14 DAY TRIAL // Illegal file-sharing is at the heart of a growing dispute in a number of countries around the world, but the UK has been taking center stage lately. A controversial 'three-strikes' law is now going through Parliament which would potentially kick alleged illegal file sharers of the internet for repeated offenses. There's a heated debate surrounding the proposed law and very recently a clear abuse of the legal system relating to file-sharing was exposed in Parliament in order to spur the addition of amendments to the law that would prohibit such misuse.
Currently, there are a number of law firms in the UK, most notably ACS:Law, who send thousands of so-called "settlement letters" to accused file-sharers demanding a 'small' settlement fee in exchange for not pursuing with a lawsuit. Most people, even if they're guilty or not, would pay the hundreds of pounds demanded rather than mounting a much more expensive defense. We've written in more detail about this before. There are hundreds of cases of wrongfully accused people yet the scheme operates within the confines of the law.
Most recently, the BBC reported that, to date, more than 150 people consumer publication Which? Computing complain that they've been wrongfully accused by ACS:Law of copyright infringement. The problems come with the inherent technical problems of detecting illegal file sharers. While the law firm may be very confident in its data, even it only claims to be able to know the IP address of an illegal downloader.
This too is debatable, even assuming that the IP address was always accurate, there is no way to know who was the person who downloaded the content as there may be more than one user of a single internet connection and the problem gets worse in the case of unprotected WiFi connections.
Thankfully, there are people, outside of the media, starting to take notice and the issue has been brought up in the UK Parliament as TorrentFreak noted. This more or less lead to the local music industry representatives, the British Phonographic Industry itself a group no stranger to outlandish copyright infringement claims, to distance themselves from the ACS:Law firm and its practices, as the BBC, which has been on the case for a while now, reports.
"We don't favour the approach taken by ACS:Law to tackle illegal file-sharing," BPI spokesman Adam Liversage said."Our view is that legal action is best reserved for the most persistent or serious offenders - rather than widely used as a first response," he added. Hopefully, the UK lawmakers will be able to get pass all the lobbying and make the decisions that mostly benefit the consumers not a handful of companies.