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As described by Lord Lucas and Lord Clement-Jones in the House of Lords. "Legal Blackmail" (Click on Thumbnails)
Labels: acs, acs law, ACS LAW Letters, amanda mitten, andrew crossley, blackmail, bogus legal letters, davenport lyons, digiprotect, filesharing, legal blackmail, terence tsang, tilly bailey irvine, wank plan, wanker
posted by I have received a letter from ACS LAW at
22:07
3 Comments:
Thanks for putting your link on my site. Its a very interesting read.
I would like to address a few points. Firstly whilst I am completely anti-piracy, I think the approach made in tackling it is disproportionate, futile and in extreme cases intimidating.
Ive often argued in the licensing of ISP's (similar to public houses) and holding them responsible for allegations of copyright infringement. It appears to me the ISP's try to sell you fast access knowing full well what people will do with it and not caring when allegations are made (afterall its not them with a potential court case)
I think many users who were wrongly accused might be tempted to pay up merely to prevent the matter going further...this too is wrong.
And then we have the most important point of all (in respect of ACS:Law or any other firm engaging in this work)
Imagine this example, a drug dealer who is claiming unemployement benefit gets arrested. Would he be charged with dealing drugs AND benefit fraud? - I wouldn't think so as the "employment" is not gainful (in that is not legal) and therefore would not be classed as employment in the spirit of fraud. - Thats my interpretation anyway.
Now if that is correct, how can many of these cases of alleged copyright infringment be heard in a UK civil court when some of the material Ive seen listed has not achieved BBFC classification and in some cases (in respect of the list of titles ) I'd suggest it may even border on indecent.
How can recompense be heard in a UK Civil court for a title that is not legally allowed in the country in the first place?
I am considering that this is an angle which has not yet been considered. Maybe because my interpretation of the civil law involved in these cases is not enough or maybe no cases have run all the way to court?
I would be very interested to see if this point was brought up in court and, should the "accused" be found not guilty the amount of compensation one could seek for a wrongful accusation. Its not so bad if the title in question was Harry Potter, but a wrong adult material accusation could prove very costly for the person making it.
I have to admit that Amanda Mitten looks like great dating material, at least until you learn what she's been up to. Then she looks like slime.
As to so called 'piracy', all of the musicians that I know use P2P and BitTorrent for advertising, and it works really well. You should check out TechDirt, they have some excellent material on how 'piracy' actually helps artists.
The BPI/RIAA hate it, because with P2P the artists no longer need the labels to make a good living out of music, and the artists are leaving the labels in droves. The labels would like to make it illegal to use P2P to force artists back into dealing with the labels, which is why the 'Digital Economy Act' is being pushed in Britain, and ACTA worldwide.
Some people get offended by the term "Piracy" in respect of copyright infringement, I think its more a term like "google" which has been adopted to mean something else...traditionally (and Im showing my age) it was the cracking crews which delighted in using the word "pirate" to promote themselves and I cannot see anything wrong with using the word, we are all fully aware of its meaning in respect of the debate on IP.
I think today's p2p scene highlights some rather disturbing issues. Firstly its the fact that so many people are impressed by Axxo who is merely a button pusher who encodes xvid within an AVI container, something that can be taught in about 2 minutes. I think this is a sad testament to the deskilling of the home user. In the old "scene" days, Axxo would be nothing more than a spreader or distributor and certainly wouldn't have recieved the publicity he/she has today.
Secondly I think that whilst the pro-p2p groups promote "freedom" in respect of data and sharing, they completely ignore the rights to freedom of the developer/owner to release the material in whichever way they see fit. If an IP owner does not want their material spread via p2p then surely in the spirit of fairness, that wish should be honored.
Thirdly whatever the DEB turns out to be, P2p is not to be illegal since there are many purposes it can be used for without issue (for example FOSS), you say the artists are leaving labels in droves, but Ive yet to see any significant news in relation to that.
I think "piracy" helps when its the IP owners wishes that it is spread via p2p. I don't think that p2p helps as I have many examples where revenue for a bedroom coder has been destroyed by the sharing of their work via p2p when all they were trying to do was make a little money.
The labels will (IMO) have a part to play and promotion of material within a sea of alternatives.
Of course due to the poorly thought out (and justified) attack on P2p, I think all it will do is move people to the binary newsgroups (or back to IRC) merely because the element of sharing is removed and its rather difficult to track. I don't believe there are many people who download a movie go out and buy the original, since Ive met many people at local computer clubs who have vast collections of downloaded material and haven't paid for anything in many years. I don't believe this is unique only to the clubs Ive been to.
I personally have not engaged in file sharing copyrighted material and I find the movie industry dull, the music industry plastic and manufactured and on the rare occassion that I do want to see a movie I buy it ex-rental from Blockbusters. Why people feel they have the right to get material for free is rather hard for me to fathom (if they are trying to justify morally)
Nice talking with you, I hope you contribute again to my site.
Kind regards
Goblin.
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