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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."

4 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. 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".