Criticism and US news
Such practice has been widely criticised as a way of threatening and scaring people until they fork out the compensation money, whether they acted illegally or not.
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has previously said legal action is best used on only the most serious offenders, instead of being rolled out as a first response to ordinary people.
And of course, there is a chance that 4chan may now target gallant Macmillan, just as they attacked ACS:Law. The 4chan forum is reportedly awash with suggestions of new targets, with internet policing firm websherrif.com reportedly making the shortlist.
Websherrif told the BBC it is aware of the risk of being attacked but was keen to differentiate itself from ACS:Law and similar law firms.
"What most file sharers are guilty of is exuberance, so while we to take down sites illegally sharing files, we also then direct them to sources of legal and official music, such as promotional tracks or YouTube channels," a company spokesman reportedly said.
Meanwhile, in the US, a controversial privacy law has been stalled. If it is passed later on, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act would force ISPs to stop visitors from visiting certain sites ‘dedicated to infringing activity,' Media Post reported.
While entertainment groups including the Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America reportedly backed the proposed law, it was fiercely opposed by digital rights groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and over 80 internet engineers who asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to stop the bill.
In an open letter, the engineers said: "If enacted, this legislation will risk fragmenting the Internet's global domain name system (DNS), create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure. In exchange for this, the bill will introduce censorship that will simultaneously be circumvented by deliberate infringers while hampering innocent parties' ability to communicate."
It has been argued that the bill is a step too far down the censorship road, especially as certain bodies already have the power to sue companies that ignore copyright laws and can potentially get injunctions against the websites.
