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What do ACS’s legal letters say about three-strikes?
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 1 February 2010
Which? have raised ACS’s legal letters as part of the debate over government plans to introduce a three-strikes system for combating file-sharing. Though, actually, such direct infringement litigation can be used as an argument both for and against three-strikes.
As previously reported, Which? says it would prefer to have an anti-piracy system operated by a government agency and involving the ISPs, as is proposed in the three-strikes provisions of the Digital Economy Bill, as opposed to faceless law firms sending out unregulated and threatening letters to suspected file-sharers, some of whom will inevitably be innocent (because anyone truly IT literate will tell you that no technical system for tracking file-sharing is 100% accurate).
Of course, three-strikes wouldn’t, in itself, stop content owners and their lawyers from pursuing direct legal action, though it is hoped that if the three-strikes route was available, and was both a quicker and cheaper way of combating file-sharing, most content owners would choose to use that system over hiring the likes of ACS.
But then, some argue that the confrontational methods of ACS and their clients, and the arrogant confidence such legal men and content owners have in their file-sharing tracking technology is evidence that a three-strikes system is open to abuse by the content industries, possibly resulting in innocent parties having their net connections suspended.
As previously reported, Google have previously claimed that a disturbingly high number of the take-down notices they receive under US copyright law – where content owners claim their copyrights are being infringed – turn out to be invalid claims, while Edwin Collin’s manager complained last year about how a Warner Music take-down claim had stopped her from putting Collin’s best known tracks on his own MySpace, even though Warner no longer controlled his recordings.
Certainly, there is a need for any three-strikes system to have a rigorous appeals procedure to ensure that those falsely accused don’t lose their net connections, especially if they are accused by heavy handed content owners. Concerns about such heavy handedness will have even more kudos if rumours the accused individuals will have to pay to appeal turn out to be true. That idea appears in a new amendment to the Digital Economy Bill put forward last week, though the specifics of the proposal are very vague.
