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UK Anti-Piracy Firm E-mails Reveal Cavalier Attitude Toward Legal Threats

Posted by timothy on from the who-would-have-thought dept.

Khyber writes "A recent DDoS attack against a UK-based anti-pirating firm, ACS:Law, has resulted in a large backup archive of the server contents being made available for download, [and this archive] is now being hosted by the Pirate Bay. Within this archive are e-mails from Andrew Crossley basically admitting that he is running a scam job, sending out thousands of frivolous legal threats on the premise that a percentage pay up immediately to avoid legal hassles."

6 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. The DOS did cause leak. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It was a chain of events, which was triggered by the DOS. According to what I read, in the process of countering the DOS, the default home page was briefly moved. This exposed a listing of the root directory, which happened to contain a backup image, which was rapidly grabbed by the DOSers.

  2. Re:has resulted? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The DDoS brought their servers down. They went down in flames so ACS:Law had to reinstall everything and their idiot admin exposed their entire website (mostly tons of confidential information) to the public. I downloaded it myself, the file is called backup-8.24.2010_12-58-28_acslawor and the shit I found in it was very scarry. If it wasn't for the DDoS, we wouldn't have gotten our hands on this file. Go die somewhere and stop posting shit you don't know anything about.

  3. Re:Wow. by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Informative
    No, actually, making false accusations in the hope of obtaining money is extortion. While the threat of legal action is specifically exempt, the threat of public embarrassment (accusing old people of downloading a gay porn video called "Army Fuckers") is not.

    Also, given that they claim to have "forensic computer evidence" when they do not (sorry, a date and time from a server log, without the hard disk in the server being removed to preserve the "evidence", and a proper chain of custody, is not "forensic evidence").

    This is why BritGov is investigating them.

  4. Re:Wow. - Extortion vs Coercion by commodore64_love · · Score: 4, Informative

    Perhaps there's a difference legally, but I don't see any difference for the common man.

    "Pay us $5000 or else be prosecuted," is extortion in my mind, especially since it involves money. The law firms are acting like members of The Family. "Pay us money or else we'll rough you up."

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  5. Correct legal terminology by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'd probably send a "fuck off" reply

    Please, if you are replying to a legal letter the correct response is "I refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram".

  6. Re:Privacy, there must be a law? by MattBD · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sued - probably not. But they might well be at risk of prosecution. This is covered by the Data Protection Act 1998, one of the principles of which states that appropriate technical and training measures need to be taken against granting unauthorised access to data. If they are in breach of this they could well be prosecuted by the Information Commissioner's Office. DPA also requires that the data subject has consented to the processing, which makes me wonder whether by passing user data on to ACS:Law without a court order, ISP's are breaching the Data Protection Act.