ACS:Law: ‘It’s Christmas. Time to sue’
2pnet news view Freedom | P2P: Blackmail tactics first popularised by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s RIAA are creating a cottage industry for unscrupulous lawyers and the people who hire them.
The RIAA is a past master at firing off subpoenas and following them up with threatening ‘pay up or else’ letters.
Yesterday, “The Video Protection Alliance (VPA) bills itself as a ‘fast, secure and convenient way to settle your copyright violations online’,” said p2pnet, going on:
“It generously helps ‘you, the fan, identify copyright violations, pay a nominal settlement fee, and clear your record”.
“So how does it achieve this? By a business method tried and trusted by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s RIAA. And the MAFIA.
“Extortion.”
Britain’s ACS:Law is pretty good at that too and now the season of goodwill is nigh, “Around 15,000 suspected pirates may soon get legal letters accusing them of illegally sharing movies and games,” says the BBC. “ACS:Law plan to send notes to the accused in the New Year offering a chance to settle out of court for ’several hundreds of pounds’.”
The pic on the right is a clip from p2pnet’s re-post of a GooTube video. But when click the arrow to continue, all you get is, ” The video has been removed by the user.”
Says the BBC, “The firm’s Andrew Crossley (upper right) told the BBC it was acting to “eradicate” sharing of its client’s products,” stating:
“We give them opportunity to enter into compromise right at the start to avoid having to deal with it [in court].”
If it went to court and the lawyers were successful, he said, damages “would run into several thousands of pounds”.
The story continues >>>
But consumer group Which? said that it had heard from around 150 consumers who had been “wrongly accused” in similar cases.
“A lot are accused of downloading pornography,” Jaclyn Clarabut of Which? told BBC News. “People find it distressing or embarrassing and pay up.”
Others, she said, “don’t want the threat of court action” hanging over them or cannot afford to pay for a lawyer and settle the claim for the lower figure.
Meanwhile, ACS: Law is “currently under investigation” by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), says the BBC, quoting Crossley as complaining his firm had been targeted by an “internet campaign” and was “cooperating with the inquiries”.
“It doesn’t of itself indicate that I have done anything wrong,” he says in the story.
“I have no qualms or concerns about what I am doing.”
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p2pnet – Video Protection Alliance scam, November 26, 2009
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November 27th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Thanks for reposting the Video I upped to Youtube. Yes ACS LAW do like th threaten people but hey they are lawyers, well kind of. Please see this website for some excellent background info, it has nothing to do with me but looks good.
http://sites.google.com/site/acsillegalsite/
November 27th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Under both the statutory and common-law definitions of extortion – a crime in the US and United Kingdom – these campaigns are absolutely illegal. Interesting that the cops will gladly kick down the door of some kid who has been accused – without any genuine proof – of noncommercial filesharing, but these organized extortion schemes – run by attorneys – are magically immune from legal prosecution.
Naturally, the selective enforcement of “the law” such as this is not even a subject of comment in today’s mainstream culture. Just how it works, is what we’re expected to believe. Some of us, unfortunately, still remember that “the rule of law” trumps political expediency or the drive of pure greed.
Fausty
November 27th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Interestingly enough, the scammers at ACS didn’t mention they are under investigation for flagrant violations of Bar regulations and the court’s own standards for attorney behavior. However, they do crow about how much money they’re going to extort from the targets of there scheme in this article in an adult-industry trade magazine:
http://www.xbiz.com/news/115144
The sad thing is, I know the folks at Xbiz and consider them to be decent journalists. However, they’ll reprint crap like this from ACS – never mentioning that the scheme is illegal – leaving readers with the impression this is all on the up-and-up. The “adult industry” is so desperate to forestall its self-inflicted demise due to lack of innovation and respect for customer diversity and desires, that it will listen to anybody who promises it what it wants to hear: namely, that the times of easy money, no real competition, and no need to innovate will keep going on forever if they just let this or that scammer pick some of the last few dollars out of their pockets.
Fausty