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| Judge Orders Hearing To Deal With All ACS:Law File-Sharing Cases Posted: 22 Dec 2010 02:07 AM PST Following last month's failed attempt by ACS:Law to have default judgments handed down to 8 individuals accused of illegal file-sharing, the company have been back in court again. In a case where they couldn't even get the defendant's name right, ACS hoped for a ruling in their favor but were again denied by the judge. Instead, all of ACS:Law's outstanding cases have been rounded up for a hearing next month. Things are about to get interesting.
Representing Media C.A.T, a kind of 'front company' for movie companies involved in so-called “pay up or else” or “speculative invoicing” schemes, ACS:Law managed to squeeze an impressive number of errors into the proceedings and the result was that in all 8 cases, default judgments were denied. Now it appears that ACS:Law have been back to court again, this time with a case brought against an alleged file-sharer called Mr Billington. “Following our phone call today regarding the claim form I have received from yourselves [on behalf of] ACS:Law, I apologise for the belated reply as on the claim form there is no mention of timescale, or a acknowledge service form for me to respond to, which I believe should have been included,” Mr Billington wrote in a letter to the clerk of the court. Judge Birss QC, who also handled last month’s cases, noted that in Mr Billington’s case the claim appeared to have been issued without including a response pack, i.e the necessary paperwork which enables the defendant to put his side of the story. “My last correspondence on 1st November to ACS Law was advising them that I have not infringed any copyright, I refuted the claim in that, they have an IP address, which they claim relates to my computer,” continued Mr Billington. “Firstly I have 5 computers so I do not know which one they refer to. Also I am not the sole user of the computers. I asked them for further evidence of this alleged infringement. I then receive the said claim form.” The defendant then went on to explain that since he had been receiving “threatening letters from ACS Law demanding monies” he believed he had been the victim of “some sort of scam”. However, rather than deal with the case, the Judge did something interesting. In October the Patents County Court implemented new procedures designed to streamline intellectual property disputes. To this end, the court conducted a review of ACS:Law/Media C.A.T cases in the system. They found 27, which included the 8 from the previous hearing and this new one involving Mr Billington. “Some of the cases are defended but the court file in most of the 27 cases consists of little more than a claim form,” wrote the Judge, noting that all cases are broadly similar. He added: “In the circumstances I have decided to take an unusual course and to exercise the court’s power to make orders of its own initiative under CPR Part 3 rule 3.3(1). The order I will make is an order to convene a hearing for directions in this case and in all the parallel Media C.A.T. Limited cases in the Patents County Court files at the moment.” So, the hearing of all outstanding ACS:Law cases will take place on Monday 17th January 2011 before Judge Birss QC who has the power to decide how these cases will be dealt with. Considering his comments from the previous cases, that Media C.A.T is not even the rights holder of the movies in question, potentially all of the cases could be dismissed. Should this come to pass, this could be a pivotal point in the overall ‘speculative invoicing’ scene in the UK. There are loud but unconfirmed reports that ACS:Law are no longer instructed to act for rightsholder DigiProtect in similar cases. If both they and Media C.A.T are put out of the picture, ACS:Law have no more significant anti-filesharing clients left and if it’s true that damaged reputations are directly linked to the prospect of gaining more customers, that gap won’t be filled any time soon. Furthermore, it has been confirmed that lawyers Gallant MacMillan no longer represent Ministry of Sound in chasing alleged file-sharers. Couple that with comments from CEO Lohan Presencer that their latest court application “makes no economic sense” and it’s clear that it’s hardly full-steam ahead for them either. Another interesting issue that appeared again in Mr Billington’s case is ACS:Law’s ability to keep making mistakes. In addition to the catalog of errors from last month, in the case detailed above ACS:Law managed to get the defendant’s name wrong. Allan Billington does not exist. There is, however, an Aaron Billington at the address in question. While a transposed forename might seem fairly trivial here, consider the implications of a transposed IP address – the only evidence on which ACS:Law rely. For example, TorrentFreak’s IP address is 208.100.11.174 – transposing the last three digits of that IP connects readers not to file-sharing news, but to a gender reassignment clinic. The important thing now is that the court will notify all 27 individuals of the January hearing and give them a chance to respond. They must respond, it is absolutely crucial. Anyone in receipt of one of these court claims (claim numbers here) can contact us here at tips@torrentfreak.com for completely free and confidential advice. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
| isoHunt Continues Legal Fight To Thwart MPAA Censorship Posted: 21 Dec 2010 01:59 PM PST BitTorrent search engine isoHunt is fighting the permanent injunction issued by the District Court of California last summer in their case against the MPAA. isoHunt contests the imposition of a site-wide keyword filter based on a list of movie industry keywords. By doing so, the search engine also makes a case for the public's 'freedom of search', not just on BitTorrent, but on the Internet in general.
The injunction is the result of isoHunt’s protracted court battle with the MPAA that started back in 2006. The court ordered the owner of isoHunt to start censoring the site's search engine based on a list of thousands of keywords provided by the MPAA, or cease its operations entirely in the U.S. The filter has now been implemented for a few months and prevents a list of film related phrases from showing up in the search results. In addition, isoHunt changed the appearance of its search engine for U.S. users, such as removing the list of most searched for phrases on the site. Although the site’s owner actively protested this form of commercial censorship, the court left isoHunt with no choice. However, isoHunt does not intend to be defeated so easily and has decided to take the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. There, it hopes to get the law on its side and quash the previous District Court ruling. The BitTorrent search engine has now filed (pdf) its opening appellate brief to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, requesting for better protection from such mass copyright lawsuits for both isoHunt and other search engines alike. The counsel of isoHunt argues that if the permanent injunction holds up, other search engines such as Google may face similar censorship threats as well. “This case is about the freedom to search on the internet and whether web search engines have to preemptively censor user generated links and torrent data files or be subject to keyword filtering,” said isoHunt counsel Ira Rothken. The appellate brief addresses the various misunderstandings and misjudgments that the defendant believes were made by the District Court. One of the questions is whether the keyword filter violates the First Amendment Free Speech rights. In addition, it is questioned “whether the District Court exceeded its territorial jurisdiction in ordering Defendants, Canadians operating in Canada, to ‘filter’ communications taking place entirely within Canada.” In other words, is a US court permitted to order censorship measures for a Canadian company? Among other things, isoHunt further questions whether it was rightfully excluded from the "safe harbor" provided by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and whether the common law that resulted from the Grokster verdict applied to a BitTorrent search engine. isoHunt’s Appeal BriefInstead of being equated to P2P applications that actually touch, distribute, or copy copyrighted material isoHunt should be seen a regular search engine. After all, most torrent files can be downloaded through Google as well, the defense argues. “Defendants showed that 95% of the torrents available on their system were also available on Google or Yahoo!,” the brief reads. The opposition against the permanent injunction does not mean that isoHunt is not willing to make concessions. Instead of a keyword filter, isoHunt’s owner would rather implement a system that bans torrent files based on “infringing” hashes. A similar system is already in use for a partnership the site has with the US Attorney General to ban child porn. The Ninth Circuit Appeal Court has now to decide whether the permanent injunction will stay in place or not. This decision will be a crucial one to the future of isoHunt and possibly other search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
Last month, the Patents County Court in the UK witnessed a 
In May this year the U.S. District Court of California | You are subscribed to email updates from TorrentFreak To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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