Earlier this week Andrew Crossley, sole solicitor ACS Law, finally went before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal: he was suspended for two years and fined £76,326.55. ACS Law, which is now dissolved, became infamous over a number of years for sending out thousands of letters accusing people of downloading files illegally. Over several pages of legalise the letters threatened court action unless a fine, usually of just under £500 (about $770) was paid.
However, only around 20 people that ACS accused of illegal downloading ended up anywhere near a courtroom and the firm failed to actually prosecute a single person. In the final case before the firm’s collapse the judge presiding said that he was, "getting the impression with every twist and turn since I started looking at these cases that there is a desire to avoid any judicial scrutiny."
In his final summing up the same judge added that the cases bought by ACS, "based on untested legal and factual propositions and issues of technology." As a result of the whole affair, Crossley faced the tribunal on seven counts. Perhaps the most concerning of the allegations were that he had acted against his clients best interests when there was a conflict of interest between them and that he used his position as a solicitor to take advantage of others.
Nevertheless, Crossley only objected to one charge – that he failed to take adequate steps to protect his clients' data – and it seems unlikely that he’ll appeal the tribunal’s decision, as he is entitled to within 28 days of the hearing, given that he accepted the vast majority of charges.
Some watchers of the case might have cause to wonder whether ACS should have been subject to sanction from the criminal courts or, indeed, whether other people in the company should have been held accountable for their actions.
After all, ACS took the, already too hot to handle, filesharing caseload over from Davenport Lyons and it was that firm that actually drafted the letters, cribbed from a similar German law. Yet Davenport Lyons have never faced any action and further prosecution seems unlikely.
Crossley’s disciplinary action is, in other words, the final word in long and very sorry tale for ACS Law.
What now for the DEA?The conclusion of the affair does raise some interesting questions for the future, however.
In early 2013, the UK is set to introduce a controversial ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule on filesharing under the terms of the Digital Economy Act (DEA). The idea is that ISPs themselves turn filesharing police on their users: monitoring IP addresses, matching those to real names and addresses and then sending out notifications. In draft, there’s even a provision for those notifications to include a warning that the recipient could go to court, although the law they’d be charged under remains unclear.
But the ACS cases show how difficult actually identifying from IP can be: piggybacking on a connection is fairly common and, as several lawyers in the case have noted, filesharing sites increasingly insert spoof IP addresses into BitTorrent clouds. Both Davenport Lyons and ACS Law actually started pursuing those it accused of illegal downloading before the DEA was made law but both used the, then nascent, three strikes rule as justification for their actions.
Even so, pressure is growing for the UK to go ahead and implement.
Just this week the industry-backed Film Policy Review Panel said that it "...recommends that as soon as possible the Government and Ofcom implement the provisions in the Digital Economy Act designed to reduce significantly online infringement of copyright.” As it stands, though, implementation is likely to seem to sanction the actions of ACS Law and pave the way for more firms in their image.
Julia edits the consumer guides at Choose, a UK price comparison site, which among personal finance and shopping, helps people to compare TV, phone, broadband and mobile deals.
