Leagally threatening people is one thing… but THIS…… if true…. Well, whoever is the practicing lawyer/soliciter should have their license revoked. Very underhand.

Tattysnuc
Leagally threatening people is one thing… but THIS…… if true…. Well, whoever is the practicing lawyer/soliciter should have their license revoked. Very underhand.

There is a word for this practice, that word is extortion. Extortion carries jail time. Andrew Crossley should be disbarred and jailed. That is all.

Former employee said: "Some people will be tempted to pay, regardless of whether they think they have actually done anything, simply because of the desire to avoid embarrassment.

Judge reportedly said: "Some people will be tempted to pay, regardless of whether they think they have actually done anything, simply because of the desire to avoid embarrassment


A typo, a coincidence that they started with identical statements or did they have the same script?
:undecided

It has been pretty obvious for some time, that ACS:Law has been very happy to accuse innocent people of illegally downloading porn. £500 in exchange for a letter is pretty good going.

Actually there is a legal reason for it, morally it might well be questionable but legally I seem to remember that if someone accesses your wireless to commit an illegal you can be held jointly accountable.
Same applies to if you use the internet at work to do something illegal, your work place will share a joint legal responsibility.

EDIT it also shows they don't care about the actual issues of copyright and piracy just about making money.

Pob255
Actually there is a legal reason for it, morally it might well be questionable but legally I seem to remember that if someone accesses your wireless to commit an illegal you can be held jointly accountable.

Same applies to if you use the internet at work to do something illegal, your work place will share a joint legal responsibility.

In both cases you would have to show intent, unless your copyright theft is specifically sanctioned by the company, or the individual who's connection you're using, then they can't be charged with anything.

Pob255
Actually there is a legal reason for it, morally it might well be questionable but legally I seem to remember that if someone accesses your wireless to commit an illegal you can be held jointly accountable.
Same applies to if you use the internet at work to do something illegal, your work place will share a joint legal responsibility. ….

Oh, it's far less clear than that. In relation to the work stuff, yeah, the case may well be made, certainly in some types of civil matters, that the company is liable. Examples would be defamation. But significant in that would be company policies on employee use of the internet, and what steps they'd take, to prevent such abuses, such as staff training and, in some cases, monitoring (though that latter opens up another whole can of legal worms for the employer).

But, MonkeyL raises a good point, that being the intent required for offences that aren't strict liability offences. And it also raises issues like the “common carrier” defence, referred to in the EU E-Commerce directive as the “mere conduit” situation.

Having said that, anyone operating an open and unsecured WiFi connection, unless they deliberately and explicitly intend to do so, perhaps for social purposes, is either ignorant of the implications for their own security of doing so, or is a muppet if they know of those implications and still don't secure it.

And, of course, that's far from uncommon. Several years ago, I scared the poop out of a friend with an unsecured wifi router by showing him some printed information he was shocked I could see. Needless to say, his router was secured about 2 minutes later, which was the point of the exercise. He got the message, loud and clear, especially when I offered to lock him out of his own router from my laptop, and from outside his home, and asked how how he'd explain it to the authorities if someone sat down the road in their car downloading child porn via his net connection. And how long he might sit under arrest in a police cell on child porn charges before he convinced them he knew nothing about it. ;)

And what that investigation, and what the arrest much less any charges that might result might do to his career as a computer security manager. :rolleyes:

And no, I'm not kidding about that last bit, on his occupation.

Tpyo
Former employee said: "Some people will be tempted to pay, regardless of whether they think they have actually done anything, simply because of the desire to avoid embarrassment.

Judge reportedly said: "Some people will be tempted to pay, regardless of whether they think they have actually done anything, simply because of the desire to avoid embarrassment


A typo, a coincidence that they started with identical statements or did they have the same script?
:undecided

no typo youve changed what they have said

I suppose if I leave my front door unlocked then I should be jointly liable for the theft of my own property.

Pob255
Actually there is a legal reason for it, morally it might well be questionable but legally I seem to remember that if someone accesses your wireless to commit an illegal you can be held jointly accountable.

Just to add to what others have said, that was just one of the issues that the judge raised when considering the applications for default judgment ACS Law / Crossley made. iirc the judge at that time made the point that there was no settled law in England about it. Hang on, google will help my memory… Here we go:

HHJ Birss QC
The Particulars of Claim include allegations about unsecured internet connections. I am aware of no published decision in this country which deals with this issue in the context of copyright infringement. The German Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) dealt with a similar case in its judgment of 12th May 2010 – I ZR 121/08 – Sommer unseres Lebens (Summer of our lives). According to the court's press release the German Supreme Court decided that the owner of the unsecured wireless internet router accused of being involved in a sharing network on the internet could be subject to an injunction to secure their router but was not liable to pay damages. I mention this decision not to decide the point but simply as an illustration of the complex and significant legal issues arising.

In the final hearing, he went on to say:

HHJ Birss QC
27. The Particulars of Claim also mentioned unsecured internet connections and tied in with that alleged infringement by the individual defendant either by infringing themselves or “by allowing others to do so”. The judgment notes that I am aware of no published decision in this country which deals with the issue of unsecured internet connections in the context of copyright infringement and refers in passing to a decision of German Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) on the point. The point about “allowing” is that the word used in s16(2) of the 1988 Act is “authorising” not “allowing”. They are by no means the same and the difference may be very important if the allegation is about unauthorised use of an internet router by third parties.
…
30. But the argument is based on equating “allowing” and “authorising” and on other points. What if the defendant authorises another to use their internet connection in general and, unknown to them, the authorised user uses P2P software and infringes copyright? Does the act of authorising use of an internet connection turn the person doing the authorising into a person authorising the infringement within s16(2)? I am not aware of a case with decides that question either. Then there is the question of whether leaving an internet connection “unsecured” opens up the door to liability for infringement by others piggy backing on the connection unbeknownst to the owner. Finally what does “unsecured” mean? Wireless routers have different levels of security available and if the level of security is relevant to liability - where is the line to be drawn? No case has decided these issues but they are key to the claimant's ability to solve the Saccharin problem and say – one way or another there is infringement here.

Reading the final judgment in the case, the Judge was so unhappy with the whole letter writing scheme, he was seriously considering ordering that no further letters demanding money could be written unless and until a test case was properly dealt with and issues about e.g. unsecured wireless connections or problems relying on IP addresses were dealt with properly. It seems he only gave up on that because Media CAT and ACS Law went out of business. The Judge made it clear that he thinks there should be a condition like that imposed before any other ISP's give up customer details based on IP addresses.

Just in case anyone else is as sad as me, the various judgments are here:

Original Default judgment issue: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWPCC/2010/17.html

further judgment when the judge took it upon himself to find all the other MediaCAT / ACS law claims and order a directions hearing to consider all of them together: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWPCC/2010/18.html

Final hearing: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWPCC/2011/6.html

mcmiller
no typo youve changed what they have said

Possible I made a mistake :embarrassed: but I both read it that way and copypasta'd it here (I deleted the intervening text to make it clear, next time I'll leave it as a record), so maybe corrected without comment?

Well investigation comes rather late. Surely ACS Law should be pursued for their criminal actions. How can they make hundreds of thousands off innocent victims and get away without an repercussions?

The problem with all of this for me to destroys my “encryption” argument. I used to say using public key encryption for all sites to protect your credit card details was using the wrong solution to fix the wrong problem (point being you care if you nearest and dearing know your downloading porn however some in oz you never heard of or will meet is less of a problem, however making sure others cannot use your CC details is prime importance). Now we seem to have blackmailers everywhere, using a “legal” pretence.

snootyjim
I suppose if I leave my front door unlocked then I should be jointly liable for the theft of my own property.

I disagree, people know full well how to operate a front door locking mechanism, the internet is for some MUCH more complicated and when people, if they bother at all try to “secure”
their net, or cannot connect to thier router when secured, they will usually just leave it open.. after all its simpler that way rather than spending possibly hours working out how to connect, or change settings to make the bloody thing work!

snootyjim
I suppose if I leave my front door unlocked then I should be jointly liable for the theft of my own property.

Not criminally, obviously …. unless it was a conspiracy with the thief. But you'd almost certainly invalidate your insurance, and that can happen if you don't have and/or use the locks they stipulate.

speculative invoicing… sticking a solicitor's name on the top to frighten people - no more, no less. Make a few quid, then oh well shut the company down and make another one. Not much bad will really happen, onto the next scam.

snootyjim
I suppose if I leave my front door unlocked then I should be jointly liable for the theft of my own property.

A better analogy would be if you left your door unlocked, and someone use that opportunity to snipe the occupants across the street, before leaving the vicinity. You may well be innocent, but don't be surprised if suspicion falls on you.

The point is, I don't why you should be held liable for someone else misusing your property.

We're not talking about a loaded gun left on the pavement, we're talking about broadband. We should have the right to leave our broadband unsecured, just as we should have the right to leave our wallet and laptop on the passenger seat of our unlocked cars.

snootyjim
We're not talking about a loaded gun left on the pavement, we're talking about broadband. We should have the right to leave our broadband unsecured,

These aren't the innocent days of the early internet. Someone's unsecured broadband account can directly contribute to monetary harm to a third party or disruption of services etc.

Doesn't make a difference, you shouldn't be liable for it.

snootyjim
Doesn't make a difference, you shouldn't be liable for it.

Why not? Every broadband contract makes it clear what your responsibilities are regarding securing your connection. If you don't do so and someone then uses your broadband connection to commit a crime then surely you bear some responsibility because if you followed the terms of your contract correctly they wouldn't have been able to cause actual harm to a third party.

You shouldn't have to live your life dictated by scum, ensuring that you make things as difficult as possible for them to commit scummy acts on/with your property solely to absolve yourself of their guilt.

If they want to do it fine, lock them up. But blaming the person who they took advantage of is a joke.

snootyjim
You shouldn't have to live your life dictated by scum, ensuring that you make things as difficult as possible for them to commit scummy acts on/with your property solely to absolve yourself of their guilt.

It's not having your life dictated by scum or making it as difficult as possible (or we'd ban the interwebs!), it's simply maintaining a healthy balance of easy measures that have some deterrent or delaying effect. I'm sure no-one would be considered liable if they had taken reasonable precautions like using one-touch wireless security and yet they were still hacked.

It's the deliberate absence of even taking simple measures, despite it being a condition of broadband use from most ISPs, that should be considered irresponsible and potentially liable IMHO.

If you wish to protect your property, that's your choice. Forcing people to protect their property is a different situation altogether.

Ok, if some steals you car (whether you locked it or not) and runs some one over, or commits a crime then your are not liable.
If some steal your internet connection whether its passworded or not, it is still stealing therefore you are not liable.

I'm training in IT networks and I can break my own wireless Router, its just not very good, but everyone uses it because its easy.

Its scum like Andrew Crossley, that just cash it on it.

If he conducted him self and his company differently then it would be different. Its clear to me that piracy is an issue. However Mr Crossley is just at the other end of the scale.

snootyjim
If you wish to protect your property, that's your choice.

Your broadband connection almost certainly isn't your property, and it's not your choice if it's part of the contract or terms and conditions you've accepted. Someone is providing you access to a service on the condition that you are responsible for the use of that service.

If I hire a car I likewise have to accept terms and conditions, which make me responsible for how the car is used and restrict the uses to which the car can be put.