Bully anti-piracy lawyers fined and suspended

and:

"Andrew Crossley (instigator of this embarrassing debacle), is due to appear before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal on 18th August 2011. The charges that he faces are:

- Allowing his independence to be compromised.
- Acted contrary to the best interests of his client.
- Acted in a way to diminish the trust placed by the public in the legal profession.
- Giving false statements to the court; and
- Using his position to take unfair advantage of others.

The decision will not be known until October 2011."

http://www.bitterwallet.com/len-dast...ases-end/47509

normal country fix douchebags

ACS LAW fucked themselves real bad over this stunt they pulled. They could have been a very succesfull law company because they had a pretty good profile before the letters they started sending out demanding money from alleged file sharers.




ACS:Law was a United Kingdom law firm specialising in intellectual property law.[1] Prior to 2009, its most notable case was the defence of a British national accused of public indecency in Dubai.[2] The firm is best known for its actions against persons allegedly infringing copyright through peer-to-peer file sharing. The firm ceased pursuing file sharers in January 2011[3] and ceased trading on 3rd February 2011.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACS:Law



On 21 September 2010, the website of ACS:Law was subjected to a DDoS attack suspected to be coordinated by online group Anonymous as part of Operation Payback. When asked about the attacks, Crossley said: "It was only down for a few hours. I have far more concern over the fact of my train turning up 10 minutes late or having to queue for a coffee than them wasting my time with this sort of rubbish."[18][19]

When the site came back online, a 350MB file which was a backup of the site was visible to anyone for a short period of time. The backup, which included copies of emails sent by the firm, was downloaded and made available as a torrent.[20][21] Some of the emails contained unencrypted Excel spreadsheets, listing the names and addresses of people that ACS:Law had accused of illegally sharing media. One contained over 5,300 Sky broadband customers whom they had accused of illegally sharing pornography,[22][23] while another contained the details of 8,000 Sky customers and 400 Plusnet customers accused of infringing the copyright on music by sharing it on peer-to-peer networks.[24] This alleged breach of the Data Protection Act became part of an investigation into ACS:Law by the Information Commissioner's Office.[25]

In May 2011, ACS:Law was fined £1000 for the privacy breach, with the Information Commissioner Christopher Graham commenting: "Were it not for the fact that ACS:Law has ceased trading so that Mr Crossley now has limited means, a monetary penalty of £200,000 would have been imposed, given the severity of the breach." Graham criticised ACS:Law for having computer security measures that "were barely fit for purpose in a person's home environment, let alone a business handling such sensitive details." The consumer group Which? described the £1000 fine as "paltry".[26]

God you're nauseating.

.

Did I read that right.... they didn't get into trouble for actually suing or threating to sue anyone, but rather the misconduct of the action taken.

this of course did wonders for their attempt to argue that people should be held responsible for their unsecured wifi.

if they could secure their own servers and they were a million dollar corporation

how could a house hold be expected to do better.

Wow, you have described pretty much every lawyer in the United States. It reads like a legal resume, or bio.





.

I do not like file sharing specially when you see ripped sites and other peoples work be it porn or mainstream all over the net for free. It is not right, but I do not agree at all by the way they send out these bullshit letters demanding money. Its just another money making scheme which puts them in the same boat as file sharers in my eyes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACS:Law

Quality of evidence against suspected copyright infringers

ACS:Law identify suspected copyright infringement through peer-to-peer file sharing by the IP address of the internet user's connection. However, ACS:Law's use of Logistep's technology has been the subject of an investigation by Which?, who said that "innocent people are being accused".[33][34] Following the batch of 10,000 letters sent in January 2010, over 150 people contacted Which? saying that they had been falsely accused.[11] In an interview with The Guardian, one person who had received letters from ACS:Law commented: "ACS:Law act as investigator, judge and jury without any regard for who their actions affect."[35]

Researchers in Washington DC found that the technology often results in false positives.[36] ACS:Law responded saying "we are happy that the information we get is completely accurate".[11] A study by the ISP TalkTalk showed that unsecured wi-fi networks can easily be accessed without permission, leading to innocent users being accused of activity carried out by a third party.[37] Andrew Heaney, spokesman for TalkTalk, explained "the lack of presumption of innocence and the absence of judicial process combined with the prevalence of wi-fi hacking will result in innocent people being [blamed]".

Criticism from the music industry

ACS:Law has been criticised by representatives of the music industry. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) said "our view is that legal action is best reserved for the most persistent or serious offenders - rather than widely used as a first response", adding that they would not be adopting the tactics of ACS:Law.[42]

actually the misconduct was the action of how they sued people and threated to sue people

Using his position to take unfair advantage of others. = sending threatening letters to potentially innocent people

Giving false statements to the court = misrepresenting the validity of the evidence (hiding false positives)

hey gideon, i think i hear a p2p program calling your name. go away freetard.

Hate to say it but so far I've only seen ONE approach to P2P piracy that's putting fear into content thieves. Steele, like him or not, is only of only a few guys making a dent while also making his clients money instead of costing them money. People who hate him are usually) 1) other layers, or 2) content thieves. Not surprising that those used to a free lunch don't like what he's done.

When I see stories about Steele in the mainstream it's interesting to read the comments after... some people don't like "free" being threatened and complain, while others say they completely understand that porn companies own their property and it isn't right to swipe it. No different from Hollywood content being swiped.

seriously you do realize john steele is the guy putting gay porn in rar files for music and software

and then suing people who mistakenly download his clients shit.

there are tens of thousands of people who use the torrents just like i do as nothing more than a vcr who are pissed off at that bullshit move.

That has absolutely nothing to do with stopping content theft of his clients

the people in question are not even looking for his clients shit, and they are getting a pay us or else letter.

I hope gideon finds out he has a rare form of ass cancer while on his way home from a funeral for a loved one.

Aye, but it doesn't say the action of mass suing was the issue.... but rather his direct conduct, related to the threatening of innocent people without evidence to support the action, is the issue.

Meaning, if they had real proof and mass sued, it wouldn't be an issue.

you do realize that real proof means going after each person individually

getting access to their hardware and doing an investigation to prove that the file in question was actually on their machine

you can sue on mass and have real proof the two things are mutually exclusive.

You just made up your own meaning for the word proof, funny....

When you mass sue, you're doing it individually, you're just filing it all at once, it's not like they did a class action lawsuit against the people.

You do not need access to the computer to prove the person pirated, that's just silly. At that, if it was needed, it would be after the case started, thus they had proof and need more.

This case is not about them mass suing, it's about the misconduct of the action, related to them going after innocent people, without 'any' proof or the evidence they did have, was bogus - so they couldn't back it up.

How do you accidently download gay porn?

when you group everyone together, grabbing ip address and then sending letters to all those people demanding money

you can't help but catch innocent people in that dragnet.

the misconduct is a consequence of mass suing.

if they handled each case one at a time, collected the evidence FIRST and then went forward you don't extort money from innocent people.

it was the order that was the problem

1. get ip address
2. ****
3. send out letter demanding payment
4. sue people who didn't pay

it the skipping over the getting proof that they actually commited the crime (#2) was the problem.

http://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1025...light=honeypot

This is the consequences of greed, nothing else.

You can twist it how you like... end of the day, he's not in trouble for mass suing, this case is not about him mass suing, even if it's what gave him the ability to do it, it's not what he is in trouble for, it's not what is in question, it's not part of the case at all.

your original statement was

which i responded

it doesn't matter if you sued 100 people or 1 hiding the false positives is giving false statements to the court and that would be the suing people with bogus info.


the same is true for sending threatening letters to potentially innocent people.
it doesn't matter if you do it 1000 or just once it is the threatening to sue people.

If you can prove it was mislabled, then so you are fine.

Just so you know, you really don't need to keep reposting Torrentfreak.com articles. That's all you seem to ever do. Is that your site?

Gideon belongs on GFY as much as a member of mensa belongs at the special olympics.

Nah, that sites too successful for an idiot like gideon.

If he spent a quarter of the time he spends on this shit actually working he would have the money to buy the content he consumes.

you do realize that you just argued for a legal form of extortion

you have to fly to california, hire a lawyer, spend tens of thousands defending yourself

or
you can pay the fine of 1.5K.

the fact is there is no doubt it mislabel

the demand notice



actually list the content the person was trying to download

john steele is doing the same thing as the UK lawyers hiding the fact honeypoted the infringement when they request the ip address info.

i do buy all the content i consume

i just refuse to pay twice for shit i already bought.

I am just saying, as an American I am use to it!
Hell the police do it all the time. You have to prove you were not speeding.
Mistaken identity puts several in jail all the time.

Maybe people are sued every day on BS crap. AND NO you do not automaticly get attorney fees, or days worth of work, just depends on the state.

What is insane is how much time he spends arguing this stuff to people who not only don't care, but that are more likely to not agree with him or be persuaded to agree with him,... and on top of it all, its not like it benefits any business interests he may have (or claim to have).

the point is do you think the request for the ip address would have gone thru if they told the judge that they had tricked the person into downloading their gay porn

of course not

They completely hid that fact.

That the significant difference

for it to be the same the police would have to know their radar gun reports speeds 20 km more then normal and still use it to convict you.