Re: Have you received a letter from Davenport Lyons?
 

It is not true that they will not take you to court if you have representation. This happened to my friend who lost at court in his application to set aside a default judgement. He also responded to their letters and was in telephone communication with them throughout.

Re: Have you received a letter from Davenport Lyons?
 

The problem here is nobody believes you. What you keep posting flies in the face of all the other evidence to the contrary. There has not been one single reported court case that DL have won and considering the publicity surrounding their actions, such as scaring pensioners in to thinking they've downloaded Shaving Private Ryan or whatever, you'd think DL would be eager to publicise a case that has actually gone in their favour.

Re: Have you received a letter from Davenport Lyons?
 

Yes, to be fair and I agree with Russ, if such a thing had happened, it would have been all over the Internet.

Most readers here are actually waiting for this to happen, and its likely that it won't if there is any hint that a person is being legally represented, especially if that representation has experience in Internet Protocol (IP) technology.

Re: Have you received a letter from Davenport Lyons?
 

Further to what Russ and Toto have said, and for the moment assuming what you say is true, these circumstances are somewhat different because DL already have a judgement in their favour - a default judgement, because your 'friend' didn't turn up at court for whatever reason.

DL are *not* going to waste time and money chasing a case through court they know they cannot win. They *will* go to court to defend a judgement they have already won. Otherwise they are simply walking away from possibly thousands of pounds that is already theirs for the collecting.

And in any case, M'Lud is always likely to take a dim view of someone who's appealing against a judgement he previously made to the best of his ability considering the defendant couldn't be bothered to turn up, meaning that DL stands a reasonable chance of hanging on to the cash they have won.

The experiences of your 'friend' do not automatically transfer onto all the dozens of other cases out there, which have not yet gone to Court. DL has no guarantee of success in any of these cases.

Re: Have you received a letter from Davenport Lyons?
 

It would be interesting to know how much DL receive of this 16K.

Re: Have you received a letter from Davenport Lyons?
 

Indeed.

Re: Have you received a letter from Davenport Lyons?
 

Well, under UK law as I understand it, you can only claim the amount of money you lost, plus legal fees. Let's for a moment assume they can prove you uploaded a file to them (which of course they can't, but for the sake of this exercise let's assume), then they might be able to claim the up to the retail price of the game/video in question. Of course, they would have a hard time arguing even that, since there is no evidence that you uploaded to anyone but them and of course uploading to them does not translate into a lost sale.

In fact, uploading to anyone does not automatically translate to a lost sale, even if there were some magical way to prove that happened.

They have absolutely no case, not a leg to stand on, nothing. It's just a scam, designed to scare innocent people with little technical knowledge into paying them hundreds of pounds.

Re: Have you received a letter from Davenport Lyons?
 

To be proved sir.........and innocent?

I'm not totally convinced that that is the case for all they have contacted.

Re: Have you received a letter from Davenport Lyons?
 

In the vast majority of cases, those who they have contacted are innocent. They may be liable for a breach of copyright, but that's a civil matter - guilt or innocence doesn't come into the equation unless outright, large-scale piracy can be proved. That's then a criminal matter. But DL aren't launching criminal prosecutions, they're chasing people through the civil courts.

</pedant> :D

Re: Have you received a letter from Davenport Lyons?
 

Well, look at it this way, every single person who did not pay up and challenged them was not sued. If they had a case, they would make it.

Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. DL have not managed to prove a single person's guilt. Therefore, everyone so far accused is innocent.

Re: Have you received a letter from Davenport Lyons?
 

Nope, in a civil case innocent till proven guilty is not on the cards purely as it's one entity against another...both can't be innocent can they???

Re: Have you received a letter from Davenport Lyons?
 

As stated in post 414.

There is no guilt or innocence in a civil court. You are either held liable, or not liable. If you're liable, you pay money to the other party in order to discharge that liability.

Re: Have you received a letter from Davenport Lyons?
 

I was just trying to put it in language a layman would understand. As I have said many times, it is not a criminal court, it is a purely civil matter.

What I meant was you are not considered to have committed copyright infringement and to owe anyone reparations for said infringement, until the court decides otherwise. The exact legal position is that anyone can claim someone else owes them a debt, but if the other party disagrees then the debt is unenforceable until decided upon in a civil court.

If you believe otherwise, then know that you have infringed on my copyright you now owe me the sum of $1,000,000,000 to be paid immediately ;)

Re: Have you received a letter from Davenport Lyons?
 

Sorry wouldn't work as the site is copyright of the owner not the poster who by the T&C's gives away rights to the post ;)

Re: Have you received a letter from Davenport Lyons?
 

I'd be very, very careful about trying to claim you own the copyright on forum posts. Consider that if someone posted something defamatory, or even illegal, you are claiming to own that material and as such could be held accountable for it.

For that reason most website operators, especially those who accept user created content, do not claim ownership of posts made. They sometimes include an unlimited license to re-distribute/sell/use content (see the recent Facebook TOC scandal), but they are always careful to maintain their "common carrier" status - i.e. they are not liable for anything posted on their site, just like BT are not liable for abusive phone calls made on their network.

I'd suggest getting your Terms and Conditions checked out professionally. There are quite a few problematic and contradictory sections. You also need to change the registration page because the current version uses a text box which I can edit, and I always delete everything in such text boxes as a matter of course ;)