[[Adz]]

Quote:

After disgruntled letter recipients mailed off a barrage of complaints to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority against ACS:Law owner Andrew Crossley, he told his advisor that not only did he "feel defeated" but that in his long-term interests it might be better if he "shut up shop". Doing so, he explained, would bankrupt him.

Source
Part of me wants to feel sorry for him, but then I think it's just karma for everything he's done to people.

 

[UnAimed]

Erm What is this about?

 

[Viridian]

Fantastic news. I enjoy hearing about news like this. It serves him right for being a ridiculous slimbag.

 

[AtomicFrost]

So now I guess he feels like the people he was going to sue . . . .

 

[jmki1]

Definitely karma.
---
Go anon!

 

[br3nd064]

Quote:

Originally Posted by [Adz] Part of me wants to feel sorry for him, but then I think it's just karma for everything he's done to people.

I don't feel sorry for him at all..

 

[Mjolnir]

Quote:

Originally Posted by [Adz] Source Part of me wants to feel sorry for him, but then I think it's just karma for everything he's done to people.

Apparently, this guy is a lawyer who decided to come up with a scheme to sue people who pirate. He sent letters demanding 500 pounds sterling vs facing court trial. It appears he then kept most of the money, not reimbursing the people who were stolen from in the first place.

This is how I understand it. Correct me if I am wrong.

 

[jmki1]

Completely right. If you read into previous TorrentFreak articles, you'll see how the case on file sharing that started ACS:Law's solicitations really shouldn't have won in court.

I'm sure that his responses are in part because they accidentally published a backup of their entire email database when they were trying to get their site back up from the DDOS attacks.

 

[SchmoSalt]

Excellent news! Now I wish someone could bring criminal charges against him for his pathetic crimes.

 

[jmki1]

wouldn't that be great. From what I can see, his business is essentially ruined. That and thousands of people from the internet community (and I'm talking more about the hacker/tech savvy pop of the internet).

 

[98uk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SchmoSalt Excellent news! Now I wish someone could bring criminal charges against him for his pathetic crimes.

Hate to be a party pooper, but isn't that ironic when it was his company bringing criminal charges (or fines) to those committing crimes? I mean, right or wrong, copying copyrighted media is illegal.

I'm not justifying their techniques or what they do, but your statement stinks of hypocrisy.

 

[Mygaffer]

There is an acronym I like for these situations.

DIAF.

 

[SchmoSalt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by alex98uk Hate to be a party pooper, but isn't that ironic when it was his company bringing criminal charges (or fines) to those committing crimes? I mean, right or wrong, copying copyrighted media is illegal. I'm not justifying their techniques or what they do, but your statement stinks of hypocrisy.

Don't get me wrong I am against file sharing and piracy. I believe that those developers who made the product shouldn't be cheated out on their rightful profits.

From what I heard this company never really had any proof against 99% of the people they sued. They practically scammed all of those people out of their money.

 

[jmki1]

@Mygaffer Eh, I'm about 50/50 with you on that.

@alex, yeah file sharing is illegal, but check out the charts on the second link.

Some good articles:
http://torrentfreak.com/high-profile...-farce-100926/
http://torrentfreak.com/leaked-email...scheme-100926/

 

[98uk]

As I said, i'm not justifying what they do, just saying that SchmoSalt's statement was rather hypocritical

 

[Viridian]

Quote:

Originally Posted by alex98uk Hate to be a party pooper, but isn't that ironic when it was his company bringing criminal charges (or fines) to those committing crimes? I mean, right or wrong, copying copyrighted media is illegal. I'm not justifying their techniques or what they do, but your statement stinks of hypocrisy.

Not really hypocrisy if the poster doesn't pirate; which isn't implied nor mentioned.

And this ACS guy is a through and through knobhead. I'd rather throw my weight behind someone pirating from a huge corporation than some slimbag lawyer who was targeting singular people and ripping them off. If people ignored his letters, nothing become of it.

And like you say, pirating is wrong and very much illegal. However, targeting people downloading music should also be illegal (it's stone cold fact that it's wrong) They should be going after the hosts (in the case of P2P programs, the software developers), trackers, and websites. Those are the outlets for getting this stuff, those should be the targets. Not people taking advantage of a free resource.

However, if you ask me, they should just scrap it and give everything for free and support them via advertisements. But at the end of the day, people don't like being told what to do, what not to do and what they can't do; and people don't like being forced into watching advertisements. So, they should just give up.

 

[98uk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Viridian Not really hypocrisy if the poster doesn't pirate; which isn't implied nor mentioned.

Hypocrisy in that he wants the owner of ACS:Law criminally charged... but accepts piracy. You know what I mean!!!

I'm not going to get into this argument because it makes me look like some sympathiser where in actual fact, he is a arse. I'm just playing the devils advocate.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Viridian And like you say, pirating is wrong and very much illegal. However, targeting people downloading music should also be illegal (it's stone cold fact that it's wrong) They should be going after the hosts (in the case of P2P programs, the software developers), trackers, and websites. Those are the outlets for getting this stuff, those should be the targets. Not people taking advantage of a free resource.

Well, the Police target drug users not just the dealers. User or supplier, it's illegal either way

Quote:

Originally Posted by Viridian However, if you ask me, they should just scrap it and give everything for free and support them via advertisements. But at the end of the day, people don't like being told what to do, what not to do and what they can't do; and people don't like being forced into watching advertisements. So, they should just give up.

Advertising wouldn't work. People would take the free music and strip advertising

 

[jmki1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Viridian But at the end of the day, people don't like being told what to do, what not to do and what they can't do;

Well said.

There are three groups- the pirates (regular ppl), the anti-piracy orginizations (ACS:Law, Davenport Lyons, AFACT, etc) and the anti-anti-piracy groups (saveTBP, anon).

YES pirating is illegal, but the fact is that it would be really hard (and really expensive) to stop.

The anti-piracy groups are having too much of a field day and often wind up collecting profits off people that are innocent or just did it a few times.

The anti-anti-piracy groups (who are usually pirates) are also way out of hand. What started as revenge against an anti-piracy company (Aiplex) for DDOSing a popular tracker (thepiratebay) exploded into something much much worse. It's a great thing that the internet community can rise up, but when they *accidentally* take down an additional 8000 sites in an attack against one site, they need to take a step back and look at what they've done.

 

[chatch15117]

HAH! I read through all the emails and he definitely deserves this.

 

[[Adz]]

Quote:

Originally Posted by alex98uk Advertising wouldn't work. People would take the free music and strip advertising

They target the users, and the users will often (or maybe occasionally, I don't have figures to quote) be sent to rehab. They target the dealers who get nothing less than a prison sentence.
Also, targeting users is trying to kill the weed by chopping it's head off - you have to get the roots (the dealers in the analogy) to bring an end to it.
But just like drugs, fighting piracy is a losing battle.

Quote:

Originally Posted by alex98uk Advertising wouldn't work. People would take the free music and strip advertising

That's no different to the current situation - all you're doing is replacing the price tag and copy protection with advertising. People take the free music and strip drm.
But take a look at Spotify - relatively successful. It offers free music, subsidised by advertising. You will find a number of people will listen to the adverts so they don't have to buy it because listening to adverts costs nothing.
You will of course still have people who will strip the advertising and not pay for it, but that'll still happen no matter what you do. The objective is to offer something which makes piracy more of an expense - not just financially, but also in terms of the effort and time it takes to access it and the absence of limitations on it - than buying it legally.
At the moment, pirated music is cheaper, requires less time, more effort and has no limitations. So out of 4 categories, piracy is beating legitimate sources on 3 of them. For people who regularly pirate, it probably wouldn't take much effort either, making piracy win on all 4 counts.
Until legitimate sources can turn the table and win the majority of those 4 criteria, piracy will continue to grow.