ACS:Law
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Andrew Crossley, the sole solicitor of the now defunct ACS Law, was banned from practising law for two years and charged costs at a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal in London today. Crossley's firm infamously sent letters to alleged illegal file-sharers on behalf of a pornography rights firm, demanding recipients pay hundreds of pounds to avoid going to court, as part of what has since come to be called "speculative invoicing". However, none of the cases went to full trial, with Crossley himself successfully shutting down 17 cases that did end up in court . His firm was attacked online, with his website knocked down and email database leaked, leading to a charge from the Information Commissioner's Office. The expected fine of £200,000 was later dropped to only £800 on the grounds Crossley couldn't pay - despite the solicitor seemingly continuing to live a luxury lifestyle .
File-sharing ACS Law solicitor suspended | News | PC Pro
Open Rights Group | ACS:Law and overstated proof
ACS:Law got away with their letter writing, according to the Judge, by 'materially overstating the untested merits' of their proof. This saw plenty of innocent people harassed – often people who, according to one of the legal teams representing the alleged infringers, 'have explained how they cannot possibly have uploaded or downloaded copyright protected material'.ACS:Law Judgment Has Serious Implications for Digital Economy Act | TorrentFreak
The battle against ACS:Law, MediaCAT and other companies previously involved in developing the so-called Speculative Invoicing model in the UK, has been fought on many fronts. A key group that has championed the rights of the innocent caught in the dragnet, and indeed introduced the term ‘Speculative Invoicing’ to the legal landscape, is BeingThreatened.com. This compact and highly resourceful team have worked tirelessly to protect innocent members of the public from the predatory tactics we have read so much about lately. Following yesterday’s judgment in the Patents County Court, today TorrentFreak is pleased to welcome BeingThreatened.com spokesman James Bench, who will give us more detail about this legal debacle and explain how the judgment has implications for the UK’s Digital Economy Act.
ACS:Law gets more of copyright fines than rights holders | Technology | guardian.co.uk
ACS:Law sent out letters alleging that web users had illegally downloaded a song by Cascada. Photograph: Shirlaine Forrest/WireImageFollowing on the catastrophic leak of data and ongoing scandal arising from ACS:Law case – astonishingly, another London based copyright lawyer, Gallant MacMillan – who represent The Ministry of Sound – is set to pursue exactly the same course as ACS:Law at The High Court, London, in just 4 days time – on October 4th. In an astonishing show of legal arrogance, mounted against the UK public’s current outrage that thousands of their names and addresses were “leaked” – along with details of sordid pornographic videos they were supposed to have shared online – one would have thought that Gallant MacMillan and their right’s holders – could have at least waited until the furore died down. But alas, it seems not …
Gallant MacMillan to follow ACS:Law route … | WiredVC | Venture Capital and Funding News
Leading internet service providers BT and Sky have been drawn into the storm surrounding a data breach at ACS:Law, a law firm that sent dunning letters to thousands of alleged illegal file-sharers. ACS:Law faces legal action and a potential £500,0000 fine after the personal details of people it accused of downloading files illegally appeared on the Pirate Bay file sharing site. But the details were supplied by Sky and BT, who asked the law firm to keep them confidential. According to reports, at least 8,000 Sky , 500 BT customers and another 5,000 Britons were exposed by the Pirate Bay files. According to Privacy International, the personal details were exposed when ACS:Law rebooted its website following a distributed denial of service attack by 4Chan, a file-sharing collective. ACS:Law had sent dunning letters to thousands of people it identified after it found IP addresses linked to them were used to download files.
BT and Sky ISPs drawn into ACS:Law data breach - 9/29/2010 - Computer Weekly
ACS Law potentially facing investigation by ICO for major breach of data protection - Information Technology Law Articles and News - Lawdit Reading Room
It was reported on BBC's technology section yesterday that ACS Law appears to have committed "one of the worst breaches" of data protections laws according to Simon Davis a privacy expert of data protections laws: It was reported that more than £8,000.00 names and addresses have been "leaked" onto the internet these lists are said to have contained the file that that the person has allegedly downloaded together with (in some cases) credit/debit card details of the people how have settled.ACS:Law - Practicing Greed in the field of Law | Full links to ACS Law leaked emails: BREAKING NEWS: Andrew Crossley's arrogance, greed finally gets the better of him
LIVE FROM ACS:NEWS 24 HQ: CONFIRMED - All emails ; internal and external have been leaked from ACS:Law .
4 chan Attacks May Cause BT, ACS:Law, Legal Troubles | GamePolitics
UK service provider British Telecom and anti-piracy law firm ACS:Law may find themselves in some serious trouble. The BBC reports that BT and the law firm may have breached the Data Protection Act.
1) Please confirm that you are the owner of the internet connection, and/or are responsible for paying the bill. □ I am the owner of the internet connection . □ I pay the bill . □ If you are not the owner of the internet connection, or if you do not pay the bill, what is your relationship with the bill payer?
ACS:Law: Pervert lawyers asked for names, ages of KIDS! Total invasion of privacy! | WiredVC | Venture Capital and Funding News
Open Rights Group | What ISPs should do about the likes of ACS:Law
What BT, Sky and other ISPs should do about the likes of ACS:LawACS:Law and the Norwich Pharmacal Orders | WiredVC | Venture Capital and Funding News
As one of the first news websites to break the ACS:Law copyright extortion and data leak scandal ( see here ) currently engulfing the UK – we might just have a little more than most.The data breach which has exposed the names, addresses and credit card details of 8,000 internet users accused of illegally downloading pornography shows the ‘flaws’ in the Digital Economy Act, say privacy campaigners. The majority of people on the list are Sky internet users being pursued by solicitors at ACS:Law for allegedly infringing copyright. The law firm has identified alleged infringers by collating the internet protocol (IP) addresses of the computers used to illegally share files, and then getting a court order to force internet service providers to hand over the details of the individuals to whom those IP addresses are registered.
ACS:Law leak ‘shows weakness of Digital Economy Act’ - Telegraph
The cost of pornography is not usually a prominent line item in the profit and loss accounts of London law firms, but events in the past week may lead to IP law specialist’s “ACS:Law” having to account for a fine of up to £500,000 for precisely that cost, if they are found guilty of a serious data protection breach by the Information Commissioner that they are alleged to have committed.