well i do not know what the standing with the company exactly is but i believe Sky owns Easynet but since easynet is a company in its own right if they have just requested the details from Easynet and you get your connection from sky you (i would expect) be alright as it would be like requesting the details from BT for every ISP which uses BT wholesale products, just because we use Easynet equipment doesnt mean they hold your details as you have not entered into a contract with them
Personally I dont see you have any excuse for piracy once you are over 18. Jobs are not impossible to find, even in the UK's current situation. And even if you have no money, no job etc, you still don't have a right to play games, watch films and listen to music for free. I freely admit that I used to steal stuff through bittorrent, for about 2 years before I turned 18/got a job. It wasn't right, but then nor was the underage drinking Funny to see how many people still do it and try to rationalise it.
i dont think we want to go down the road of discusing piracy on this thread. think thats been done to death at this stage. age isnt an excuse though the addresses are obtained under court order, they send them out hoping youll pay without challanging them, with the fear of further action or paying a solicitor. they dont have a legal leg to stand on because the source is so un reliable so if theyre challanged or even asked there is nothing done about it
Its important to understand that an IP adress is extremely weak evidence to bring to court. It does not tell you who downloaded it. Unfortunatly the IP adress is tied to whoever pays the bills so its instantly targeted at them. an IP adress would never stand up in court. There being serious about it but making them selves as big as possible in the public eye to raise awareness and "scare others off". There letters also do the same. Its also important to know that the fee they demand is irrelevent, copyright damages are settled in a civil court and to date, the only court cases acs law have won are ones that have been undefended (i.e defaulted because the prosecuted didnt turn up). Thats my bits of research that ive found out, hope this helps. none of the above is 100% accurate though - but im fairly confident of it.
from the way I see it and from the previous one that happened, the approach taken by this 'law firm' is bullying and uses dodgy methods to get the 'evidence' the last time this approach was taken a elderly couple where accused of file sharing even though they had not even heard of the game let alone file sharing and it was eventually dropped, however it was expected that load of others just settled out of court, usually to the tune of several hundreds of £s, because of the worry of being taken to court the problem comes in the fact that the method used to get peoples details has actually been banned in some countries (France to name one) due to the question marks over its reliability now i agree if you get copyrighted material illegally then you shouldn’t cause hell about getting caught as that is the risk you take if you break the law (shock horror gasp) however for a firm to use such dodgy and questionable methods to get some money is not right
Err, no it's not. Again, no it's not. The DPA contains specific provisions that allow for disclosure of personal data where it is necessary in connection with legal proceedings, including prospective legal proceedings. Not that it really matters in this case because ACS have got Court Orders but to claim that having them is the only way they could have had names and addresses passed to them is just wrong.
Actually section 35(2) would be a better fit in this situation, section 29 would really only be applicable to this sort of disclosure if it were in connection with a criminal matter.
My apologies. I switched from law, so my memories are few and far between. Still, point is deffo valid. EDIT: Piracy for the distribution to others, or to the point where you are technically depriving a business of a substantial amount of money, are criminal acts. So, in certain situations, both are valid.
To sue 7 million (or whatever the latest, made up, figure was) british citizens would be something new. Whereas the idea of wanting to screw that many people is as old as the hills. These scams have never worked on anything like that scale previously. If anything comes of this i can forsee some serious challenges for this company, but more importantly the people associated with it. If it ever does come to demonstrations, consider taking part. Take a backpack, pack water etc. and film everything that moves, use your phone, your digicam, whatever. Make it clear to all you have a camera, even if you're not filming anything at that time, point it about a good bit. Film even if there seems to be nothing worth filming. Have everyone you know take a camera + a cameraphone. Any money they've fleeced their clients of with their hollow promises (we'll make the british public cough up!! Just hire us as the enforcers!! For you sir, one time special offer of £x,xxx,xxx just think how much you'll make back though!!) would be eaten into fairly rapidly i should imagine. The British public aren't the kind of folks you want to pee off, historically they can be extremely forthright, to the point of aggression (not physical, but having folks pushed out of their posts is a common tactic here).
No. These letters are threats of civil action. The police aren't involved (unless ACS law are doing something wrong - but in general it seems they are not), and the case definetly is not referred to the CPS via the Police or whatever. Criminal records won't happen (unless it's referred to the police with regard to additional evidence that proves someone has done something criminal), even if it does goto court (and all you have to do is supply evidence that your wireless router encryption can be cracked and ask for the MAC addresses that are culprits. Then there is enough doubt to dismiss it. You can even prove MAC address spoofing is easy as hell if it gets that bad.) Umm, Bede, where in this thread have people tried to rationlise piracy? For the one part that's not what this discussion is about, and for the second part your post is totally off topic. Use the search if you want to discuss that as there are many many threads on it in Serious Discussion. Here, we are talking about whether ACS Law is pulling a fast one or not.
While I agree with you on this, I was always under the impression that there had to be reasonable evidence to suggest that this person may be doing something wrong before this information could be released. I can't see how this case has anywhere near enough weight behind it to warrant releasing all the data. If that was the case then surely there is a massive loophole in the DPA where anybodies data can be had just by saying "oh we think he/she might be connected with something blah blah blah".
It's upto the person requesting the disclosure to convince the data controller that the exemption applies. There's no specific evidence required for section 35(2) but the data controller should be able to document their basis for believing that the disclosure was necessary in connection with legal proceedings. If not then they could potentially be in breach of the DPA.
Stop knowing everything about the DPA . But I did think there was something along the lines of that to stop data just being released like crazy. Cheers for the info. Now lets just hope I don't get a letter, I can't see why I would but then old grannies got them from the old DL so lets just wait and see.
But what are you going to do when you get a letter? Pretending it wont happen isn't enough. Their techniques are flawed, their evidence quality questionable in the extreme. Innocent people, like you, are going to get stung.
Yes this is the problem! BiT-Torrent servers readily admit that they seed in legitimate IPs of non-sharing people to poison the pool and make those who scrape a whole stack of IP address' have inaccurate information. Unfortunately, there seems to be no actual justice taking place in this country, only extortion.
There are at least 3 BT acronyms stoating around this thread and its hurting my head.... Spent 10 minutes trying to work out why British Telecom were poisoning the pool.
