665 within 21 days or else it will commence court proceedings.

Since receiving it I have read this thread and many others like it, read numerous news reports and other nic nacs on the web and it seems to be the very standard DL letter just with a different originating firm. Whether that firm is a subsidary or perhaps the interest has been sold on, I don't know, but it's certainly the same shtick.

I am contemplating two options and I am listening to all advice on the matter.

1 - Ignoring it completely - I could always mount a defence if I am unlucky enough to get an ACTUAL summons. I wouldn't hand them another default judgment to dress up in the media.

2 - Send them a letter denying I have infringed their clients rights and inviting them to begin court proceedings at the earliest possible opportunity. Also pointing out that their evidence their are proposing to submit has already been discredited in several european countries and in the unlikely event that is was deemed admissable in a UK civil court would be insufficient in demonstrating I infringed their clients rights AT ALL let alone to the substantial degree of damages that their client has already claimed in recent default judgments.

My hope is if I fire back with 2 it'll just get them off my back and stop me getting anymore letters.

I hate this because despite myself I am fearing them. I know that their evidence is so much shenanighans. Law firms have done this all across europe, it's been squashed there, people have been disbarred for it FFS and now they come here and are trying it on.

But in spite of all that I'm still worried I'll end up paying 16K. I of course know I won't. But it still gets to me.

This is basically exortion, right? I should go for option 2?

[penumbra]

I am contemplating two options and I am listening to all advice on the matter.

1 - Ignoring it completely - I could always mount a defence if I am unlucky enough to get an ACTUAL summons. I wouldn't hand them another default judgment to dress up in the media.

2 - Send them a letter denying I have infringed their clients rights and inviting them to begin court proceedings at the earliest possible opportunity. Also pointing out that their evidence their are proposing to submit has already been discredited in several european countries and in the unlikely event that is was deemed admissable in a UK civil court would be insufficient in demonstrating I infringed their clients rights AT ALL let alone to the substantial degree of damages that their client has already claimed in recent default judgments.

My hope is if I fire back with 2 it'll just get them off my back and stop me getting anymore letters.

I wouldn't ignore their letters - everyone legally trained always says not to.

Personally, I would reply and deny. See the guide thread in my signature. They will not simply leave you alone - they will send letters back and try like hell to get you to pay.

If you did not do it do not pay.

Out of interest how similar is the letter to this one? (PDF link)

Also, anyone with a scanned copy of this letter please PM me.

[penumbra]

has anybody on here actually recieved court summons yet?

I've a good mind to write to this firm and tell them to go ahead with court precedings, rather than waste their time with further threats with their seriously flawed evidence!

Nobody who has replied and denied (against Davenport Lyons) have received anything approaching a summons.

Certainly people have gone down the route of denying it strongly and saying "see you in court". They haven't received anything either, yet. They probably never will.

[mommypro]

I wouldn't ignore their letters - everyone legally trained always says not to.

Personally, I would reply and deny. See the guide thread in my signature. They will not simply leave you alone - they will send letters back and try like hell to get you to pay.

If you did not do it do not pay.

Out of interest how similar is the letter to this one? (PDF link)

Also, anyone with a scanned copy of this letter please PM me.

The usual legal advice would indeed be do not ignore - the reason being it would not look good on you in court. However, do you or I really believe this will ever end up in court? These people have already stolen a couple hours of my time and I would really resent having to waste more time replying to them if I don't have to.

I wouldn't pay even if I did do it. Because they clearly don't have any evidence that'll actually stand up. They wouldn't even dare try to pin it on me because they risk losing a load of money and stopping the rest of their scams in their tracks. These people are after some nice, risk-free money, right?

The letter is practically word for word. Of the two obvious differences (excepting my specifics and the solicitors details) only one is of significance a paragraph added between the paragraphs 'consequences of bringing a claim' and 'offer to settle' entitled 'submissions from you'.


"If, despite the information we set out above, you say you are not responsible for the infringement of our client's rights, please set out your reasons in writing for us to evaulate. In light of the information we have obtained, it is unlikely that a simple denial (without further explanation) will change our view of the cicrumstances, so please provides as much detail as you are able to"

Seems to me that they're just copy and pasting the exact same letter and with that new paragraph they are trying to pre-empt some of the standard responses they receiving from people who have consulted the web. They want people to say what 'they've read' so they can try and convince them that it's not true and they definitely will get sued if they don't send £700 right away.

[weejok]

I was quite shocked when i opened my post this morning to find a threatening letter from ACS:LAW for the game dream pinball 3d!

They are asking for £730 to be paid within 21 days.

I thought some of you may be interested in this, i expect there will be a lot of people getting letters from these guys!

Their Website is here for those who are interested. http://www.acs-law.org.uk/

On further inspection of this letter i noticed that the game in question is actually a nintendo Wii game, i do not own a Wii, i have never owned a Wii and nobody in this household has ever owned a Wii so why the hell would i download this game?

This is some kind of scam, no way i will pay this! i would rather go to prison than pay for something i didn't do!

I too received a letter from ACS:LAW this morning demanding £665 in 21 days. My service provider is Virgin and had supplied details to them. While I can't deny using file sharing from time to time, I have no memory of ever downloading Dream Pinball 3D but it was supposed to have been active on my computer 27/4/2008! Even if I wanted to there is no way I could pay this amount so they will have to take me to court (if it ever comes to that!)

[goldlight]

hi
it seems to me all you can do is reply and deny .
it seems that yet another law firm is sticking its snout in the trough to get money from people who can ill afford it in these hard times.

[mommypro]

Yes, I think reply and deny it is. In the HIGHLY unlikely event that you do found yourself in court you want to be on as best footing as possible and having a prompt "Letter of Response" (as would be the legalise in this case) on record is a good first step.

I will drafting my Letter of Response tomorrow and will be working to the guidelines of the 'code of practice for pre-action conduct in intellectual property desputes". If anybody else would like to refer to this resources, you can find it here - http://acs-law.org.uk/preaction.pdf

So it seems we arrive in a situation that ACS:LAW, the solictors handling this claim, are paying the server costs to host a document which is ultimately helping me in deflecting their attempts to exort money from me.

[samba pa ti]

look at the address of ACS LAW :

18 Hanover Squre
London

thats how its spelt on their own shitty website (i could do better and im rubbish at html)

now look where davenporn live...

30 Old Burlington Street
Hanover Square, London, W1S 3NL
020 7468 2600

looks like they have gone round the corner to get some new blood involved, a new name makes them look serious since everyone knows DL are a fucking joke.

[mommypro]

Yup I noticed that too.

Seems to me that nothing has changed here except the face company. Everything else still applies. Still no real UK judgment on this in what, 4 years?

[penumbra]

I wouldn't ignore their letters - everyone legally trained always says not to.

Personally, I would reply and deny. See the guide thread in my signature. They will not simply leave you alone - they will send letters back and try like hell to get you to pay.

If you did not do it do not pay.

Out of interest how similar is the letter to this one? (PDF link)

Also, anyone with a scanned copy of this letter please PM me.

The usual legal advice would indeed be do not ignore - the reason being it would not look good on you in court. However, do you or I really believe this will ever end up in court? These people have already stolen a couple hours of my time and I would really resent having to waste more time replying to them if I don't have to.

Well, I don't think anyone who has replied with a robust denial will end up in court, no. However, ignoring the letter - that's a slightly different matter. You're deliberately reducing your options. Let me explain:

If you reply to the first letter with a wide ranging and robust denial, then you have the option of ignoring all their further correspondence. If you simply ignore everything then the next time you hear from them could be the court summons. And it won't look good on you in court. They may drop it like a hot potato when you file your defence, but at that point they may feel they have a good line to go on in court - you ignored their letter AND you will annoy the judge.

See where I'm coming from?

The letter is practically word for word. Of the two obvious differences (excepting my specifics and the solicitors details) only one is of significance a paragraph added between the paragraphs 'consequences of bringing a claim' and 'offer to settle' entitled 'submissions from you'.


"If, despite the information we set out above, you say you are not responsible for the infringement of our client's rights, please set out your reasons in writing for us to evaulate. In light of the information we have obtained, it is unlikely that a simple denial (without further explanation) will change our view of the cicrumstances, so please provides as much detail as you are able to"

Thanks for the info mommypro.

Now that is a very interesting paragraph, as you say a pre emptive heading off of the simple reply and deny. However, I would still argue that the average joe has very little training in network security and can't possibly know the relevant information to provide beyond a simple denial. The truth is that it forces them into a huge gamble, or further expense if you simply refuse to attempt to explain it away.

Also, you're right - these letters are almost exactly identical to those sent out by Davenport Lyons. So despite the two top people not being linked to DL in any way I can see, they have managed to come up with almost identical letter templates. Also, the first three pages of the FAQ on their website are a verbatim copy of DL's own file sharing FAQ and the notes on evidence have been copied wholesale.

If these people aren't DL themselves, or haven't received licence to do this, they're infringing copyright. How ironic.

The chief guy doesn't seem averse to smut: http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/lawyer ... speaks-out

[penumbra]

Also, they're a legit law firm, even if the website isn't :
http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/choosingan ... archType=L

[samba pa ti]

they might be a legit company setup by DL, wouldnt suprise me if they are subcontracted as they are advertising all the same games from ages ago on their website, which i might add is the quick and dirty kind setup with Joomla.

http://acs-law.org.uk isnt archived by http://web.archive.org so i assume its new, the domain was registered on the 9th of april so its barely a month old which confirms its age > http://www.who.is/whois/acs-law.org.uk/

looking at the court orders page it seems they are only going to be pestering people for the computer games and porn

(two worlds, call of juarez, dream pinball, and digiprotect (porn))

also strange is the registrants address appears to be a name although the registrant is somone else, maybe thats the LAW bit of acs law...

Registrant:
Terence Tsang
Registrant's address:
Rupert LAw
Quorn
Leics
LE12 8PE
GB

[mommypro]

Thanks for the info mommypro.

Now that is a very interesting paragraph, as you say a pre emptive heading off of the simple reply and deny. However, I would still argue that the average joe has very little training in network security and can't possibly know the relevant information to provide beyond a simple denial. The truth is that it forces them into a huge gamble, or further expense if you simply refuse to attempt to explain it away.

Also, you're right - these letters are almost exactly identical to those sent out by Davenport Lyons. So despite the two top people not being linked to DL in any way I can see, they have managed to come up with almost identical letter templates. Also, the first three pages of the FAQ on their website are a verbatim copy of DL's own file sharing FAQ and the notes on evidence have been copied wholesale.

If these people aren't DL themselves, or haven't received licence to do this, they're infringing copyright. How ironic.

The chief guy doesn't seem averse to smut: http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/lawyer ... speaks-out

Indeed, failing to secure your computer is not copyright infringement as far as the law today is concerned and it won't be until precedent has been set and something tells me this bunch of cowboys won't be the ones setting it.

I better get started on my 'robust denial' then.

[bunnox223]

whatever you do .. do not pay them anything.... just reply and deny it... say know more and forget about it until the next letter arrives then deny it again. dont think of things like my network was wireless and must of been hacked they have no knowledge of you having it wired or wireless so dont give them any ammo..


send it
fuk it
and
forget it ...

[penumbra]

Indeed, failing to secure your computer is not copyright infringement as far as the law today is concerned and it won't be until precedent has been set and something tells me this bunch of cowboys won't be the ones setting it.

I better get started on my 'robust denial' then.

I'm sure if they want to pay for an independent expert of your choosing to come round your house and acquire the information they want, at a time of your choosing and at your convenience then they will be welcome. Subject to strict conditions, of course.

[mommypro]

They may drop it like a hot potato when you file your defence, but at that point they may feel they have a good line to go on in court - you ignored their letter AND you will annoy the judge.

This is interesting.

When I was reading the history earlier and about that one woman with the 16k default judgment I was thinking "What would they have done with their crappy non-evidence if that woman, or any of the other default judgements had shown up?" and I concluded that they must have just took that gamble.

But are you telling me they knew well in advance that nobody would be turning up and could have bailed out if one of their 'luckily picked at randomly' non-responders had filled a last minute defence and planned to turn up?

That would explain a lot. Means they could have absolutely no intent of EVER seeing this in court because they know how thin it is, right?

[penumbra]

also strange is the registrants address appears to be a name although the registrant is somone else, maybe thats the LAW bit of acs law...

Registrant:
Terence Tsang
Registrant's address:
Rupert LAw
Quorn
Leics
LE12 8PE
GB

I assumed that was a mangled version of Rupert Law Close, which is a real place with that post code:
http://is.gd/xvay