Have you received a letter from Davenport Lyons?

[photodude]

This is just drifting so off topic now, it's unreal. I've given advice to people dealing with Davenport Lyons, and it's getting hidden with this rubbish.

From now on, I'm keeping out of it. It's getting out of hand, and where child porn comes in to it, god only knows (other than shock tactics to try and prove a point).

Good luck to all you guys n gals fighting Davenport Lyons, lets hope some of what I said was useful.

[Russ B]

If this thread is to continue it needs to stay on-topic

There will be no more comparisons to downloading child porn.

[shawty]

Originally Posted by photodude

This is just drifting so off topic now, it's unreal. I've given advice to people dealing with Davenport Lyons, and it's getting hidden with this rubbish.

From now on, I'm keeping out of it. It's getting out of hand, and where child porn comes in to it, god only knows (other than shock tactics to try and prove a point).

Good luck to all you guys n gals fighting Davenport Lyons, lets hope some of what I said was useful.

Its you who went round in circles ansd then started confusing yourself while proving me right. The whole point of the debate this caused was that they will go after the account holder because thats allt he information they will get from the ISP. Just because the account holder did not download the game, does not mean case dropped as they would still have proof that the game was downloaded onto that computer. The child porn came in to back this up, which you also done nicely with your Shannon Mathews case.

Was in the middle of writing this before noticing what you said Russ. Although my point still stands.

[Kymmy]

I think we all need to take a step back and read what others are posting...

Yes there I think is a point where a connection can be shared or even hijacked and just because D-L have an IP/DATE/TIME it doesn;t mean to say that the person who holds the accoutn is responsible..

But on the other hand the customer has signed a contract which although with VM puts them plainly in the eyes of civil law as being responsible for the connection from thier side of the modem onwards... That contract will be used in a civil court to accuse the customer the copyright infringment...

So can we please just agree that there is two sides to the arguement and progress forward with what this thread is about and that is the facts that these letters are going out to people and what possibly could be done about them...

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by shawty

How would they prove it was not them that downloaded it then? If the offence did actualy take place how will they defend themselves.

Your jumping the gun a bit, the first thing to do is write to them denying responsibility for the down loading and then see if they want to pursue it, this is much like the heifer at KFC thread.

[shawty]

Originally Posted by TheDaddy

Your jumping the gun a bit, the first thing to do is write to them denying responsibility for the down loading and then see if they want to pursue it, this is much like the heifer at KFC thread.

Its not jumping the gun (and why single me out, we have all been talking about it). We were talking about what would happen if it went to court, I dont see how its jumping the gun, but debating what could possibly happen.

[Damien]

Can you request something is brought to a 'proper' court? They seem to be taking advantage of the civil courts needed less proof.

[Kymmy]

There's not really much of a difference between the courts, but instead the rules governing Civil and Criminal cases

[cook1984]

This is getting out of hand now. The amount of misinformation and uninformed legal opinion is not helping anyone. Really, it's pointless to continue until someone who actually received a letter can reply with a statement of fact as to what they did and what happened.

I can state what happened when I received a "warning" letter a few years ago, back when I was on ADSL. It was a mistake, I wasn't sharing the file, so I wrote back and told them. Never heard anything after that, not even an apology. They did make some vague legal threats but didn't actually demand money.

[photodude]

I was digging about earlier, and found the court order they used to get the ISP's to hand over the details. The site I got it from (sorry lost link in power cut) pointed one important thing out about the order. It stated that they had obtained the IP's of people downloading the game to their PC's, and "assumed" this was for the purpose of sharing it, thus creating a POSSIBLE breach of copyrights. In other words, they could prove you downloaded it (not a crime or breach in uk law), but could not prove you also uploaded it, or breached their copyrights. This is why they are now trying it on, to get people to pay up, or get default judgements.
Also note that it is a "prima facie case", in other words a case in which the evidence presented is sufficient for a judgement to be made unless the evidence is contested.

Here is the high court order http://www.digiprotect.org/html/hc_london_300608.html

I think this makes it even more important that people contact them requesting the proof that they downloaded or uploaded the file, or copied it for others

[cook1984]

Another interesting article:

http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-loses-y...e-case-081007/

The "wifi defence" seems to be working well in Europe, hopefully someone will test it here soon.

[photodude]

Originally Posted by cook1984

Another interesting article:

http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-loses-y...e-case-081007/

The "wifi defence" seems to be working well in Europe, hopefully someone will test it here soon.

Nice find Kind of backs up what I've been saying

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by shawty

Its not jumping the gun (and why single me out, we have all been talking about it). We were talking about what would happen if it went to court, I dont see how its jumping the gun, but debating what could possibly happen.

Because there are avenues to exhaust before it goes to court which is what Photodude has been saying all along, deal with Davenport Lyons correctly and it won't get anywhere near.

[Alien]

Originally Posted by cook1984

Another interesting article:

http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-loses-y...e-case-081007/

The "wifi defence" seems to be working well in Europe, hopefully someone will test it here soon.

There's also this, which is worth reading as well.

[photodude]

Originally Posted by TheDaddy

Because there are avenues to exhaust before it goes to court which is what Photodude has been saying all along, deal with Davenport Lyons correctly and it won't get anywhere near.

Yep, lots of ways to prove your not in the wrong, and you need to put these to Davenport Lyons.
I never got to court with Microsoft, they backed down long before it got to that stage. It took me about 8 weeks of communicating with their anit-piracy/legal team, and sending them discs to prove they were genuine, before they admitted they had no case.
In the orders used to get the account holders details, the judge makes some statements that point to their being no proof of copyrights breach, just a possibility of it happening. I've marked these in bold below:

AND UPON reading the documents marked in the Court file as having been read and it appearing that there is a prima facie case that each of the subscribers associated with the IP addresses listed in Schedule 1 to this Order have copied the Applicant's work(s) on to his or her personal or office Computer (the "Work(s)") without the Applicant's permission for the purpose of making it available via file sharing Websites for third parties to download, which may give rise to a claim for Copyright infringement;

Note that the only statement of fact where the judge has said there is a "prima facie" case, is underlined. In "propper inglish" that means that on seeing their side of the evidence only, there could be a possibility of a copyrights breach. So he ordered the ISP's to release details to Davenport Lyons (as he is bound to do so by the data protection laws, that release data for the purpose legal proceedings), so they could then legally pursue the possible copyrights breach.
What Davenport Lyons then did with all this data, is send out 1000's of letters asking people to admit to a copyrights breach, and pay them a fee. They knew full well that they had no physical proof of who committed the breach, or if a breach had occurred. But by doing it this way, they knew they would get some money out of it.
Those who they guessed wouldn't reply or attend court, were taken forward, and got default judgements against them. They did that to try and create a benchmark ruling for them to refer to. But as many have pointed out, there is no benchmark, because those few cases were not defended.

So, don't throw them in the bin, just send it back denying the claim and requesting proof you have "shared" or "distributed" this game (or what ever).