British law firm Tilly Bailey & Irvine (TBI) which began a file-sharing settlement letters scheme earlier this year, later withdrew from the business due to masses of bad publicity. A staff member from the company later tried to rewrite history on its Wikipedia page by removing any references which showed its connection to this work.

While we have covered developments with these type of schemes closely here on TorrentFreak with numerous Davenport Lyons, ACS:Law and latterly TBI articles, there are other sites which concentrate purely on them. The excellent BeingThreatened consumer site is an excellent resource, but for those who prefer a more tabloid-style take on events, the ACSBore blog can be quite an eye-opener.

After an earlier site, BeingScammed, was threatened by ACS:Law and was eventually taken down, a guy called ‘Hickster’ – himself wrongfully accused of file-sharing by the company – became motivated to launch a replacement.

“Really the aim of the site is to put pressure on the law firms that are falsely accusing people of filesharing,” Hickster told TorrentFreak.

“Imagine when an internet connection is in a wife’s name and she receives a letter from these people accusing her of downloading and watching some vile pornography. I mean does she look at her husband in the same manner? Especially when it is gay pornography, what could that do to a marriage?”

Although Hickster maintains that he only publishes the truth, he does admit that his blog takes a ‘Red-Top Tabloid” approach. Anyone familiar with the British tabloids will know that they are not averse to a bit of image Photoshopping should the need arise, and it is that type of activity that has caused Tilly Bailey & Irvine to complain about the ACSBore blog.

Back in January we reported that Lord Lucas had labeled the type of scheme run by these law firms as “straightforward legal blackmail“. It was this statement that inspired Hickster into action.

After culling a photograph from the FaceBook page of a lawyer who handled file-sharing cases at TBI, Hickster transformed it into a Wild-West style ‘Wanted’ poster which declared “Wanted: For Legal BlackMail” and offered a $1000 reward – an amount similar to the settlement fees demanded by these companies. This image was then included in an article on his WordPress-hosted blog.

This week in correspondence with WordPress, Tilly Bailey & Irvine complained about the image claiming “Copyright Infringement and Libellous statements”. The section describing the complaint reads:

The copyright image of Ms Amanda Mitten is framed in a ‘Wanted’ poster with the word “Wanted for Legal Blackmail”. We consider this statement to be defamatory in terms of the wording used and the way in which the copyright image has been framed in a ‘Wanted’ poster. There is no truth in the statement that Amanda Mitten personally or Tilly Bailey & Irvine LLP has been involved in “Legal Blackmail”. Such a statement is misleading and false.

This blog entry can be viewed by general members of the public who have access to the internet and as such cause injury to the reputation of Ms Mitten. This blog entry has caused great distress to Ms Mitten personally. It is generally accepted under English law that defamatory statements on web pages are to be regarded as libel.

The company also claims that the displaying of the image constitutes copyright infringement and goes on to state that as the publisher Automattic, Inc. can be held liable for defamation. TBI then formally put the company “on notice of our claim for copyright infringement and defamation” while demanding an immediate takedown of the image.

Interestingly, TBI then threatened to use a Norwich Pharamacal Order against Automattic, Inc. to obtain the identity of Hickster – the same technique it used to obtain the identities of alleged file-sharers – so it can take further action against him. Although the WordPress operator took down the image, it isn’t going to play games with their users’ identities.

“We only dealt with the DMCA notice contained within the e-mail sent to us,” said WordPress in correspondence. “We will not, under any circumstance, disclose any contact/personal/private details of our bloggers without a U.S. Court Order, and this has not been presented to us.”

This isn’t the first time that Hickster’s actions have drawn the attention of lawyers acting against file-sharers in the UK. He was named in the legal threat made by ACS:Law to file-sharing forum Slyck.com earlier this year, after he referred to a law firm employee as “a wanker“

Source Torrentfreak.com

The RIAA and the company behind Limewire have been fighting out a legal dispute since 2006, but in recent weeks the case seems to have been moving along faster than ever before.

Last month, a US Court ruled that the Lime Group, the company behind Limewire, was liable for the copyright infringements committed by its users. Two weeks later the Lime Group asked the court to reconsider this judgment. This request was followed by one from the RIAA, asking the court to shut down Limewire via a permanent injunction.

The RIAA argues that Limewire’s operation has to be stopped immediately, to avoid it doing any more harm to the music industry in the future. Interestingly enough, very little argumentation or evidence is given for any real losses suffered by the record labels.

“It is patently obvious that the rampant illegal conduct that Lime Wire intentionally induced, and for which it has been adjudged liable, will continue uninterrupted day after day unless and until the Court issues an injunction to rein in this massive infringing operation,” RIAA’s lawyers wrote to the Court.

“Every day that Lime Wire’s conduct continues unabated guarantees harm to Plaintiffs that money damages cannot and will not compensate,” RIAA’s legal team continues. “The scope of the infringements that Lime Wire induced – and that continue to this day – boggles the mind.

The RIAA is right in saying that Limewire users have committed, and are committing many millions of infringements, but there is very little evidence for the massive damage that this has cost. Thus far, a real assessment of the claimed losses has been lacking in most file-sharing related legal cases.

“It does not require sophisticated mathematics to calculate that the likely damage award in this case will run into the hundreds of millions, if not the billions of dollars,” the RIAA argues. However, one of the few academic papers (pdf) that looked at the relationship between actual downloads and lost sales to the music industry has found that there’s no direct correlation.

With that said, the outcome of this case could potentially change the file-sharing landscape for good. Despite BitTorrent being the leading file-sharing protocol for several years already, Limewire is most likely the most installed P2P application on the market. In 2008 LimeWire was the most installed P2P application with an impressive market-share of 37%, compared to 14% for runner-up uTorrent.

If the RIAA score a victory in court against Limewire, hundreds or millions of people will have to seek an alternative download client, which might mean a significant boost in user numbers for some of the major BitTorrent applications.

The file-sharing and anti-piracy world is full of interesting characters, most of whom remain hidden in the shadows. Some individuals are just too large to be contained though, and are either involuntarily thrust into the media spotlight by force or become deliberately high-profile by design.

While many people will be familiar with Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid and Fredrik due to them being featured in countless articles, the pair tend to shy away from too much direct publicity. The same cannot be said of Peter Sunde who rarely misses an opportunity to be in the spotlight, and to great effect it must be said.

The believed owner of MegaUpload, however, makes Peter Sunde look like a shrinking violet.

Kim ‘Kimble’ Schmitz is a quite unbelievable character. Born in 1974 in Germany, he grew to become a computer hacker, successful businessman and convicted criminal. In 1998 Schmitz received two years’ probation for hacking into corporate networks and abusing telephone services but the draw of big money was just around the corner.

In 2001 Schmitz pulled off a huge stock market bluff which netted him a small fortune. After buying shares worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in the almost bankrupt LetsBuyIt.com, he announced that he would invest 50 million euros in the company, but in reality he didn’t have the money. His declaration led to the biggest single-day rise on the German stock market which allowed Schmitz to sell his shares and pocket $1.5 million profit. He was arrested for insider-trading in 2002, sentenced to a term of 20 months and given a 100,000 euro fine.

Also in 2001, one of Schmitz’s companies loaned another one 280,000 euros and conveniently both went bust shortly after. Schmitz later pleaded guilty to embezzlement and received another two years probation.

A master of the PR stunt, Schmitz has previously faked his own suicide and also offered a $10 million reward for the capture of Osama Bin Laden. He also claimed to own a fleet of jets but apparently the planes he was photographed with belonged to other people.

A self-confessed car-nut, Schmitz entered the Gumball 3000 rally many times and actually came first in 2001, but his appearances in this event brought even more controversy. According to YouTube videos here and here, Schmitz drove at 240 km/h on a public road in Belgium, ignored stop signs and drove in cycle lanes where one of his friends hit a pedestrian. In another clip he’s seen admitting to bribing the police and deliberately nudging a rival’s Porsche with his Mercedes.

But claims that he also did the private jet ‘trick’ mentioned above when photographed with, allegedly, other peoples’ cars, may have been a little off the mark.

According to a recent report from New Zealand, Schmitz is currently under investigation for using multiple names to register three luxury cars including a Rolls-Royce Phantom convertible. The cars are adorned with personal plates – GOD, WANTED and GUILTY.

The vehicles are registered to an address in Coatesville, New Zealand, which turns out to be a very special venue indeed – Schmitz’s newly-acquired mansion and the country’s most expensive house, a snip at just over $20 million USD.

The mega-money has clearly continued to roll in, with the addition of porn site Megarotic and the site most readers will be familiar with, MegaUpload. Although Schmitz’s connection to these projects has been denied in the past, he was the person who registered the site’s domain name in 2005 and there are many other links which are difficult to simply brush off.

MegaUpload has become more and more successful in recent times and its growing popularity make it a popular choice with those looking for an alternative to RapidShare. Much of MegaUpload’s system appears to be running from host LeaseWeb in The Netherlands and Carpathia Hosting in the US. In both locations they have many hundreds of IP addresses and servers.

While RapidShare’s huge growth has seen the company become the target for recent legal action, according to information received by TorrentFreak it appears that an apparent expansion of MegaUpload hasn’t gone unnoticed either. French anti-piracy group ALPA has been cranking up the pressure on LeaseWeb in what is being described as a “pre-litigation period”.

If the future of MegaUpload and Kim Schmitz is anywhere as colorful as the past, there will be yet more amazing stories to come.