Tuesday, January 18, 2011

TorrentFreak Email Update

TorrentFreak Email Update

Senior Judge ‘Astonished’ By Actions Of ACS:Law in File-Sharing Cases

Posted: 18 Jan 2011 12:49 AM PST

Following a review of all outstanding active ACS:Law cases, last month Judge Birss QC found that a total of 27 had been filed, many of them displaying what he described as "unusual features". In order to decide how to progress these cases he ordered a directions hearing to take place at the Patents Court in London yesterday.

As detailed in TorrentFreak’s report last evening, things did not go well, with ACS:Law again managing to surprise even seasoned legal professionals with their behavior.

Today, with the help of consumer group BeingThreatened.com, who were present at yesterday’s hearing and have been supporting victims of ACS:Law predatory lawsuit activities, we look at what happened and where the cases go from here.

Late last week, ACS:Law business partner MediaCAT, the middle-man company who claim to have rights over dozens of movies, tried to pull the rug from under yesterday’s proceedings. Last Thursday, with only a single working day left to go, it wrote to the 27 file-sharing defendants informing them it would discontinue the cases against them.

The defendants, some of them prepared to head off to court on Monday, reasonably thought their case was now over and that they did not have to attend. However, thanks again to ACS:Law’s apparent misreading of the law, MediaCAT were actually not authorized to drop the claims without the court’s permission.

The problem lies in the strange fact that MediaCAT aren’t the copyright holders of the works they are using to extract payments out of file-sharers. Another company, the David Sullivan-owned Sheptonhurst Ltd is believed to be, but even that is yet to be proven.

It was at this point that confusion set in with MediaCAT’s counsel, Tim Ludbrook. The man-in-the-know, ACS:Law owner Andrew Crossley, wasn’t in court on the back of claims of a “family car accident” at the weekend and had simply ordered Ludbrook to seek an adjournment of proceedings. This is where events took yet another turn for the unusual.

While MediaCAT had indeed tried to discontinue the cases against the 27 alleged file-sharers, last Thursday ACS:Law told the court that they intended to refile them all at a later date, apparently after correcting the numerous errors that were present when they were originally filed.

Noting that five of the defendants had already filed defenses, Judge Birss QC said he was “astonished” at the refiling notion and described it as “unprecedented in his personal experience and career at the bar.”

At his discretion the Judge allowed one of the defendants to have his case discontinued but refused 26 others noting complaints that by filing and then discontinuing cases, Crossley had obtained an unfair advantage by seeing defenses.

Another allegation was levelled at Crossley in court by defense lawyers, one which raised eyebrows with Judge Birss QC. With reference to the earlier Solicitors Regulatory Authority investigation into his affairs, it was alleged that Andrew Crossley is “involved in a champertous agreement” in breach of the solicitors’ code of conduct.

The actual agreement between MediaCAT and Sheptonhurst was produced which showed, to the apparent surprise of the Judge, that ACS:Law is contracted to take 65% of the revenue and that rights to the movies in question had been allocated purely to prosecute and that no exploitable rights had been transferred.

Defense lawyers pushed for an order to force Andrew Crossley to file a defense against the champerty, code of conduct and civil procedure rule breaches. At this stage the Judge refused – the issue will be dealt with at a later hearing.

For MediaCAT, however, the situation they find themselves in with ACS:Law is nothing short of a mess. Lawyers representing some of the defendants are seeking ‘wasted costs’ “off the scale”, a reference to costs which are punitive and a reflection that there has been wrongdoing.

"MediaCAT's attempt to discontinue all twenty-seven cases and pay costs to the defendants shows how fundamental ACS:Law now consider the problems in these claims,” said BeingThreatened.com spokesperson James Bench.

“It has been clear since the speculative invoicing scheme first made an unwelcome appearance in this country, that there were massive and fatal flaws in the model. It does not provide a solution to copyright infringement, it is apparent that the evidence is untrustworthy and the laws and precedent which ACS:Law believe underpin its work do not support their position. It is good news that Judge Birss has seen fit to put this practice under the spotlight and expose it for the unsupportable and flawed legal shambles it is".

The Judge said that two further hearings are likely to be required. One to resolve the problems with the joining of the copyright owner, and another to discuss the procedural failings and decide on ‘wasted costs’.

The hearing in the remaining cases will recommence 24th January.

Article from: TorrentFreak, Covering Torrent Sites and News since 2005.

Arrested Pirate Party Member Becomes Tunisian State Secretary

Posted: 17 Jan 2011 01:11 PM PST

tunesian pirateStarting last month thousands of Tunisian citizens joined protests on the streets against the harsh economic conditions, political repression and increasing levels of censorship by their government.

The protests reached their height a week ago, and in the process several Pirate Party members and other activists were arrested. Last Friday former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali eventually caved in, signed his resignation and quickly fled the country.

Tunisia soon went on to form a transitional government to be led by Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi. Today, several significant changes were announced, including the release of all political prisoners, political freedom and the abolishment of the Government’s information ministry.

Ghannouchi also named the members of his transitional government, which includes Slim Amamou, one of the Pirate Pary members arrested only a few days ago. Amamou is a well-known blogger and activist in Tunisia and played an important role in the ‘online’ revolt against the former government.

Amamou has been appointed as State Secretary for Sports and Youth, and his appointment is most likely the result of his good reputation in the online community, which played an important role in the revolution that unfolded in Tunisia.

On Twitter Amamou, who runs a team of software developers at his company Alixys, describes himself as “against censorship, against the intellectual property rights, for net neutrality,” all topics that are dear to Pirate Parties worldwide.

TorrentFreak has been briefly in touch with Amamou, who is understandably very excited about this appointment, and we will conduct an exclusive feature interview with him in the days to come. Meanwhile, we congratulate all the Tunisians who stood up for their rights, both on- and offline, and hope that their strength leads to a better future.

Update: There is some confusion about the State Secretary / Minister title in Tunisia. Formerly Tunisia had no State Secretary of Youth and Sports, only a minister. However, there are reports that Amamou is a junior/deputy minister instead of a full minister. As the dust settles in this will hopefully be cleared up. For now we choose the safe option and go for State Secretary. Excuses for the confusion.

Article from: TorrentFreak, Covering Torrent Sites and News since 2005.

ACS:Law Try To Drop File-Sharing Cases, Fail To Appear in Court

Posted: 17 Jan 2011 10:01 AM PST

Last month ACS:Law made a messy attempt at achieving default judgments in the Patents County Court against 8 internet connection owners who the company claimed infringed or allowed others to infringe copyright.

Representing MediaCAT, a middle-man company for movie companies involved in so-called "pay up or else" schemes in the UK, ACS:Law made a number of errors in their presentation and all 8 defaults were denied.

Following a review of all outstanding ACS:Law cases, Judge Birss QC found a total of 27 had been filed, many of them displaying what he described as “unusual features”. In order to decide how these cases should be handled in future, he ordered a directions hearing to take place today at the Patents Court in London.

Despite ACS:Law previously stating that they have no fear of taking cases to court, last week the 27 defendants started receiving new letters, some of them arriving as late as Saturday. The letter informed them that their case had been dropped. For those who have followed the antics of ACS:Law and their clients for the past several years, the news came as absolutely no surprise.

Despite this last minute manoeuvring, the hearing ordered by Judge Birss QC would go ahead today as planned.

This morning at 10:30 GMT the hearing got under way, with the announcement that the Judge would at the moment be refusing to accept the discontinuation of the cases. Lawyers for some of the defendants present said they would be seeking costs.

MediaCAT then informed the Court they were unsure what to do now. Why? Because even at this late stage ACS:Law had managed to introduce yet another ‘unusual feature’ into these cases. Citing “an unfortunate family car accident at the weekend” as a reason, ACS owner Andrew Crossley failed to turn up in Court.

Journalists present in the Court said they intend to confirm the validity of Crossley’s claim.

After discussion about whether or not MediaCAT are even licensed to bring these claims to court on their own, the hearing was eventually adjourned until 24th January.

Tomorrow we will report in depth on the more technical points of today’s hearing.

A reporter from the Court told TorrentFreak: “Crossley looks in serious trouble, both defence barristers are seeking all costs, including ‘wasted costs’ and order to show ‘due cause’ both of which require serious misconduct in order to be awardable; prima facie case put forward on that basis.”

Crossley will now have one week to recover from the weekend’s mishaps in order to participate fully on the 24th and help the Court understand the tangled web he and MediaCAT have created.

But not before they’ve tangled it up just a little bit more for good measure.

Last week, continuing the well-worn theme of conducting their business in the most confusing and controversial way possible, the MediaCAT and ACS:Law circus threw out yet another curved ball.

People who had outstanding pay-up-or-else letters from ACS:Law were informed by post that the law firm is no longer instructed by MediaCAT to send out letters or to enter into correspondence in file-sharing cases. ACS:Law would only get involved if there was a need to take legal action against people who refuse to pay, or so the letter claimed.

The new kid on the block, a previously dormant company called GCB Limited – whose sphere of businesses is reported as ‘Transport via Railways’ – was introduced to letter recipients by ACS:Law with orders that people should send payments to them now, not ACS:Law or MediaCAT.

Enclosed with the letters were copies of misleading court rulings, one of which – in breach of copyright – was taken directly from the BBC website.

Adding to the confusion, the return mailing address is for a firm of accountants called McLean Reid who were originally responsible for registering GCB Limited as a company. TorrentFreak contacted Mclean Reid to find out how they fit into all this.

“We have no connection with ACS:Law or MediaCat and have never had,” they told us. “We were the registered office of GCB until we became aware of this matter when we terminated the relationship.”

A worrying notice quickly appeared on the McLean Reid website.

GCB Ltd was formed by us and appears to be being misused by some third party. We are taking urgent steps to ensure that our name is not in any way abused in this connection.

“GCB Ltd was a dormant company formed by us at the request of a client, we were the registered office for convenience,” McLean Reid said in a further statement.

“Our client thought he was helping out an 'associate' of his by allowing that 'associate' to use this dormant company for a business venture (which we knew nothing about). Neither we, nor our client, knew it was going to be used for this purpose.”

According to a report on Consumer Action Group today, GCB Limited has just moved to a new address and is being run by a Mr David Fisher.

While we wait for the new directions hearing, there will probably be people reading this article who are in receipt of a letter from GCB Limited and are wondering what to do now.

Today, TorrentFreak called the GCB Limited ‘Payment Center’ telephone number in the UK to ask a few questions. We were greeted by a recorded message which stated that the letters people had received should be disregarded as GCB Limited were “no longer pursuing the matter stated in the letter.”

So, the advice is simple.

Don’t worry. Ignore these letters but keep them safe somewhere. But most importantly don’t pay them or any subsequent companies or law firms a single penny, at least until Judge Birss QC gets to the bottom of this whole sorry episode on the 24th.

Tune in tomorrow for our report on the more technical points of today’s hearing.

Update: Mclean Reid have issued another statement in response to a question from TorrentFreak about what they intend to do with any payments they may receive for GCB Limited.

We will take legal advice, however our intention is to return any post to sender should we receive any.

We are advised that the Director has taken the decision stop further trading through GCB Ltd in respect of alleged copyright infringement. We believe that he has moved swiftly to minimise the damage to his name in taking this decisive action. We are further advised that he was unaware of the background involved in these claims or the precise nature of the claims.

To that end anyone receiving letters from or on behalf of GCB Ltd in respect of copyright infringement should ignore these letters. We have been assured that no further action will be taken.

Article from: TorrentFreak, Covering Torrent Sites and News since 2005.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)