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Legal
Solicitor’s Tribunal to consider ACS man in June
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 6 April 2011
The Solicitor’s Disciplinary Tribunal has set a date to initially consider complaints made against Andrew Crossley, the lawyer whose legal firm ACS:Law became synonymous with unpopular sue-the-fans style anti-file-sharing litigation.
As much much much previously reported, Crossley set up shop as an expert in such legal action, working for various smaller content owners – many owners of pornographic content – and sending out letters to suspected file-sharers on their behalf, insisting they pay damages for past copyright infringements to avoid being taken to court. Crossley took a commission on any damages paid.
The legal man was quickly accused of intimidating people into paying damages, especially where they were accused of illegally accessing porn, and that he had no intention of actually taking anyone who ignored the letters to court. Keen to counter his critics, a then bullish Crossley filed copyright infringement lawsuits against a handful of those who had failed to respond.
However, as soon as those cases reached court everything started to untangle, as it turned that, while Crossley may have been an expert in sending threatening letters to people, his knowledge of the intricacies of copyright law was less extensive. The cases collapsed, and the judge hearing them made various statements criticising the entire ACS:Law operation for trying, he reckoned, to operate outside judicial scrutiny.
Along the way, of course, ACS:Law’s servers were attacked by the Anonymous gang, and in trying to deal with the attack the legal firm’s IT man accidentally published personal information about thousands of suspected file-sharers in one of the greatest breaches of British data protection laws ever.
All in all there’s a lot for the Solicitor’s Disciplinary Tribunal to think about, even if Crossley has shut down ACS:Law and gone into hiding. The complaints against the legal man will be discussed at a ‘pre-listing day’ on 3 Jun. This is very much a prelim discussion though, where the tribunal considers whether to proceed with a full hearing and, if so, sets the dates for such a thing.
Given all the interest in the file-sharing community regarding the whole ACS debacle, I’m suspecting this sitting of the Solicitor’s Disciplinary Tribunal will generate a lot more interest than usual.
