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

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."

Comments

Wow.

[Cryolithic]

Is this surprising at all? I don't think anyone would be shocked at this...

Re:Wow.

[gilesjuk]

What is surprising is that it seems that there is little or no involvement of the police or law enforcement agencies in this.

What appears to have happened is private companies have been granted permission to sample Internet traffic and this information is then made available to these dubious legal firms who just spam people with demands for payment.

Pointless.

[ledow]

And probably all rendered inadmissible in court because they were obtained illegally. Way to immunise a guy against an awful lot of evidence.

I know someone who was threatened by ACS:Law. As with all things serious, we researched it and discovered it was likely a scam, and this was WAY before they were news-worthy. The threat was ignored, except for a polite response, and nothing else happened. If you pay up, you're a moron. If you think this will stop such companies, there are no shortage of other morons willing to pick up such easy work, and they don't even need to be anywhere near a lawyer themselves.

DDOS, hacking, etc. isn't doing anything but legitimising their actions should they go to the mainstream media. Just ignoring their threats and/or inviting them to court, as any sensible person would do (and have done - ACS:Law are under investigation by various high-level UK legal authorities for legal irregularities) does infinitely more.

The guys an scamming idiot, but it's like a playground fight here - I can guess how much a moron he is without having to break into his personal emails and just because they might reveal he is an asshole doesn't mean that you've "won" anything against anti-piracy lawsuits or even against legal threats with zero evidence. All you've done is become nothing more than a publicity generator. How long before I see on the news: "Pirates hack into law-firm's servers, distribute private emails, law-firm says it's represents the mindset of the people they are chasing".

Re:Pointless.

[James_Duncan8181]

In UK law, this would be admissible in the court. Even if the police break the law obtaining evidence, it is still admissible. The punishment for the methods used is, unlike the US, a separate issue from admissibility.

...deliberately does not target TalkTalk or Virgin

[bobstay]

From TFA: "Email evidence that ACS:Law deliberately does not target two UK ISPs, TalkTalk and Virgin Media"

That's interesting. I'm with Virgin so that's nice to know. I wonder why these two?

Perhaps they don't cave as easily as the others.

Can you hear that?

[Torinir]

It's the sound of the copyright lobby having another heart attack.

When will the governments of the world finally say "Enough is enough" to these clowns?

It's not like all this litigation and threats are profitable or anything. I believe /. had an article on the fact that RIAA spent $16m to recover $391,000 in 2008. It was worse in 2007, when they spent $21m and only recovered $516,000. I know it's been all over the place at various points. Add in the frivolous lawsuits, DDoS attacks and harassment of uninvolved individuals, and the whole copyright lobby looks like an organized crime syndicate.