25 Jan 2011
A copyright dispute over downloaded blue movies has taken a “mind-boggling” turn, with the solicitor representing the pornographers telling the court he has quit the case.
Solicitor Andrew Crossley of controversial law firm ACS Law told a patent court in London yesterday that he had ceased his work on behalf of client MediaCAT after criminal attacks and bomb threats.
“I have been subject to criminal attack. My emails have been hacked. I have had death threats and bomb threats," Crossley said in the statement read to the court.
Last year, ACS Law sent thousands of letters to thousands of alleged file-sharers in the UK, demanding the recipients hand over hundreds of pounds to compensate its client MediaCAT or face going to court. This week’s court case involved 26 people who deny any wrongdoing.
The case received additional publicity last September after thousands of ACS’s emails were published online, detailing the names of the people it had accused of copyright infringement and the titles of the films they were accused of sharing.
But Crossley’s departure does not mean the end of the case. It emerged that a separate law firm has subsequently sent letters on behalf of ACS, once again alleging copyright abuse.
Judge Birss who is presiding over the case called the latest episodes “mind-boggling”, but insisted that granting permission to discontinue the case was not straightforward.
His ruling is expected within a week.
Do you think that Crossley's statement "My emails have been hacked." is ignorance or perjury?
There has been significant coverage that no hacking was involved in the loss of the email data. The DDoS attack that took his website offline was a different matter, however the emails appear to have been restored to a publicly facing webserver, so this is a breakdown in the ACS Law system and process and the emails were not directly hacked.
And this plea of victimisation is coming from the same person who stated about the "attacks" in September "It was only down for a few hours. I have far more concern over the fact of my train turning up 10 minutes late or having to queue for a coffee than them wasting my time with this sort of rubbish."
Posted by: withheld 10 Feb 2011
I have always thought that ISPs often used IP addresses dynamically. I had several different IP addresses when I was a Virgin customer. It might stay the same for months and then change without apparent reason though it might be associated with breaks in usage when I went on holiday. If this happens the person accused of downloading may not be the person who had that IP address when the alleged crime was committed.
Posted by: misceng 25 Jan 2011
The operation payback has clearly demonstrated that cybercriminals should by no means be underestimated http://bit.ly/bzWweH. Whilst for now Anonymous' attention appears to be diverted, it is an example of how and why organisations should protect their online presence and data to minimise the potential damage caused from such attacks.
Posted by: Juliette_msc 25 Jan 2011
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