This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Legal Top Stories
ACS:Law goes out of business
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 7 February 2011
ACS:Law, the London law firm that became synonymous with sue-the-fans style anti-file-sharing litigation, has gone out of business, after its first attempts to actually take accused file-sharers to court crumbled when the judge hearing the cases immediately discovered slack procedure and circumspect legal argument.
As previously reported, ACS founder Andrew Crossley told the Patents Court last month that he was withdrawing from the whole sue-the-fans game because of harassment from the pro-file-sharing community; though the formerly bullish Crossley only seemed to have a change of heart once his legal assumptions and professional conduct were called into question in court. Most assume the actual closure of ACS:Law was motivated mainly by fears some of the 27 accused file-sharers taken to court could now sue for costs or damages given the speed with which the case against them fell apart.
Crossley has been accused by some of entering the sue-the-fans domain not to uphold the principles of intellectual property law, but to make a quick buck, based on the assumption many accused file-sharers, if sent an intimidating letter from a law firm, will pay anything between a few hundred and a few thousand pounds to make the matter go away without a court hearing. More so if, as was the case with a number of Crossley’s clients, the content they are accused of illegally sharing is pornographic.
Despite those claims, Crossley insisted he was willing to take those who failed to settle, or to respond to one of his letters, to court. But when he did just that with 27 no-response cases, the judge questioned the evidence that there had been no responses, raised doubts as to whether ACS:Law’s client – MediaCAT – was eligible to sue for infringement anyway, and refused to accept Crossley’s arguments regards whether claims a third party had used a defendant’s unprotected wi-fi network would or would not constitute a solid defence.
The question as to whether MediaCAT could sue at all came about because the company itself was not actually a content owner, but was in fact an agent which worked for rights holders to monitor file-sharing. Judge Colin Birrs said that in copyright cases, the actual rights holders – and not an agent – must instigate infringement litigation. According to The Guardian, there are reports MediaCAT has gone out of business as well.
So, the end of an era. As previously reported, Crossley only represented a small number of small rights holders in the music space, and British record label trade body the BPI actively distanced itself from his approach to pursuing file-sharers last year. Nevertheless, the actions of often arrogant lawyers like Crossley harms all the content industries, in that they provide ammunition to the pro-file-sharing and anti-copyright lobbies who will say rights holders cannot be trusted and should not, therefore, be given more powers to protect their copyrights.
