Judge Accuses ACS:Law Of Dodging Public Scrutiny

A judge overseeing 26 copyright-infingement cases brought by controversial solicitors firm ACS:Law on behalf of pornography licensee MediaCAT has denied them the opportunity to drop the cases, despite the companies’ closure earlier this week.

In a hearing at the Patents County Court today, Judge Birss QC accused the two companies of attempting to avoid public scrutiny by backing out of the cases, and cast doubt on the evidence of file-sharing provided by IP address logging.

He also said the letters sent out by ACS:Law to supposed illegal file-sharers “materially overstate” MediaCAT’s ability to prove copyright infringement, lending weight to critics’ assertions that the letters were a ‘bullying’ tactic not designed to stand up in court.

“Whether it was intended to or not, I cannot imagine a system better designed to create disincentives to test the issues in court,” the judge said. “Why take cases to court and test the assertions when one can just write more letters and collect payments from a proportion of the recipients?”

Speculative invoicing

ACS:Law first came into the spotlight last year, after more than 150 people contacted the consumer magazine Which?, claiming to have been wrongly targeted in a crackdown on illegal file-sharing, which followed government moves against file-sharers. It emerged that ACS:Law had sent out thousands of letters, accusing recipients of illegally sharing copyright material.

Then in September, the firm suffered embarrassment after it was hit by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that exposed the unencrypted details of thousands of broadband users, who reportedly signed up to BSkyB services and were thought to be illegally sharing pornography.

Matters were made worse for the firm in December when eight cases of alleged copyright infringement, brought by MediaCAT and represented by ACS:Law, were firmly rejected. “The claimant, MediaCAT, is not the rights holder of the works in question,” said Judge Birss at the time. “A copyright case can only be brought by the owner of a copyright or an exclusive licensee.”

Despite this, ACS:Law and MediaCAT continued to pursue the issue, sending out letters in January claiming that ACS:Law was no longer acting on behalf of MediaCAT, and that further payments should be made to a company called GCB Limited.

Last ditch attempt

“There was no doubt that GCB Ltd had embarked on a campaign of reasserting Media CAT’s rights at the same time that Media CAT was telling the court that it wanted to discontinue the cases because it needed to reconsider its case,” Judge Birss said at today’s hearing. “It is very difficult not to draw the inference that this was nothing more than a last ditch attempt to make some money from the letter writing exercise.”

Earlier this week, both ACS:Law and MediaCAT shut up shop, and neither ACS:Law’s Andrew Crossley nor MediaCAT’s Lee Bowden were present at today’s hearing. Copyright holders are being given 14 days to join the action, otherwise all of MediaCAT’s cases will be dismissed when the court reconvenes on 16 March.

Defendant solicitors Ralli and Lawdit are reportedly both applying for costs orders against ACS:Law.

“We are pleased with the outcome for our clients in these cases,” said Ralli in a statement. “It can be incredibly upsetting for people to receive these letters and they may well have a claim in harassment, so I am urging them to come forward.”

Part of the case rested on IP logs which appeared to show file-sharing by some of the defendants. This was called into question by expert witnesses as unreliable – an opinion which Judge Birss quoted in his desision, saying that the value of IP logs had not been proven:  “[expert witness Francis] Mr Davey submits that it has never been established whether Media CAT’s approach does in fact reveal that copyright infringement has actually taken place,” he said.