ACS Law Solicitors of London, currently the only law firm in the UK actively pursuing through the civil courts indentified copyright infringers on file sharing networks said today that the Government’s plans announced in the Queen’s speech recently will be too little, too late for the thousands of people working in the creative industries. 

“The Government has got the right aim, but misses the target, because its ammunition is too weak and too slow”, said Andrew J. Crossley, Principal of ACS Law Solicitors.  

He went on to say, “It is additionally unfair to burden the ISPs with the job of policing the wrongful dissemination of copyrighted material; instead it should be the responsibility of the copyright owners themselves to either adequately protect their products (through effective digital rights management) or carefully monitor their product on the internet and take action when instances of infringement have been identified.”  

 

Finally, Mr Crossley said that illegal file sharing could, at a stroke, be dramatically reduced and copyright owners properly compensated without cutting off or restricting internet connection and at no additional cost to the Internet Service Providers or the Government. To combat illegal file sharing ACS Law Solicitors have devised a five point plan to achieve this:- 

Introduce statutory damages of £750.00 as a minimum for each act of copyright infringement (such provision exists presently in the United States);

Make all Internet Service Providers produce, on request of a copyright owner or licensee, the identities of the account holders of the internet connection used for illegal file sharing of their copyrighted material. The cost of producing such information would be met by the copyright owner requesting it;

Make the account holder of the internet connection strictly liable for infringements where their connection was used for illegal file sharing

Streamline, simplify and speed up the court process of a copyright owner applying for the identities of the account holders from ISPs (this is presently a complex and time-consuming procedure); and

Secure approval and consensus for standard-form letters, documents and claims making the process of notification and prosecution of an identified infringement clear and easy to understand, with the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven.