As many as 25,000 BT and 5,000 customers of other ISPs will be receiving shock letters demanding big payments during the coming weeks. Lawyers in the UK have been granted more court orders which force ISPs to hand over the details of individuals who they say have been monitored sharing hardcore pornography.
For regular readers of TorrentFreak, this fresh news can hardly come as a surprise. The supposed anti-piracy scheme originally pioneered in the UK in conjunction with lawyers Davenport Lyons rolls on, but now in the hands of ACS:Law and their partners DigiProtect.
Although there is an insistence that the project is aimed at reducing piracy, in reality piracy is the scheme’s lifeblood, providing healthy profits for all concerned, except the original rightsholders that is.
On November 19th at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, ACS:Law made NPO (Norwich Pharmacal Order) applications in order to force ISPs to hand over the names and addresses of subscribers the company claims infringed their client’s rights.
The NPO’s related to approximately 25,000 IP addresses harvested from UK ISP BT’s subscriber base and a further 5,000 from various other ISPs, covering approximately 291 movie titles.
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The companies behind this are really scummy, it’s little more than organised blackmail.
Of course, none of the artists they’re supposed to be defending will see any money from it.
This could turn into one of the biggest invasions of privacy recorded. Unless it is proven that they are downloading copyright material then this is a waste of time. Of course if it is proven that they are downloading material that is protected by law then the argument could be that ISP’s are acting against our human rights by this monitoring. Either way it’s gonna be a legal battle royale
I, for one, welcome our new DigiProtect overlords.
I fear for the safety of many UK men, as when their wives find out we could have some john wayne bobbit icidents happening lol
Piracy doesn’t really count if it’s porn.
They are no threat, just wideboys out to scare people
http://torrentfreak.com/new-anti-piracy-lawyers-chase-uk-file-sharers-090508/
How about make the price of DVD’s and music more affordable.
From a business sense, if people are “stealing” something, maybe they are charging too much for it!! Im a student in university, can just about afford to live! If I could get something for free I bloody well would! (If my uni didnt monitor the BitTorrent protocol that is).
I like that piracy is hurting the film industry sooo much that New Moon has been out 5 days and has a worldwide gross of $296,774,318 (http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=newmoon.htm). This more than covers the est. $50,000,000 budget (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259571/business).
If you market right and get a brand goin you will reel in the cash. One can imagine that New Moon will reach a TorrentFreck top 10 most pirated list soon too (just like the Dark Knight, which grosses a hell of a lot of ££).
Can u specify exactly what kind of hardcore pornography they are monitoring for?
So somebody thought it was a good idea to attack the largest community in the country known – by definition – to be good at sharing and cooperation? Could be interesting. A bit of planning and patience here and what we have is the Roman Army versus the Barbarians ready to ‘unleash hell’ on our courts with up to 30,000 near-simultaneous cases. That’ll please the judicary no end.
C*NTS & COCKS!
(that’s all I have to say!)
I’m so glad I live in Africa! If they tried a stunt like that down here they would go to jail (The ISPs and lawyers that is, not the filesharers).
#deletes all porn and sexy pics#
Sources from germany (where digiprotect are based) indicate the solicitors in question (ACS:law, formerly Davenport Lyons) get around 40% of the £500 they demand. Digiprotect pay the rights holder a percentage out of their cut. Rights holders get naff all of the money.
One of the porn rights holders, John Stagliano was given the impression the demands would only be for about £50 or so…
The recent digital britain report does not adress this at all, despite it being number 2 on their list of concerns received from the public. Rights holders will still be able to proceed directly to extortion. Dispicable.
all i have to say is epic win at everyone getting scared now
ISP’s can hand over our details, huh?
Yet another reason to tell bt where to shove their broadband the moment my contract with them expires.
LOL @
d says:
November 26, 2009 at 11:59 am
Can u specify exactly what kind of hardcore pornography they are monitoring for?
This bunch are not just targeting porn – they have some very dubious music titles too and are using these also to demand large amounts of money, again from innocent people. I am one of those accused and have certifiable proof that I did NOT commit this offence. My letter of denial explaining my defence was dismissed and the price demanded increased. If it goes to court I will win, but its not likely to get that far – I just keep getting threatening letters demanding payment. So before you think that its acceptable, please be aware you don’t have to download anything for your name to be included in this process – just unlucky.
I got a letter years ago from the Motion Picture Association of America because I downloaded The Simpsons. It scared me at the time as they mentioned large fines and possible jail terms. However, I later learned that these letters are no more than a threat and you may as well throw them in the bin.
The only problem I see is that they may mention the names of the files you downloaded, that’s okay if its a movie, but what about porn? Could get embarrassing for some people who downloaded Teenage Mutant Ninja Dildoes.
What makes me laugh is that they are chasing people over Porn. Movies, Music, Games, Software, but porn. All I can say is dear, oh dear, oh dear.
I have come up with a great defence if I ever get done for downloading. (ps. 99% of the songs I download I originally owned on the old cassettes and those record things from long times ago!) Anyway back to my defence, I was making a legal backup of my memory as I am sure one day I will suffer from dementia or possibly get knocked down by a bus and loose my memory. So this way I will beable to recover my life as quick as possible should the worst happen. And the porn so I remember how to do it!!
this is probably a given but for anyone who doesn’t know, if you have wireless internet make sure to get a password set up on your network. I live in an apartment block and as well as my own (password protected) network I currently have a choice of 5 other networks I could use that aren’t password protected. I understand a lot of people have had these letters because other users are hijacking their networks.
Big claims could end up with some MP’s other half’s this time! Should be fun!
An interesting move to target ‘porn’. The reason to do this is allot of people find porn ‘immoral’ and ‘wrong’ and so this gives greater legitimacy to the people trying to to stop file-sharing. Porn isn’t even copyrighted, so this is quite a significant change because of the way it frames the issue using ‘morals’.
I’m still VERY suspicious and VERY concerned about how this is proceeding. What will probably happen is file-sharing will continue to be pressured and be forced to move completely onto a dark-net (VPN, unbreakable encryption etc).
The real question is how will the authorities respond, because they are utterly powerless to stop what goes on inside a dark-net. It’s easy to imagine politicians justifying the prohibition of dark-net use under the guise of ‘national-security’ is an atmosphere of fear of an enemy image (terrorists).
Just a thought.
If the data protection laws have been compromised as Lord Lucas suggests they might have. Then surely someone ought to turn the tables on these scammers and send them a letter demanding a sum of money or they will be taken to court for invasion of privacy.
Everyone put this in their letters and watch the sparks fly.
DSP in Lincolnshire.