Control Freaks

Hot on the heels of the recent announcement in court that ACS:Law will stop chasing alleged file-sharers, comes an even more dramatic development. According to a document seen by TorrentFreak, both ACS:Law and their copyright troll client MediaCAT have just completely shut down their businesses. The news comes just days before a senior judge is due to hand down a ruling on the pair's activities.

According to a copy of a document obtained by TorrentFreak, which appears to have been sent out by Crossley during the last week, ACS:Law have not only stopped all file-sharing related work as previously reported, but actually shut down completely 31st January 2011. Furthermore, the document adds that ACS:Law's only remaining speculative invoicing client -- MediaCAT -- has also ceased trading.

Ahead of Judge Birss' judgement due on Tuesday, it would seem to some that Mr Crossley and Mr Bowden are attempting to avoid not just 'judicial scrutiny' but financial responsibility for the flawed claims that they foolishly decided to issue, consumer group BeingThreatened told TorrentFreak on hearing the news: They perhaps hoped that they might gain a judgement which they could use to threaten future letter recipients, instead their greed has led to the exposure of the significant and manifold flaws in the legal and evidential basis of the speculative invoicing scheme they employed.

...Read the full article

Offsite: Another dressing down

9th February 2011. See  article from  torrentfreak.com

The Patents Country Court began yet another hearing to announce how more than two dozen previously filed cases should be handled. Judge Birss QC slammed the scheme operated by the pair and denied them the opportunity to drop the cases.

The court decided that ACS:Law would not be allowed to drop the 26 cases against alleged file-sharers, an answer to one of the key questions from the earlier hearing. While the copyright holders are being given 14 days to join the action, it is doubtful they will. If this happens, all MediaCAT cases against these defendants will be dismissed in March.

Yet again ACS:Law and client MediaCAT were heavily criticized, with the Judge reiterating that both companies have a very real interest in avoiding public scrutiny because of the revenue they generated from wholesale letter writing.

Whether it was intended to or not, I cannot imagine a system better designed to create disincentives to test the issues in court, said the Judge. Why take cases to court and test the assertions when one can just write more letters and collect payments from a proportion of the recipients?

...Read the full article

Update: Lawyer suspended

21st January 2012. See  article from  torrentfreak.com  

Lawyer Andrew Crossley from the now defunct ACS:Law faced the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal over his disastrous foray into speculative invoicing -- the chasing down of alleged file-sharers with the sole aim of receiving cash settlements. In a surprising turn-around from previous displays of bravado, Crossley contested only one of the seven charges against him. The Tribunal suspended him from acting as a lawyer for 2 years.

Pub landlord Karen Murphy is defending her right to show English Premier League matches in her pub using a fully paid up subscription to Greek satellite TV.

In a decision that could change the way sports rights are sold across the continent, the European court of justice was advised that forbidding pubs from buying in cheap football coverage from overseas operators was incompatible with European free trade laws.

Murphy was taken to court by a company representing the league over her decision to import a Greek decoder to show the games rather than paying Sky, which holds the rights in the UK. She has fought the case all the way to the highest European court.

Juliane Kokott, one of the eight advocate generals of the European court of justice, advised that selling on a territory-by-territory basis represented a serious impairment of freedom to provide services , adding that the economic exploitation of the [TV] rights is  not undermined by the use of foreign decoder cards as the corresponding charges have been paid for those cards .

Because Murphy had paid the legitimate rights holder in Greece, she was entitled to receive its satellite broadcasts. Whilst those charges are not as high as the charges imposed in the UK there is ... no specific right to charge different prices for a work in each member state, Kokott said. Selling on a basis of territorial exclusivity was tantamount to profiting from the elimination of the internal market .

Kokott's opinion is not binding, but the Luxembourg court usually follows the advice of advocate generals. The court is expected to deliver its verdict later this year. As well as the criminal case against Murphy, civil cases against two importers of the decoder cards are being considered in parallel.

In order to neutralize Sweden's incoming implementation of the European Data Retention Directive, Bahnhof, the Swedish ISP and host of Wikileaks, will run all customer traffic through an encrypted VPN service.

Since not even Bahnhof will be able to see what its customers are doing, logging their encrypted traffic will be unrevealing.

In 2009, Sweden introduced the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED). The legislation gave rights holders the authority to request the personal details of alleged copyright infringers. This prompted Jon Karlung, CEO of ISP Bahnhof, to announce that he would take measures to protect the privacy of his customers. Shortly after Bahnhof ceased logging customer activities and with no logging there was no data to store or hand over.

Now, in the face of Sweden's looming implementation of the European Data Retention Directive which will force them to store data, Bahnhof will go a step further to protect the anonymity and privacy of their customers. Soon, every Bahnhof customer will be given a free anonymizing service by default. In our case, we plan to let our traffic go through a VPN service, Bahnhof's Jon Karlung told SR.

After infringing on thousands of artists' works, the big four music labels have agreed to collectively pay them $45M USD

After a long class action lawsuit dating back to 2008, filed on behalf of angry independent musicians, Warner Music, Sony BMG Music, EMI Music, and Universal Music have in effect acknowledged that they were engaging in copyright infringement.

As Michael Geist explains:

The  Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) members were hit with the lawsuit in October 2008, after artists decided to turn to the courts following decades of frustration with the rampant infringement. The claims arise from a longstanding practice of the recording industry in Canada, described in the lawsuit as exploit now, pay later if at all. It involves the use of works that are often included in compilation CDs (ie. the top dance tracks of 2009) or live recordings. The record labels create, press, distribute, and sell the CDs, but do not obtain the necessary copyright licences.

Instead, the names of the songs on the CDs are placed on a pending list , which signifies that approval and payment is pending. The pending list dates back to the late 1980s, when Canada changed its copyright law by replacing a compulsory licence with the need for specific authorization for each use. It is perhaps better characterized as a copyright infringement admission list, however, since for each use of the work, the record label openly admits that it has not obtained copyright permission and not paid any royalty or fee.

The music companies argued that they did not pirate tracks or commit copyright infringement because they hoped to pay artists at some point -- although they never did.

Unfortunately, the victory for the small artists is mostly symbolic. In Canada, the U.S., and abroad, major record labels plan to continue to sell music they've essentially pirated from unknown artists . The lawsuit does nothing to change this situation.

This irony of the situation was noted by the artists in the lawsuit, who wrote: The conduct of the defendant record companies is aggravated by their strict and unremitting approach to the enforcement of their copyright interests against consumers.

After a narrow vote, a Spanish parliamentary commission has rejected an anti file sharing bill. 

All of the main Spanish parties, except for Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialists rejected the so-called Sinde Bill, named after Culture Minister Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde.

The draft legislation would have set up a government commission which would have then provided courts with details of websites offering access to copyright-protected material such as music, movies, video games or software. A judge could then have ordered the closure of offending websites.

The bill sparked furious opposition from internet users who accused the government of violating the freedom of expression .

Techdirt noted Spain's somewhat more reasonable copyright laws than other parts of the world highlighting provisions that say that personal, non-commercial copying is not against the law and also says that third parties should not be liable for copyright infringement done by their users adding that obviously Hollywood hates this and that Spain's recently introduced reform package seemed like a checklist of the entertainment industry's wishes and that one of the recent Wikileaks diplomatic cable leaks showed that US diplomats played a role in pressuring the Spanish government to make these changes, at the behest of movie industry lobbyists .