CyberLaw Blog

Archive for January, 2010

BBC News – Law firm’s piracy hunt condemned:

By Jane Wakefield, Technology reporter, BBC News

Music industry representative the BPI has criticised the approach used by a UK law firm in chasing file-sharers.

Law firm ACS:Law has sent thousands of letters to people it claims have downloaded illegal content.

The BPI said it did not condone the approach of mass-mailing alleged internet pirates.

A law firm that represents some of those sent letters has called on the Information Commissioner to investigate the matter.

The BPI said it would not be adopting the same approach as ACS: Law if UK legislation on the issue of illegal file-sharing comes into force.

‘We don’t favour the approach taken by ACS:Law to tackle illegal file-sharing,’ said spokesman Adam Liversage.

‘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.

Wi-fi hacking

The government Digital Economy Bill is in the process of going through parliament.

In it the government lays out its approach to the issue of illegal file-sharing which would start with sending letters to those addresses linked to computers found to have been downloading illegal material.
TalkTalk engineer in road with laptop
Some of the accused could have had their network hacked into

If a letter campaign does not work, more drastic action, such as removing them from the network, will be taken.

Consumer publication Which has been approached by 150 people who have received letters from ACS:Law and say they are completely innocent.

It highlights one of the problems with the software used to track file-sharers, namely that finding an IP address of a computer does not necessarily find the person who has committed the crime.

It could be that someone else has used an unsecured wireless network, effectively piggybacking on a householder’s network to download illegal content without being traced.

Or, in other cases, it could be that another member of the household is responsible.

ACS:Law said that it is happy that the methods used to trace file-sharers is completely accurate.

But lawyer Michael Coyle from Lawdit, who represents around 100 people who have received letters, is concerned that none of the cases has gone to court.

‘About 10% of them have paid but the rest have just disappeared,’ he said.

To me it seems like a license to print money, all you have to do is hold your nerve, beat the stick and most people do pay
Michael Coyle

He is not convinced that the evidence would stand up if they did go to court.

‘It seems to me that the only way that a claim can be upheld is if you admit the claim or they inspect your hard drive,’ he said.

Andrew Crossley from ACS:Law told BBC News that cases are pending.

‘It has been said that we have no intention of going to court but we have no fear of it,’ he said.

He represents a range of clients, including German firm DigiProtect.

DigiProtect is not a content company itself but agrees with rights holders to pursue file-sharers on their behalf.

Mr Coyle said that there are other firms ‘jumping on the bandwagon’.

‘So bizarre’

One of his clients was contacted on behalf of an English firm called MediaCat whose members include two London-based pornography companies.

Mr Coyle said that his client was accused of downloading 22 adult films and ACS was ‘demanding £11,000′.

It is the equivalent of someone stood outside HMV with a pile of the latest albums, handing them out to people who were intending to go in the shop and buy it
Andrew Crossley

‘The whole thing is now so bizarre that I don’t actually think it’s got anything to do with copyright any more,’ he added.

Mr Crossley said that MediaCat seeks ‘£540 per infringement’.

‘It is an appropriate settlement and if it went to court the claim would be for £3,000 per infringement,’ he said.

He said his client did not pursue people ‘who have just downloaded something’.

‘The system is designed to monitor uploads not downloads.’

‘It is the equivalent of someone stood outside HMV with a pile of the latest albums, handing them out to people who were intending to go in the shop and buy it,’

But Mr Coyle questions the motives of firms such as MediaCat.

‘We have been approached by similar companies in Belgium and Germany asking us to do the same sort of thing. To me it seems like a license to print money, all you have to do is hold your nerve, beat the stick and most people do pay,’ he added.

He thinks the practice needs to be stopped.

‘I suspect that many hundreds of people have been innocently accused of copyright infringement and the accusations continue without any organisation being prepared to intervene,’ he said.

‘Ideally the Information Commissioner ought to intervene and seek to prevent the courts releasing the personal data of thousands of individuals,’ he added.

BBC News – EU to assess piracy detection software

A human rights watchdog has asked the European Commission to assess the legality of software being used to analyse file-sharing in the UK.

The software in question is called CView and will be used by ISP Virgin Media to identify legal versus illegal traffic on its network.

The EC has said it will monitor the use of the software, following a complaint from Privacy International.

Virgin Media countered that the software posed no risk to privacy.

Privacy International has concerns about the software, designed by monitoring firm Detica.

It utilises so-called deep packet inspection, which means that it can identify actual file-names, making it possible to accurately find out what content is legal and what is not.

According to Alexander Hanff, head of ethical networks at Privacy International, use of such software is in breach of current UK law.

‘Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) intercepting communications is a criminal offence regardless of what you do with the data,’ he said.

Mr Hanff said he would file a criminal complaint if Virgin Media deployed CView.

He said the software is similar to that used by ad firm Phorm, which developed technology to monitor individual’s web use in order to better target adverts.

Trials of the technology in the UK have been put on hold while the EC investigates how it was tested.

Legal service

The UK government is in the process of creating legislation that could see illegal file-sharers identified and, potentially, thrown off the network.

But this software will not do that job, said a spokesman for Virgin Media.

‘It was never designed to capture identities. This isn’t an answer for that,’ said Asam Ahmad.

Instead the software will be used to identify how much traffic on its network is illegal.

‘We want to understand what we can do to reduce illegal file-sharing. This will tell us things such as the name of the top ten tracks being shared as well as the percentage of legal versus illegal,’ said Mr Ahmad.

Virgin Media is about to launch its own music service.

‘Double-edged’

Mr Ahmad said no date had yet been set for the trial but told BBC News it will monitor traffic on three peer-to-peer networks notorious for trading illegal as well as legal software; Gnutella, eDonkey and BitTorrent.

He admitted that potentially 40% of Virgin Media’s customers could have their data scrutinised and confirmed that it has no plans to inform them beforehand.

He also conceded that it would not be technically difficult to link up deep packet inspection technology with the IP addresses which would identify individuals but stressed that was not the plan currently.

‘These mandates have not yet been set and when it comes down to identifying individuals or prosecuting them, that is a role for content providers, not us,’ he said.

Virgin Media is involved in an ongoing education campaign, which includes sending letters to those identified as downloading illegal content on its network.

Andrew Ferguson, editor of broadband news site ThinkBroadband, said the trial could be ‘double-edged’.

‘If Virgin can form a baseline for its ‘illegal’ P2P traffic, it can see how much effect any legislation has, and perhaps plan better for the letter forwarding side of things,’ he said.

But he pointed out that Virgin Media is not alone in using deep packet inspection – BT has been doing it for years, he said.

‘It is possible they may be doing exactly what Virgin are doing,’ he said.

BBC News – Internet racism pair lose appeal

The men were jailed after a failed bid to seek asylum in the US

Two men have lost their appeals against the UK’s first conviction for inciting racial hatred via a foreign website.

Simon Sheppard, 51, was sentenced to four years and 10 months, and Stephen Whittle, 42, to two years and four months at Leeds Crown Court in July.

However, the Court of Appeal has reduced Sheppard’s sentence by one year and Whittle’s jail term by six months.

Sheppard, from Selby, North Yorks, and Whittle, of Preston, Lancs, controlled US websites featuring racist material.

During their first trial in 2008, they skipped bail and fled to California, where they sought asylum claiming they were being persecuted for their right-wing views, but were deported.

The police investigation began after a complaint about a leaflet called ‘Tales of the Holohoax’, which was pushed through the door of a Blackpool synagogue and traced back to a post office box in Hull registered to Sheppard.

‘Abusive and insulting’

Published material found later included images of murdered Jews alongside cartoons and articles ridiculing ethnic groups.

The pair were charged under the Public Order Act with publishing racially inflammatory material, distributing racially inflammatory material and possessing racially inflammatory material with a view to distribution.

Sheppard, of Brook Street, Selby, was found guilty of 16 offences and Whittle, of Avenham Lane, Preston, was found guilty of five.

Sentencing them, Judge Rodney Grant said he had rarely seen material which was so abusive and insulting.

Sheppard’s counsel Adrian Davies told the Appeal Court the sites were ‘entirely lawful’ in the US.

He said that there was no evidence that anyone in England and Wales – except for the police officer in the case – had ever seen any of them.

BBC News – Piracy letter campaign ‘nets innocents’

Piracy campaign ‘nets innocents’

More than 150 people have approached consumer publication Which? Computing claiming to have been wrongly targeted in crackdowns on illegal file-sharing.

ACS:Law has sent thousands of letters to people claiming they have illegally downloaded material and offers them a chance to settle by paying around £500.

Which? says it has been approached by some – including a 78 year-old accused of downloading pornography – who have no knowledge of the alleged offence.

ACS:Law said its methods were accurate.

The London-based firm said that it would send more letters soon.

However, since the latest letters were sent two weeks ago, ten new people have come forward saying they have been wrongly accused.

One told Which?: “My 78 year-old father yesterday received a letter from ACS Law demanding £500 for a porn file he is alleged to have downloaded.

“He doesn’t even know what file-sharing or BitTorrent is so has certainly not done this himself or given anyone else permission to use his computer to do such a thing.”

‘Wrongly targeted’

Which? Computing is concerned that too many innocent people are being wrongly accused.

“Innocent consumers are being threatened with legal action for copyright infringements they not only haven’t committed, but wouldn’t know how to commit,” said Matt Bath, technology editor of Which?

Many “will be frightened into paying up rather than facing the stress of a court battle”, he added.

“ It has been said that we have no intention of going to court but we have no fear of it ”
Andrew Crossley

He advised people who believe they have been wrongly targeted to “rigorously deny it and, if possible, provide physical evidence of where they were when the infringement took place”.

He also advised them to contact Which with the details of their case.

Andrew Crossley, of ACS:Law, said that some cases had been dropped although he declined to give numbers.

He said that he is convinced the method used to detect the IP address used for illegal downloads is foolproof.

“We are happy that the information we get is completely accurate,” he said.

He said the letters do not accuse individuals.

“We explain that an infringement has taken place but it may not be the account holder who has done it,” he said.

He advised those who believe they have been wrongly accused to seek out the “advice of a technical expert or the citizens’ advice bureau”.

But he warned that people “shouldn’t just think that writing and saying they didn’t do it will be sufficient”.

Mr Crossley said the majority of illegally shared content was music with only 10% being adult content.

‘More letters’

He told BBC News that the law firm had a range of clients that it was representing, including German content firm DigiProtect.

The company is based in Frankfurt and brands its business with the motto “turn piracy into profit”.

It has represented a range of rights holders in the past including the German techno band Scooter.

It tracks down alleged pirates by logging the individual Internet Protocol, or IP, address of internet users logged on to file-sharing networks.

It then applies to the High Court to force broadband companies to release the physical contact details of customers matched to those addresses.

ACS:Law is currently under investigation by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Mr Crossley said that the law firm planned to send “lots more letters” this year although conceded that none of the current 10,000 actions had yet come to court.

“It has been said that we have no intention of going to court but we have no fear of it,” he said.

Some are already in the process of going to court, he told BBC News, although the majority of the accused settle out of court.

Mr Bath is not convinced.

“These cases have been pending for a long time. I suspect that if they went to court it would be very difficult to proof beyond doubt that a particular individual was responsible for downloading the illegal content,” he said.

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/8481790.stm

CA – Web Filters Cause Name Change for a Magazine: (New York Times)
In 1920 the Hudson’s Bay Company, which owed much of its early fortune to the trade in beaver pelts, began publishing a magazine for its 250th anniversary, The Beaver. This evolved into a respected magazine about Canadian history, and last week Canada’s National History Society, the nonprofit group that now publishes it, decided that the Internet required the magazine to undergo a name change. To be more precise, the title was doomed by a vulgar alternative meaning that causes Web filters at schools and junk mail filters in e-mail programs to block access to material containing the magazine’s name.

(Via QuickLinks Update.)

E-commerce Regulations updated to exempt ISPs from hate speech charges: “The Government has published Regulations that will absolve internet service providers (ISPs) and other digital service providers of responsibility for religion or sexuality-related hate speech transmitted over their networks.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

ISP anti-disconnection petition clocks up 30,000 supporters: “A petition set up by internet service provider TalkTalk at the Prime Minister’s website has received over 30,000 signatures in opposition to the Government’s proposal to cut off internet connections used by suspected file sharers.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

Nominet gives registrars right to cancel names on allegations of criminality: “The body in charge of the UK’s domain names, such as those ending in .co.uk, has given domain name registration companies the power to suspend any name if it is presented with evidence of suspected illegal activity.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

German court finds parent liable for child’s file-sharing: “Parents can be legally responsible for the unlawful behaviour of their children using home internet connections, a German court has ruled. It said that a woman had a duty to monitor the use to which her internet connection was put.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

China returns fire against US in Google-war: China inflamed the international row with America over cyber-attacks on Google yesterday, denouncing Hillary Clinton’s criticism of the country’s internet curbs as ‘information imperialism’.

(Via Tech and Web from Times Online.)