Law Firm Defends Illegal Fileshare Hunt

DigiProtect, a German law firm that specialises in anti-piracy actions, has defended the methods it uses to track down alleged file-sharers and asking them to pay a fine or face court – a practice which critics have described as “extortion”.

Just Protecting Rights-Holders

In the UK, DigiProtect works with local law firm ACS:Law. In an interview with the BBC, DigiProtect said it was just protecting its rights-holders, although it refused to divulge the names of its clients, saying only that they were “musicians or producers”.

It also confirmed that it has no UK-based clients, although it admitted it is about to start marketing its service in the UK. DigiProtect apparently identifies when its clients’ content is being shared illegally on file-sharing networks, and then applies for a court order to obtain the IP (internet protocol) address so that it can approach the Internet Service Provider (ISP) and get the physical address of the computer.

A letter is then sent to the alleged file-sharer, asking them to either pay a one-off fee of approximately £700 per infringement, or face the threat of court action.

However, the consumer magazine Which? has been actively campaigning against this practise – and received hundreds of enquiries earlier this year from people who believe they have been wrongly accused of pirating porn and music content.

Among the accused is a 78 year-old man, accused of downloading pornography.

“My 78 year-old father received a letter from ACS:Law demanding £500 for a porn file he is alleged to have downloaded,” said one complaint back in January. “He doesn’t even know what file-sharing or BitTorrent is so has certainly not done this himself or given anyone else permission to use his computer to do such a thing.”

Critics have branded this sort of practica as “extortion”.

O2 Customers Targetted

According to the BBC, customers of service provider O2 were also among those targeted, a move that the ISP has condemned.

“The approach we use is the only proven effective proceeding,” DigiProtect said, although it confirmed that much of the monitoring of file-sharing networks to identify illegal content is an “automated process”.

“With the infinite number of products offered on file-sharing networks, no other process would even be possible, this is just another example of the astronomical dimensions that file-sharing has taken on,” it told the BBC.

It also conceded that some people may have been wrongly identified.

“In some cases the subscriber is not the rule breaker, but as they own the internet access they are our initial point of contact. We make an enquiry of them as to how the infringement occurred and progress with the matter in an appropriate way depending on the response given,” it said.

And DigiProtect stands by its process and makes no apology, even to those wrongly accused.

“You have to regard the damages that are caused by illegal file-sharing. The ones who are traumatised are the content providers,” it said.

Adverse Publicity

Meanwhile, another law firm, Tilly, Bailey and Irvine (TBI) announced that it would cease sending out threatening letters due to the “adverse publicity” from the process. TBI, along with ACS:Law was recently labelled as “new entrants to the hall of infamy” by Lord Clement-Jones in a short speech given to the House of Lords.