Have you received a letter from Davenport Lyons or ACS?

[Tezcatlipoca]

Originally Posted by cook1984

An update on my case against DL:

They have written to the court and asked to have another hearing because they claim they didn't have time to prepare their evidence and defence enough. They seem to be saying that because they lost they therefore must not have had enough time.

I'm not sure what the court will do. If there is another hearing I'm sure I will prevail, and they will just end up owing me even more money to cover time off work, registered post etc.

I am still trying to get reliable information on the ISP Davenport Lyons uses. If I can find an IP address I can tie to them, I can send them a copyright infringement notice and demand payment from them. At that point I will probably have to look for some pro-bono legal representation. Ideally it would go to court, because then DL would be in the position of having to prove that an IP address and a screenshot is not enough evidence to prove copyright infringement, which would be ironic to say the least

What a bunch of jokers

Hmm. Do you think they'd like that "defence" if it was the other way round, & someone that they had won a default judgement against had a whinge to the Court that they "didn't have enough time". Doubt it...


They would have had the standard amount of time, & would have had plenty of notice as to when they had to respond by, & when the actual County Court hearing would have been.


I hope the Judge sees through them

[cook1984]

I have found a valid DL IP address

I send them a HTML email with a image in it hosted on a little web server I set up on one of my PCs using DynDNS.org. When they opened the email, their email program downloaded the image and I recorded their IP address!

It seems their security is pretty lax. If I had time I'd go to London just to check that all their wifi APs are using proper security.

Anyway, I'm not sure what I should do now. I could just copy their letter and replace my details with theirs... But that might be copyright infringement of their letter. Also, if they refuse to pay I'd be forced to call them on it and take them to court, which I'd love to do as it would either force them to loose (massive PR win) or force them to defeat their own evidence (epic legal win), but I don't have the money to do it myself.

[Toto]

Originally Posted by cook1984

I have found a valid DL IP address

I send them a HTML email with a image in it hosted on a little web server I set up on one of my PCs using DynDNS.org. When they opened the email, their email program downloaded the image and I recorded their IP address!

It seems their security is pretty lax. If I had time I'd go to London just to check that all their wifi APs are using proper security.

Anyway, I'm not sure what I should do now. I could just copy their letter and replace my details with theirs... But that might be copyright infringement of their letter. Also, if they refuse to pay I'd be forced to call them on it and take them to court, which I'd love to do as it would either force them to loose (massive PR win) or force them to defeat their own evidence (epic legal win), but I don't have the money to do it myself.

Give em something to chuckle over their Christmas dinner, send the letter.

Seriously though, I know you're hurting over this, but your plan, in my opinion, is one of simply getting revenge. That may be reason enough, but lets look at the issue a tad more closely.

The court order they seek against the various ISP's is from evidence gathered by a third party, which is then supplied to Davenport. If your going to copy their letter they are going to know almost straight away its a fix as they would hardly seek a court order on their own IP range now would they? They could laugh at it, or they could just hang you out to dry.

If you are going to go down a different route, and claim some fictitious copyright abuse claim,you had better have the stones and the cash for a fight.

On the other hand you could do this.

Get your original case challenged the proper way, and stop trying to pee about with these people.

[cook1984]

Originally Posted by Toto

Get your original case challenged the proper way, and stop trying to pee about with these people.

Much as I would love to do this, it is unfortunately impossible.

DL drop the case as soon as you respond. They only ever take it to court if you don't respond so that they can get a default judgement.

So, simply ignore them until you see them in court, right? Well, I don't know how that would look in legal terms, because you are supposed to at least converse with the court if not DL themselves. All correspondence with the court needs to be copied to DL.

Basically, it seems to be virtually impossible to make someone sue you for copyright infringement when they don't really want to. If that sounds like a rather obvious statement then forgive me, but you seem to have missed it.

That's why the best option would be for someone with plenty of money and lawyers to bring a test case against DL. It wouldn't prevent them from harvesting BitTorrent trackers for people to threaten but it would at least establish reasonable level of proof to be required.

[MovedGoalPosts]

Litigation is a way for lawyers to make money. It isn't there for the small individual person.

My experience of court procedures for financial claims, is it goes round and round in circles, and "in the interest of justice" parties seem to always be able to appeal and muddy the waters by claiming silly things like (reading between the lines) ineptitude.

Big organisations like Davenport Lyons, will give up without a fight over those who haven't yet cost them anything, but look like putting up a fight. But it will be David versus Goliath, if you wake them up by taking them on. Unless you really do have the ability to finance this, and risk everything you own to do so, find you may wish to find a way out now.

Litigation is sadly is not for the likes of the ordinary person and there is no such thing as affordable justice.

[Mick Fisher]

Originally Posted by Rob

Litigation is sadly is not for the likes of the ordinary person and there is no such thing as affordable justice.

So very true and such a damning indictment of the broken society we are living in.

[theasix]

it's been almost a month and I haven't heard from DL yet. honestly? I probably will not. I assume my letter was brief and good enough to show them that I'm not one of those easy-payers.

The law grinds very slowly but it does grind....a month is nothing in the world of solicitors and courts..

[theasix]

true but I'm hoping they dropped it :] they might send me something in a year from now I am aware but for now I feel safe..

[mr,m]

I posted a thread,"Debt collectors help" or something like that,and got loads of advice.
Anyway that was last month and have heard nothing since.
I have a friend in the industry who told me to send them a polite letter,pointing a few things out,This letter,for such a piffling amount should put them off,as they will think you know the score!If it's any help to anyone,send this.Obviously customised to your own requirments.

I have received your letter requesting payment to the sum of ~~~~ regarding your client ~~~~.
I wish to inform you that I dispute the debt and request that you furnish me with all the relevant details.
As you will be fully aware,under the office of fair trading debt collection guidance,all disputed debts must be fully investigated.
By law,all disputed debts, and collection activity, must cease whilst your full investigation takes place.
I look forward to the results of your thorough investigation.
Any further communications from yourselves prior to a full investigation will be treated as harassment and will be reported to the FSA.

Yours blah blah blah.
Don't sign it just print your name.


I'm assured by my friend that this will be enough to seriously put them off!!

[Kymmy]

Originally Posted by mr,m

I posted a thread,"Debt collectors help" or something like that,and got loads of advice.
Anyway that was last month and have heard nothing since.
I have a friend in the industry who told me to send them a polite letter,pointing a few things out,This letter,for such a piffling amount should put them off,as they will think you know the score!If it's any help to anyone,send this.Obviously customised to your own requirments.

I have received your letter requesting payment to the sum of ~~~~ regarding your client ~~~~.
I wish to inform you that I dispute the debt and request that you furnish me with all the relevant details.
As you will be fully aware,under the office of fair trading debt collection guidance,all disputed debts must be fully investigated.
By law,all disputed debts, and collection activity, must cease whilst your full investigation takes place.
I look forward to the results of your thorough investigation.
Any further communications from yourselves prior to a full investigation will be treated as harassment and will be reported to the FSA.

Yours blah blah blah.
Don't sign it just print your name.


I'm assured by my friend that this will be enough to seriously put them off!!

Which is only relevant to a debt....

DL can't incur a legal debt against someone without a contract in the first place.... What they're asking for is a good faith payment in respect to what they're calling illegal copyright infringement with a threat of court action... Only if the courts decide that monies are owing does it become a debt...

[mr,m]

Are DL not trying to get people to cough up money? It's the same thing,asking for payment without any evidence of a supposed purchase/loan/download.
They are still required BY LAW to carry out a full and proper investigation into anything,even illegal downloading,before issuing threats.They have to prove it before any action can be taken.My above post applies just the same to them as a debt collector.

[Kymmy]

It's still not a debt, they're not demanding the money but asking for it in lieu of court proceedings being initiated... So their way of asking for money is not covered by debt laws/procedures...

[cook1984]

Don't ever pay them a single penny. If anything, invoice them for your time.

Just send them a polite letter saying they made a mistake. Something like this:

Dear Sir or Madam,

In response to your letter dated xx/xx/xx, I have checked my computer and the file in question is not stored on any of them. Furthermore I do not use the software you claim to have seen uploading the file in question, and it is not installed on my PC. As it happens I am not gay either, and so would have no reason to upload or download gay pornography.

As you may know, an IP address does not identify an individual, or a single PC, or even an internet connection. It is trivially easy to frame any IP address for uploading/downloading any file. Should you wish to take proceedings to court, I am certain that your evidence would not meet the required standards, and you would be faced with paying legal costs for my defence.

Any further correspondence on this or any other matter related to files allegedly shared on the internet which does not directly relate to a pending legal case in a court of law will be invoiced at the rate of £100/hour (minimum 1 hour) to yourselves.

Yours,
(name)

Be sure to edit it to be appropriate to your situation. I wouldn't bother going into too much detail about how stupid their "investigation" or "evidence" is. You might as well shout at a brick wall for all good it will do. The main thing is just to be firm, be clear that you are not ever going to pay them anything and that you are not overly concerned by their threats.

I'd also forward a copy of their letter to the Legal Complaints Service (http://www.legalcomplaints.org.uk/), along with a note explaining that you don't take baseless legal threats kindly, especially when they have no intention at all to take matters further.

[Luquitas10]

Hi Guys,

I just received a letter from Davenport asking me to pay over £600. To be honest I don't remember if I ever downloaded a game called pinball, and if so, i've never used it. (It's not in my pc)
Is it illegal here in Uk to download games with out sharing them?
If so, is it possible to waive this "fine"?
is there any link from where I can get more info?
The name Orange provided them (the same they used in the letter) is wrong, my surname is not right (i.e. Duncas instead of Duncan). Based on this, can I just forget about the letter as per british law?

Cheers