ACS:Law copyright file sharing claims, Gallant Macmillan - and probably some others along the way...

[andydd]

That is stupid as the DVD is allowing for digital copy or summing will look it up more later on one of the discs

 

99% of DVD's have CSS copy protection on them so they can't be copied, go try copy a DVD onto your hard drive and it wont be playable, it will be all garbage.

 

Of course since the invention of DeCSS over 10 years ago, there has been plenty of software to enable you to work round this but still, technically illegal.

 

There have been some new DVD's that also contain a digital copy for use on your PC or mobile, (new Family Guy for example), but there are still strict rules on how many times it can be copied, etc and it still (in theory) for your own personal use.

 

Andy

[andydd]

These are the DVDs l mean so how can l be accused of sharing something when l have a legal copy for my i pod or mp3 player based on the one l have brought?

 

I'm not sure what you mean ?. The 'portable' copy including on the disc is only for your own personal use and I think there are DRM restrictions on it too.

 

But theoritically if you were to place that 'copy' into your P2P program shared folder then that would be deemed illegal as you would then be sharing it with potentially millions of others....But then again the big video/record companies arnt involved with ACS, its mostly just obscure euro-crap music/naff games/porn companies.

 

Andy

[andydd]

yes it the portable copy l am on about. How can l know if l have put one of those onto my P2P program when l dont even know if l have a p2p program?

 

Well, have you installed a P2P program on your PC ?

 

(P2P) Peer to Peer programs are used to share files across the internet, popular ones are Bittorrent, UTorrent, etc. These are the programs (and others) snooped on by ACS's 'investigators'. Your IP address will be available and this is what they use to track you down, via your ISP and court orders requiring your ISP to divulge your address.

 

It is possible though to spoof or hide the IP address shown on P2P programs, perhaps showing a nonsensical IP addy or more worryingly a valid IP addy of a completely innocent user.

 

The P2P program will set up a folder and anything placed within it (wether placed there by you or whether it a file 'downloaded' by you) will be available to other P2P users, this applies whether it is the whole file or if it is one you are still downloading.

 

Andy

[andydd]

As has been said many times before, a person doesn't have to be at their computer/laptop, even in the Country at the time as file sharing can happen without human intervention. It is also uploading (e.g. making the file available for others to share) that is the offence and not downloading. Under copyright, a file can be downloaded for 24 hours for sampling before being deleted, hence why they are not coming after people for downloading, but uploading.

 

An IP address is like a lock, each person has their own key, but they use the same lock. Even if a person was away at the time with their laptop does not mean the uploading did not occur at the account holders property in their absence using another laptop or desktop.

 

So, nothing that you state could be used as a defence.

 

There is a doubt over the evidence though as IP addresses can be spoofed or hickjacked with the account holders knowledge. There is also the unreliability of the way IP data is collected, P2P web sites that store the links to the files (trackers) add random fake IP addresses into the trackers to ward off anti-P2P companies, etc.

 

..and on top of that it is quite possible to use your PC as a proxy, (i.e I can quite happily be sitting on a sunny beach on the other side of the world, and yet still remotely log in to my home PC and work on it.), so it would be unwise if someone was just to rely upon a 'I was on holiday' defence.

 

Andy

[andydd]

I dont think l have installed it but in my local paper last week there is a articale where these leaches have sent a elderly man a bill for downloading a music file he has never heard of........................................The best bit is he was out of the country with proof when the file was downloaded with his laptop as he was working away but the leeches are swearing blind there info is correct.

 

Could the microsoft file sharing be a p2p site. The only reason i am asking is l am sharing photos with family members via that system.

 

As pointed out (by me and others), being out of the country would prove nothing. MS File sharing doesn't use P2P, bear in mind P2P by itself isn't illegal, it just happens that the majority of P2P traffic is copyrighted material, but it is used by others for legitimate ues, in fact the early iPlayer used a P2P system but since been ditched, although in common to popular Torrent sites it did stay running in the background 'sharing' stuff that you were (relatively) unaware of.

 

Andy

[andydd]

It will do until The SRA or similar acts as the chances of a case going to Court are minimal.

 

The are sailing very close to the wind, but according to them within the boundaries of English Civil Law.

 

 

..and a similar company is being questioned now in the US

 

BBC News - US pirate hunters target movies

 

Andy

[andydd]

Rite so if l was to copy the disc in case l lost it then being a family movie played it at a family nite then l would be breaking the law.

 

In theory (unlike CDs) DVDs are uncopyable*, and even attempting to circumvent the copy protection is illegal (at least in the US anyway, not 100% sure about the UK).

 

*As many of you know, the encryption was broken many years ago by DeCSS, there was legal action taken against its inventor who was initially found guilty (in Norway) but the verdict was later overturned.

 

Most DVD's and some software do explicitly say 'Do not make copies', but the law on making personal copies isnt 100% clear, there was much opposition to VHS recorders initially and who remembers 'Home Taping is Killing Music', or am I showing my age ?

 

Andy

[andydd]

OK I admit it, I am guilty of copyright (or is it copywrite?) theft; I just found a cassette tape I made of the hit parade in the 70s, it contained all the top 20 singles from that week!

 

Has..did u record it by holding a microphone near the speaker, only to have it ruined by your mum coming in and telling you your fish fingers are ready ?

 

Andy

[andydd]

hello all,

 

well i recieved a letter a couple months ago and i sent them a letter of denial but i have just recieved another letter of acs law telling me that it is still an active case and that they wont accept my letter of denial as they call it a generic one taken off a website and thus isnt applicable. I now have 14 days to pay them the money!!!!!

 

What do i do now? do i write another letter or do i ignore them as i claimed i would do in my letter of denial? what are my options?

 

Ignore them, you've sent a valid LOD, that is ACS's standard response.

 

If you are feeling cheeky you could write back and say you do not accept their letter as it appears to be a mass produced generic one

 

Andy

[andydd]

Ok cheers andy.

 

Has there been many instances of 2nd letters then? should i expect a 3rd. I am a little worried as i am due to go away for nearly 3 months soon and i dont want to come back to loads of letters and find myself way over my head.

 

Letters schmeters !.

 

You may or may not get multiple letters, somewhere a few posts back there is a template of factors that ACS use to determine whether to keep hassling you, factors such as your employment, what you said to them did you admit having a wifi network, have you a lwayer, etc, etc.

 

One denial is good enough, no point playing letter ping-pong, REMEMBER ACS have yet to fight any case in court !

 

Andy

[andydd]

I thought that the general idea was that you should give ACS no information at all. Certainly not your employment details or whether you have wifi

 

As to having a lawyer, surely this would involve getting a lawyer to write to ACS which would cost you :?

 

Contacting the BBC One show sounds like a good idea.

 

Yes....That is what i was implying, but some people do feel the need to blurt out their details which ACS may use to their advantage.

 

Although if you are unemployed that is going to go to your advantage, as you may be able to get legal aid, and in any case even if ACS won in Court, a judge may require you to pay a £1 a week or something.

 

Andy

[andydd]

Does anyone know of anyone (or they themselves) contacted any lawyers/solicitors on this matter? I haven't managed to yet and the longer it goes on the more worried I'm getting!

 

As this is a totally new grey-area, a lawyer will prob be unable to give specific advice anyway, but you will be a lot poorer.

 

Just send a LOD. Nothing else is needed.

 

Andy

[andydd]

Have recieved advice from my solicitor to settle with them, it's not sitting right with me tho :-|

 

Jeez, what a dumb solicitor, sack him !...whilst I have not had dealing with ACS I have recentlyn received a CPR Part36 offering to settle about a ground rent/leaserhold dispute, I ignored it (and the various threats from my landlords solicitors), I had my day in court and they totally lost and I came away a grand happier .

 

Andy

[andydd]

See a solicitor, one who's experienced with Intellectual Property cases. I'm not qualified to tell you what to do, I'm just really confused and stressed out by this whole thing.

 

Even then you are unlikely to get a full answer, this area of the law is pretty much untested.

 

An I.Property lawyer may be very smart of the details of I.Property, but he is unlikely to know about the complexities of IP addresses, wifi hacking, spoof addresses, torrent streams, P2P, deep packet inspection, etc

[andydd]

I was trying to explore the copyright angle rather than the validity if the evidence.

So, if a torrent has been placed to harvest IP addresses by ACS Law, then the copyright holder must have authorised it and its placement for download and therefore authorised it for sharing. Does this then imply that anyone who connects to this file has permission to share this file and is not in breach of copyright?

 

I remember many years ago watching a real-life show about US cops, they put a cop dressed as a tramp in a doorway with some dollar bills hanging out of his pocket, not surprisingly, some passers-by helped themselves to the money, the cops then pounced and nicked them, seems like the above is just the modern day equivilant.

 

Andy

[andydd]

I think this would be considered as "Entrapment".

 

"Entrapment arises when a person is encouraged by someone in some official capacity to commit a crime. If entrapment occurred, then some prosecution evidence may be excluded as being unfair, or the proceedings may be discontinued altogether".

 

It would be hard to argue that ACSLaw were acting in an "official capacity"

 

But it is known that Digital Protect (or whoever do the work for ACS) have been putting files up and then just watching to see who downloads them.

 

Andy

[andydd]

@blashey

 

'but they said 7 other people downloaded it from me while i was downloading it '

 

While I'm not sure that the can even prove this because of the way I think the monitors work this would equate to aprox 7 x £0.89 plus solisitors costs.

 

Of course 'solisitors costs' is the rub here as this will be the greatest expense and the only people getting any real money out of this.

 

Personally if I got a letter from MOS etc. etc. even if I liked their music I would never purchase another track from them again. Even if you have got to have the next MOS album you can alway buy off ebay thus making sure no money goes back into MOS pockets and of course sell on ebay once you've finished listening to it.

 

Maybe MOS should look at the backlash that Metallica encoutered when they had their moan at Napster, ultimately it did them no favours and hurt their sales..cynics amongst us would argue that MOS are just trying to recoup some money as the actual album in question didnt sell well.

 

Andy

[andydd]

The SRA didnt conclude their investigations into Davenport Lyons untill after they had long since stopped their 'copyright claim's, i expect the same will happen withe ACS Law.

 

Andy

[andydd]

bugger i didnt realise i wrote on first letter i deleted it then second letter i bought it im in trouble

 

Doesn't make any difference anyway, you've made a mess of it by admitting you downloaded the file, simple as that, as you have now realised, this was rather foolish.

 

The arguements you put in your letter(s) are not a defence they are a admission and a mitigation, (i.,e they might treat you less harshly), but the reality is, this is nothing to do with protecting MOS's copyright, its a '[problem]' (although legal) to try and earn some extra money due to poor record sales.

 

As I've learnt from experience when responding to legal/court documents (or even when questioned by police, etc), DO NOT spout out the first thing that comes into your head, think about what they are asking, why are they asking and give an appriopiate response (which may be nothing !) and/or seek legal advice.

 

Andy

[andydd]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11418962

 

Oohh..Interesting, it says they even have emails between Andrew Crossley and his staff, ha..don't f**k with Pirate Bay, those guys sure are clever..hee..I'm gonna go see if i can download the 'list'

 

Andy

[andydd]

Ok..Ive just re-read it...........so the database/list of BSB clients was actually held by ACS..tut..tut.....as pointed out by the BBC, it was a simple spreadsheet that should at least of been encypted, the sh*t is going to hit the fan now for ACS..ha

[andydd]

Homepage of Operation Payback:

(Valid as of 24/09/10, things may have changed from then.)

 

-

 

To whom it concerns,

 

Over the past years we have seen an technological revolution. One where you are free, in the most extreme anarchistic sense, to share ideas. Some of these ideas are shared behind proxies, darknets, or similar "closed doors", but the ideas are out there. This kind of revolution is of the mind, and its effects on respective societies is all but surprising. While the people embrace this revolution, this new "anarchy" of freedom to share, leaders have crushed and seek to crush it before it even begins in earnest.

 

These "anarchists", who are only anarchists in the minds of leaders seeking to destroy this freedom, have succeeded en-mass in distributing content to the poor, the underpriveleged, the restricted. The most popular pirates are the chinese, whose content filters restrict a vast amount of content from them. The second most popular, the poor, who cannot afford things like college books or entertainment. Indeed, while mostly ignored, a vast amount of educational literature is available to the everyday pirate. Enough that saw me through college, even, when I otherwise could not have afforded it.

 

It is no different, though, than when these powers that be tried to silence the record player, the cassette, the CD. The same claims were made then, and they were ignored, so why now are they listened to? This flawed application of extremist capitalism upon what is considered sacred by any culture - knowledge - is treason upon every human. All should have the right to listen to that beat, experience that twist in a plot, or learn from the mass volumes of literature now made available.

 

You already know this, however. You know it when you freely give your unused software, illegally I might add (remember: You don't own the software you buy [1]), to a friend or acquaintence. You know it when you give that old college book to a persin in need. You know it when little girls are basically raped in the name of "justice" [2]. You know it when thousands of bull**** legal letters are sent to SCARE money out of people [3]. You know it when such organizations lie through their teeth, produce false documents, and spread misinformation about its opponents [4]. You know that this is not right when your leaders inexplicably support massive capitalist enterprises over the majority opinion of their own people [5]. You know they are wrong when they use illegal means to get what they want, while simultaneously bashing us for doing the same [6].

 

If you were to assume the propaganda of various community-reputable organisations such as...

 

The Motion Picture Association of America [MPAA]

The Recording Industry Association of America [RIAA]

The British Phonographic Industry [bPI]

The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft [AFACT]

Stichting Bescherming Rechten Entertainment Industrie Nederland [bREIN]

 

...you would have heard many a story that if you say, 'pirate' a film or an album, you are depriving a simple artist, actor or crewmember from their rightful wage. They won't be able to break even for their next lot of groceries - and YOU robbed them of THEIR money. Money that they only see a small percentage of, they carefully omit. Do they ever tell you how small of a percentage most script writers, novelists, etc, actually make? No, and there is a reason why. Do they tell you how much THEY, the anti-piracy organizations, make? No, and there is a reason why.

 

In the end, our DDoS efforts have been compared to waiting for a train [7]. What do we have to do to be heard? To be taken seriously? Do we have to take to the streets, throwing molitovs, raiding offices of those we oppose? Realize, you are forcing our hand by ignoring us. You forced us to DDoS when you ignored the people, ATTACKED the people, LIED TO THE PEOPLE! You are forcing us to take more drastic action as you ignore us, THE PEOPLE, now.

 

We will not stop.

 

We will not forget.

 

We will prevail.

 

We are anonymous.

[andydd]

Please don't post personal details to this thread

 

AAww..boo hoo..just posting what has already been posted on other sites now, but fair enough, don't want to get CAG into trouble. The emails are hilarious though, foul mouthed emails from Andrew to his ex-wife is amusing..oh dear Mr Crossley, you really are a horrid piece of work arn't you.

 

I think this is going to get ACS into a whole heap of trouble

 

Andy

[andydd]

Everything they have on you i would imagine but it really isnt anyrhing more than anyone who was determined to get info on you could get on you unless you have card or bank details with them. That being said in theory they should not keep such information on record anyway, escecially so without telling you on a web-site that is clearly unsecure. If they have i would find tthat a bit naughty IMO.

 

 

Well..it appears that all ACS emails are out there as are a big batch of faxes, not sure about other information though, except the BSkyB list.

 

The collection includes the incoming and outgoing emails of Andrew Crossley and his employees, complete with attachments, and contains masses of information about how ACS:Law goes about its business and how much money it makes, plus embarrassing personal details.

The leak reveals Crossley discussing how he might buy a Ferrari (he decides on a less impressive Jeep in the end) and talk about how the company can most efficiently track and record the thousands of alleged offenders, with an amusing exchange where he thinks two people can process 200 cases a day and is politely informed by an employee that they would have to work without breaks to achieve this target.

There are abusive emails to his ex-wife, personal contact details, passwords to Paypal and other sites, and it also appears that Crossley is a fan of loopy conspiracy theorist David Icke. Perhaps those inter-dimensional lizards are also guilty of file sharing?

 

http://www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/news/20100925-acslaw-hit-by-email-leak

 

Andy

Edited September 27, 2010 by andydd

[andydd]

Well..Ive got them all..hee..need a bit of jiggery pokery before they are readable though.

 

Andy