Timeline of the "Speculative Invoicing Scheme"
Created by ykywi on Feb 4, 2011
Last updated: 02/11/11 at 05:57 AM
Tags: "ACS LAW" "DAVENPORT LYONS" "Speculative Invoicing" "Andrew Crossley"
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The Patents County Court yesterday stayed the hearing of actions for alleged illegal file-sharing, brought by London firm ACS:Law on behalf of its clients MediaCAT. His Honour Judge Birss refused to discontinue the cases in the manner requested by the claimants, saying the notices of discontinuance were an abuse of the court’s process and ‘avoid judicial scrutiny of the underlying claims’. The 26 cases were the first to be taken to court, after ACS:Law sent letters to thousands of consumers accusing them of illegally downloading copyrighted material over the internet. MediaCAT, a company that pursued alleged infringements on behalf of owners of copyrighted material, tried earlier this year through its lawyers to discontinue the proceedings, but the judge refused to allow the claims to be dropped because the copyright holders were not in court. Had the judge discontinued the cases, the copyright holders themselves could still have pursued the defendants. At that hearing Birss said: ‘I am getting the impression with every twist and turn since I started looking at these cases that there is a desire to avoid any judicial scrutiny.’ At yesterday’s hearing he said Media CAT and ACS:Law have a ‘very real interest in avoiding public scrutiny of the cause of action’ because, in parallel to the 26 court cases, a ‘wholesale letter-writing campaign’, based on the threat of legal action, was being conducted from which revenues were being generated. Birss noted that ACS:Law received 65% of the revenue from the letter-writing exercise and said: ‘Whether it was intended to or not, I cannot imagine a system better designed to create disincentives to test the issues in court. 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?’ The case has been listed again later this month for the owners of the copyrighted material in question to attend if they wish to pursue the actions. Otherwise the lawyers for the defendants will apply for the cases to be struck out and for the issue of costs to be considered. Michael Forrester, an intellectual property partner at national firm Ralli, which represents five of the defendants, said: ‘It was important for all the defendants in these matters that discontinuance was properly obtained so no collateral advantage could be obtained against them by anyone not a party to these proceeding’. He said the case concerned consumers who had explained that they could not possibly have uploaded or downloaded copyrighted protected material, as alleged against them, but who were still pursued. ‘The legal basis for the claims made against these alleged file sharers involves complex legal and technical principles. These are extremely difficult for a lay person to understand and can mean an innocent person is being pursued,’ said Forrester. Andrew Crossley, sole principal at ASC: Law closed down his firm on 3 February 2011, after withdrawing from the case in January, citing threats to his life over his involvement in the matter. He declined to comment. An SRA spokesman said the closure would not affect its ongoing investigation into the firm’s conduct. MediaCAT is also understood to have closed its doors. It is understood that the lawyers representing ACS:Law’s insurers were in court, though that has not been confirmed by them.
matters and wasted costs to be dealt with at 2pm on 8 February at Patents County Court, rearranged from 10:30am
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. In a statement handed to the Patents County Court earlier this month, ACS:Law owner Andrew Crossley delivered some good news for once. The anti-piracy business had all got too much for Crossley – he would now stop chasing alleged file-sharers.
Last year, an adult movie producer filed suit against 670 individuals who it claimed had infringed copyright on an obscure title. Now the entire case, which was presented by lawyer Evan Stone, has been dismissed. The plaintiffs were scathing about the court-appointed EFF attorneys, describing them as defenders of piracy. The case was dismissed with prejudice, which means that each of the John Doe defendants are completely off the hook. On 21st September 2010, a mass lawsuit was filed at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. The suit, which was filed by lawyer Evan Stone on behalf of Mick Haig Productions, targeted 670 BitTorrent users who allegedly shared an obscure adult movie titled Der Gute Onkel.
Watchdog ruled BT was not liable for emailing unencrypted customer details to controversial solicitors ACS:Law The ICO told the Guardian that BT cannot be held responsible for the action, in which a spreadsheet with confidential information including names, addresses and telephone numbers was sent in plain text by one of BT's staff to the solicitors' firm ACS:Law in connection with allegations of online copyright infringement. The spreadsheet, which by BT's own rules should have been encrypted, later leaked onto the web when ACS:Law's site came under attack from online activists.
Law firm and firm which represented copyright owners shut up shop ahead of judgement on Tuesday which could have left them open to damages
The London-based law firm at the heart of a huge row over illegal filesharing this week turned off its overworked photocopier, and vowed to no longer pursue the tens of thousands of Britons it suspects of copyright infringement.
The aftermath of ACS:Law's cessation in hounding file-sharers (see 'related articles' below) still leaves many questions unanswered, not least of which is whether identifying an IP address is really sufficient to put together a water-tight case of copyright infringement. On top of that it is still not clear whether MediaCat were actually in a position (as far as ownership of rights) to begin chasing file-sharers in the first place and this could prove to be costly if compensation is awarded or a class action for harassment against ACS:Law proves successful. The case on Monday lifted the lid off what was at least claimed by ACS:Law to be a weight of evidence, leaving it open to much closer scrutiny and despite Andrew Crossley's insistence that he had every intention of testing these cases in a court of law; few believed him before and even fewer after the event. There are also concerns that despite the claim he intends to cease activity in this area, he could pick up the gauntlet once more but under a different name or another solicitor pick up where he left off, using the same evidential paper chain. For that reason, this still remains open-ended and much rests on the shoulders of Judge Birss who is presently examining the case in more detail.
Illegal file-sharing is under the spotlight as 26 alleged net pirates appear in court but, in a bizarre twist, it is the law firm that brought the cases that appears to be on trial. Everyone loves a good, juicy court case and, in this respect, the case of MediaCAT versus 26 alleged illegal file-sharers, delivered in spades. Firstly the hearing on Monday heard little evidence about whether the alleged file-sharers were guilty but lots about the unconventional methods of MediaCAT and its law firm ACS: Law. The nature of the agreements made between MediaCAT and a series of copyright holders were under scrutiny as were the thousands of letters sent to those identified of violating their copyright by downloading pornographic films without permission. The absence of any of the copyright holders in court was perhaps the biggest elephant in the room. Then there were the unexpected witness statements on both sides. Shock statement The first, produced by defence barristers, appeared to show that while MediaCAT attempts to drop the 26 cases currently in court, letters were already being sent on their behalf to another swathe of people accused of downloading films without paying for them. It emerged that the firm behind the letters - non-legal outfit GCB Ltd - was set up by two former employees of ACS: Law - who had "mistakenly" written to one of the defendants as well as a whole bunch of new people. The revelations about GCB caught MediaCAT's barrister Tim Ludbrook by surprise and led to an adjournment just 10 minutes into the hearing as Mr Ludbrook questioned his instructing solicitor Andrew Crossley about what was going on. Then there was the statement from Andrew Crossley himself, delivered just as the court reconvened after lunch. Mr Crossley, who had been busy tapping away on his laptop during the morning, was absent in the afternoon. Instead he left Mr Ludbrook to read a statement in which he said he had decided to cease all such work, to concentrate on his other clients and the ongoing investigation of him by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. That too raised a few eyebrows. And to top it all, there was a clearly unamused judge, describing proceedings as "mind-boggling" and "unprecedented" and who said more than once that "he was not happy" with the way MediaCAT and ACS: Law had conducted its campaign and subsequent court case. Vital documents that should have been in court but were actually somewhere "in storage" seemed like a mere sideshow as events unfolded.
ACS:Law, the firm that sent thousands of letters to alleged file-sharers demanding they pay a £500 fine, has attempted to drop the 27 cases it brought to court on behalf of copyright holder MediaCAT, claiming it had received death threats. "I have ceased my work. I have been subject to criminal attack," said Andrew Crossley, the firm's founder and lead solicitor, in a statement to the Patents County Court in London yesterday, the Guardian reports. "My emails have been hacked. I have had death threats and bomb threats. It has caused immense hassle to me and my family." Judge Colin Birss criticised ACS:Law's conduct in the case, accusing it of trying to "avoid any judicial scrutiny" and comparing the number of letters it had sent to the cases it finally brought to court. "Copyright infringement is a serious matter, but this is just mindboggling," he said. The company is currently under investigation by the Solicitors Regulation Authority -- Crossley's third disciplinary tribunal -- over its letters. It's also being investigated by the Information Commissioner after the details of 8,000 Sky customers and 400 PlusNet users it was investigating were made publicly available in the wake of a DDoS attack on the company. A further twist in the case emerged when a different law firm, GCB Ltd, which was founded by two former ACS employees, also began issuing demands for payment on behalf of MediaCAT. One of the recipients of this new request was a defendant who had been told no further action would be taken, according to the BBC. MediaCAT is a holding firm acting for the real copyright holder, which the Guardian understands to be Sheptonhurst, a company owned by David Sullivan, owner of West Ham United football club and a stable of, er, gentlemen's publications, as well as Private, the UK's largest chain of sex shops. Judge Birss is considering stopping MediaCAT or whoever is representing it from making any more demands of alleged infringers until its claims are clarified. "It would be an extraordinary order to make, but these are extraordinary circumstances," he said. The court is expected to rule later this week on whether ACS:Law should be allowed to ditch the cases, and whether Sheptonhurst is forced to become a claimant.
Ralli are advising hundreds of consumers in relation to a group action for harassment following letters from ACS:Law accusing those individuals of illegal filesharing and copyright infringement. Ralli have been contacted by hundreds of consumers who wish to discuss whether letters sent to them alleging copyright infringement over “peer to peer” networks amount to harassment. The latest development in this long running matter was the hearing yesterday at the Patents County Court of 27 “peer to peer” test cases filed by ACS:Law for its client, Media CAT Limited
Media C.A.T Limited -v- others (24 January 2011) This hearing was held as a result of the adjournment from the hearing listed on 17 January 2011, the background to which can be read at: The hearing on 24 January 2011 was to address: (1) whether, as a matter of law, the court has jurisdiction to strike out the Notices of Discontinuance as an abuse of process; (2) if so, whether jurisdiction should be exercised; and (3) whether the Claimant needs permission from the court to discontinue.
As ACS:Law's legal mistakes mount, there was a recent story about how the company had passed on some collections efforts to a firm called GCB, but the details suggested another total screwup. People tracked GCB back to an accounting firm, which quickly put on their website that while GCB was formed by it, it "appears to be being misused by some third party," and that it was "taking urgent steps" to end this. The details suggested some odd maneuverings: When PC Pro spoke to McLean Reid partner John Champion, he told us that GCB had been registered at that address on behalf of one his clients, David Fisher. Champion said that Fisher had lent his dormant company to an associate, who had been collecting the file-sharing money without his knowledge. "He just decided to help a friend out," Champion said. "He wanted a dormant company, and he said 'Oh I've got one that's not doing anything, you can have that'." "I know Dave Fisher is put down as a director [of GCB], [but] this activity was done without him knowing what activity was happening," Champion added. "I think he's taking steps to make sure all that money's been repaid." The "friend"? Yeah, according to PCPro, it turns out that it was Andrew Crossley, the guy from ACS:Law. Either way, it seems that all this attention has scared Fisher off. An anonymous tipster alerts us to the news that if you call the phone number that GCB tells you to call to pay up, you get the following message: "If you have received a letter from GCB Ltd please disregard this letter as GCB is no longer pursuing the matter stated in the letter."
It was rumoured in the forums but now it is official, Gallant Macmillan are no longer representing Ministry of Sound. In a terse letter to a person accused, Gallant Macmillan the controversial Law firm with links to the Infamous ACS:LAW has announced that it is no longer being instructed by Ministry of Sound, ALTHOUGH it also states that Ministry of Sound are in the process of instructing another firm and that the recipient would “likely to hear from in due course” Although this sounds rather sinister, it may well be bluster, it is hard to think of what Law firm would pick up the Poison Chalice of further “Speculative Invoicing” cases.
BT is seeking a moratorium on legal applications to obtain details of its customers who are alleged to have illegally shared files online. The firm outlined its stance following a high-profile data breach at London law firm ACS:Law last week. The leak saw thousands of customers' details from various ISPs - including BT-owned PlusNet - published online. BT said that it wanted a temporary halt on all new and existing applications until a "test case" could be heard. Continue reading the main story Related stories Lawyers to continue piracy fight BT embroiled in porn list breach It was originally to be heard today but was adjourned until 11 January 2011 following a hearing at London's High Court.
DDoS Attack by 4Chan leads to MASSIVE leak of emails by ACS:LAW, exposing many lies and deceits and connections with the other law firms involved. Reported to the Information Commissioners Office and the Solicitors Regulation Authority
are revealed to be joining the fray by sending out letters on behalf of the Ministry of Sound
NPO Before CMW dated 7th July 2010 between MediaCAT and Be, BT, SKY, Plusnet, Telefonica, Zen "AND UPON reading the written evidence relating to this application and it appearing that there is a prima facie case that each of the subscribers associated with the IP addresses listed in the Schedule to this Order have copied the Applicant’s work(s) on to his or her personal or office computer (the “Work(s)”) without the Applicant’s permission for the purpose of making it available via file sharing websites for third parties to download, which may give rise to a claim for copyright infringement"
s one Solicitor leaves yet another rear’s it’s ugly unwanted head into the “Speculative Invoicing” World. The idea that you can “Generate alternative revenue streams” for badly selling tosh by claiming that the reason it did not sell well was that people downloaded it, not that it was a piece of crap that no one wanted. Gallant MacMillan claim to have sent out 7000 letters regarding the “Ministry of Sound – The Annual” Album. They are demanding £250 – £300 for each alleged infringement
Tilly Bailey and Irvine who started to emulate ACS:LAW in sending out “Speculative Invoices” to people asking them to “Pay up or be sued” have apparently halted their operations as it appears that the negative publicity is harming their other businesses.
are caught vandalizing their entry on Wikipedia, trying to erase all references of their letter writing, and then trying to cut and paste copyrighted material into Wikipedia which had to be removed by the moderator Rlandmann.
contact the SRA to inform them they are withdrawing from sending out any more letters.
Contacts the SRA in connection with Tilly Bailey Irvine breaching Solicitors Code of Conduct
said that the problem “has to be dealt with and is disgraceful,” adding, “If these firms really are law firms, they are bringing their whole profession into disrepute.” Lord Clement-Jones said “we learn of new entrants to the hall of infamy, such as Tilly Bailey & Irvine the second law firm which I do not think anybody has mentioned in addition to ACS:Law…………. the activities of these two law firms (ACS:LAW and Tilly Bailey Irvine) and Logistep are an embarrassment to the rest of the creative rights industry.
NPO Before CMW dated 17th February 2010 between MediaCAT and Be, BT, SKY, Entanet, KCOM, Plusnet, Telefonica O2, Thus, Zen
Tilly Bailey Irvine successfully obtain a court order against ISP BT who, as usual simply roll over and comply, handing over the personal details of their customers to Tilly Bailey Irivine in super-quick time
Lord Lucas stated “"The cost of defending one of these things is reckoned to be £10,000. You can get away with asking for £500 or £1,000 and be paid on most occasions without any effort having to be made to really establish guilt. It is straightforward legal blackmail."
BBC Radio 4's 'You and Yours' cover the ACS:Law claims, Andrew Crossley sounds hesitant against the challenge of a letter recipient and states that people are under no obligation to pay, in contrast to the nature of the message in the letters.
“Beingthreatened” and “ACS_LAW_SCAMMERS”(What becomes ACS:BORE) replace it within hours
ACS:Law formally register with the ICO under the obligations laid down in the DPA more than a week after these letters are sent (and more than 6 months from the first NPO granting them access to private data). Davenport Lyons appear to back out of all previous cases. No further correspondence has been received from DL to date
ACS:Law formally register with the ICO under the obligations laid down in the DPA more than a week after these letters are sent (and more than 6 months from the first NPO granting them access to private data). Davenport Lyons appear to back out of all previous cases. No further correspondence has been received from DL to date
It seems things kept getting worse for Davenport Lyons and DigiProtect, who have teamed up to threaten an awful lot of people that they need to pay up to avoid getting sued for file sharing, usually on extremely flimsy evidence. That means, way too often, the letters are received by innocent people who wonder why they should pay £500 to avoid being sued for something they never did. It certainly feels like a good old fashioned protection racket, and a UK consumer group has now complained to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA) in the UK, noting that a number of innocent folks have been apparently bullied by Davenport Lyons into paying up just to avoid being sued for something they never did. The group points out: Davenport Lyons' letters to alleged file sharers: make incorrect assertions about the nature of copyright infringement; ignore the evidence presented in defense; and increase the level of compensation claimed over the period of correspondence. In addition, the letters threaten, incorrectly, that failing to properly secure an internet connection is grounds for legal action.
it appears that Atari, which had hired Davenport Lyons (and whose games were part of the original story of falsely accused people) has now stopped the anti-piracy campaign, canceled requests for identification on various IP addresses and apparently dropped Davenport Lyons in the process. It seems Atari realized that the campaign was generating an awful lot of negative publicity. Shaking down innocent people can do that, apparently
Two major UK ISPs have been ordered by the High Court to hand over the identities of several thousand alleged file-sharers. BT has confirmed it is involved while Virgin Media was less direct in admitting that lawyers Davenport Lyons, working with Topwear Inc., are about to start threatening thousands more people. US game developer Topware Interactive, the people behind the now infamous ‘Dream Pinball‘ affair, are about to turn up the heat. Operating through London lawyers Davenport Lyons, they have managed to convince the High Court to send out an order demanding that ISPs in the UK start to hand over the details of “several thousand” alleged pirates. According to Samknows, BT, one of the UK’s largest ISPs and like many, currently caught up in the middle of a Davenport Lyons versus P2P battle, confirmed it had been ordered to hand over details of alleged copyright infringing file-sharers. It could not confirm whether they had already handed over the details or not. However, BT was surprised at the “strong arm” tactics being employed by the games industry, in contrast to the fairly civilized warnings currently touted by the BPI, which were toned-down under duress. “It does seem a much more strong arm approach compared to the music industry,” said the BT spokesman. “However, it is only one company pursuing a limited number of miscreants at the moment. I doubt the music industry will follow suit as the potential numbers are too great, but who knows.” Virgin Media was a little more slippery in its response but reading between the lines it seems obvious they are involved too. While noting that they take the privacy of their customers very seriously, if faced with a court order to hand over names and addresses, they simply have to comply. Virgin Media also indicated that it prefers the ‘educational’ approach, i.e the compromise reached between ISPs and the BPI recently. Virgin media spokesman told Samknows:
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