More on Internet scammers Davenport Lyons

Further to my previous article about Davenport Lyons, they’ve sent out a letter to a pensioner couple in their 60s claiming they’ve been illegally downloading gay porn movies. According to the Guardian:

A Hertfordshire couple in their 60s were horrified to receive a letter last week from a London firm of lawyers accusing them of dowloading a hardcore gay porn movie. It demanded they pay £503 for “copyright infringement” or face a high court action. The 20-page “pre-settlement letter” from lawyers Davenport Lyons, acting on behalf of German pornogaphers, insisted they pay £503 to their clients for the 115 minute film Army Fuckers which features “Gestapo” officers and “Czech” farmers.

The bewildered couple contacted Guardian Money. “We were offended by the title of the film. We don’t do porn – straight or gay – and we can’t do downloads. We have to ask our son even to do an iTunes purchase.”

But this Hertfordshire couple are not alone. A large number of people have received this letter, provoking a massive outcry on web forums such as slyck.com and torrentfreak which estimate 25,000 of these letters have been sent out. If all the recipients paid up, it would net £12.5m – more than almost any porn film has made.

The Guardian article doesn’t mention the nature of the possibly criminal scam being operated by Davenport Lyons and DigiProtect, so I’ve written a letter to their money editor (money.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk):

Dear Sir,

regarding your article “Porn bill for couple who can’t download” (<http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/nov/28/internet-porn-bill-mistake>), there are a few facts you miss out. These are:

1. the porn films in question were made by an American company, Evil Angel.

2. Evil Angel sold the rights to the films to German company DigiProtect.

3. DigiProtect then deliberately uploaded the films to peer-to-peer networks in the hope that people would download them. DigiProtect’s intention was to then threaten the downloaders into paying them money. Evil Angel knew this was DigiProtect’s intention because the contract between them said so.

4. DigiProtect have contracted out the second part of their scheme to Davenport Lyons.

5. While unauthorised downloading of copyright material is illegal, authorised downloading is of course legal. Therefore if Davenport Lyons claim in their threatening letters that illegal downloading took place, this may be an untrue statement and constitute fraud.

In any case, whether Davenport Lyons’ and DigiProtect’s actions are legal, they are certainly dishonest and unethical. While I am not a lawyer, it looks to me like Evil Angel, DigiProtect and Davenport Lyons are engaged in a criminal conspiracy.

You may wish to refer to an article on my blog that refers to these matters in more detail: <http://cabalamat.wordpress.com/2008/11/20/davenport-lyons-digiprotect-and-evil-angel-criminal-scammers/>

If you have received a threatening letter from Davenport Lyons, I suggest you follow the advice here and here. You should also read the advice of Michael Coyle of solicitors Lawdit.

Are we nearing the tipping point for Microsoft?

Glyn Moody thinks we may be close to the point where many customers stop using Microsoft’s products altogether:

As someone who has been following Microsoft for over 25 years, I remain staggered by the completeness of the Vista fiasco. Microsoft’s constant backtracking on the phasing out of Windows XP is perhaps the most evident proof of the fact that people do not want to be forced to “upgrade” to something that has been memorably described as DRM masquerading as an operating system. But this story suggests an even greater aversion:

Studies carried out by both Gartner and IDC have found that because older software is often incompatible with Vista, many consumers are opting for used computers with XP installed as a default, rather than buying an expensive new PC with Vista and downgrading.

What’s really important about this is not so much that Vista is manifestly such a dog, but that the myth of upgrade inevitability has been destroyed. Companies have realised that they do have a choice – that they can simply say “no”. From there, it’s but a small step to realising that they can also walk away from Windows completely, provided the alternatives offer sufficient data compatibility to make that move realistic.

That may not have been the case before, but the similar poor uptake of Microsoft’s OOXML, taken together with the generally good compatibility of OpenOffice.org with the original Microsoft Office file formats, implies that we may well be near the tipping point for migrations to free software on the desktop.

That doesn’t mean everyone is going to rip out Windows and replace it with GNU/Linux, simply that they will stop upgrading Microsoft Office too, and start using OpenOffice.org on new systems instead. More people will come into contact with OpenOffice.org, and start using it at home – not least because they are actually *allowed* to take copies from office systems. Throw in Firefox usage that is starting to creep up to significant levels, even in the UK, and you have the recipe for a subsequent migration to GNU/Linux systems running these same apps that is almost painless.

I think this analysis is right. People are a lot more pissed off withn Microsoft than they used to be. But the big difference is that whereas 5 or 10 years ago the perception was you just had to put up with it, now the alternatives — Macintosh as well as GNU/Linux — are seen as a lot more credible.

Government arrest opposition MP

Yesterday, Conservative immigration spokesman Damian Green was arrested and detained for several hours for his part in leaking documents that were embarrassing to the government:

Police say Mr Green was held on suspicion of “conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office”. The MP denied any wrongdoing and said “opposition politicians have a duty to hold the government to account” and that he would “continue to do so”. He was questioned, but has not been charged and was bailed until February.

Mr Green’s arrest is believed to be connected to the arrest of a man suspected of being a Home Office whistleblower.

Speaking outside the House of Commons, Mr Green said: “I was astonished to have spent more than nine hours today under arrest for doing my job. I emphatically deny I have done anything wrong. I have many times made public information that the government wanted to keep secret – information that the public has a right to know. In a democracy, opposition politicians have a duty to hold the government to account”

Craig Murray is quite right when he says:

The arrest of Damian Green MP is a constitutional outrage that may finally motivate our supine parliament to stand up to this domineering executive.

The good citizenry of London and Cambridge will not be grabbing their pikes and muskets today; but they should. The arrest of Damian Green for doing his job of opposing the executive is a step too far in rolling back centuries of democratic achievement. The pretext is the excessive desire of this government to keep all public information secret, and prevent the taxpayer from finding out what has been done in their name and at their expense. This is the most secretive, as well as the most authoritarian, government of the modern era.

I can comment with more authority than most in saying that civil servants now have a duty to leak: the official narrative is now so often far from the truth across the whole field of government, that if civil servants do not leak there can be no informed democratic debate. To arrest an opposition MP for finding out what is really happening is a grim, grim move.

Civil liberties are now the most important issue facing this country: Are we going to continue to slide towards authoritarianism, or not?

On December 25, a saviour was born

On December the 25th, a saviour was born.

He revealed eternal Truth, bringing joy to millions.

He astonished the world with His command over Nature.

He changed history forever.

Thanks to Him and his millions of followers, the world is a better place today, having being drawn out of a dark age of barbaric ignorance and backwardness.

His followers have brought light to millions, have healed the sick, have given children full bellies when otherwise they’d have been hungry, have learnt to fly, can talk to people on different continents, and have even explored other worlds.

All thanks to the brilliant ideas of Sir Isaac Newton, 25 December 1642 — 20 March 1726.

(via Friendly Atheist)

Roundupness

Britblog Roundup #197: the questionable lawmaking edition… is up.

As is Scottish Roundup The Week of the Fascist Fonebook (Phascist Phonebook?)

(Background info on Britblog Roundup and Scottish Roundup)

Yeah I’m late blogging this. So sue me.

Movie Studios Sue Australian ISP For Not Waving Magic Wand And Defeating Piracy

This Techdirt story has a funny (and accurate) title: Movie Studios Sue Australian ISP For Not Waving Magic Wand And Defeating Piracy

Pirates demand $25 million for Saudi ship

The pirates who captured the Saudi-owned ship Sirius Star want a $25 million ransom:

Pirates who hijacked a Saudi oil tanker off the Somali coast are reported to have demanded a $25m (£17m) ransom.

The AFP news agency, quoting one of the pirates, says the owners have been set a 10-day deadline to hand over the sum. The Sirius Star is the biggest tanker ever hijacked, carrying a cargo of two million barrels of Saudi oil – worth more than $100m.

“We do not want long-term discussions to resolve the matter,” the agency quoted Mohamed Said as saying. “The Saudis have 10 days to comply, otherwise we will take action that could be disastrous,” he added, without elaborating.

I hope the ship is stormed by Saudi commandos. Why Saudis? Because they don’t go in for human rights and would probably treat the pirates harshly.

Davenport Lyons, DigiProtect and Evil Angel — criminal scammers?

What do the companies Davenport Lyons, DigiProtect and Evil Angel have in common? They appear to be members of a criminal conspiracy to defraud the public.

Here’s how it works. Evil Angel, also known as “The Evil Empire” and John Stagliano Inc, are a California based company making porn films, founded by John Allen Stagliano, a porn movie actor. Evil Angel contracted with German company DigiProtect for DigiProtect to upload 800 of their films onto P2P networks, including eDonkey, Kazaa and BitTorrent. (A list of titles is here; and translated into English here.)

So far, so legal — it’s perfectly legal for a copyright holder to copy and distribute their works. However, if you read the contract (available here) it’s more sinister than that. Here’s the first two paragraphs:

1. Object of the agreement
LICENSOR is a film maker and a proprietor of the rights of use and enjoymrent and exploitation of pornographic movies. Licensor suffers economic damageas as a result of the illegal exploitation of the movies on so-called peer-2-peer networds. The object of the agreement is the appointment of DigiProtect by licensor to implement suitable measurres to prevent the economic disadvantage licensor is suffereing.

2. Granting of rights
To achieve the purpose outlined in clause 1, LICENSOR grants DIGIPROTECT the exclusive right to make the movies listed in Appendix 1 worldwide available to the public via remote computer networks, so-called peer-2-peer and internet file sharing networks such as e-Donkey Kazaa BitTorrent etc. for the duration of this agreement. The parties agree that additional movies can be added to Appendix 1 with a written supplemental agrreement.

So DigiProtect get the films and put them on P2P networks, harvesting the IP addresses of everyone who downloads them. Then they pass on the IP addresses to Davenport Lyons, a UK-based law firm. Davenport Lyons then send threatening letters to members of the public, accusing them of illegal downloading and threatening to sue them unless they pay £500. Davenport Lyons then share the proceeds with DigiProtect. This is looks like fraud to me because:

(i) if the work was put online by the copyright holder for the then any copying is legal
(ii) Davenport Lyons are claiming it was illegal copying
(iii) this is a lie; Davenport Lyons are therefore comitting Fraud under section (2) of the Fraud Act 2006.

(See also: coverage on TechDirt)

Gagging orders are pointless

Lilian Edwards at panGloss says gagging orders are a waste of time:

Just as we have long had a debate in digicircles about ethical hacking, do we now have to start having it about ethical online leaking?

Thought inspired by the much bally hooed leak of the entire BNP membership list in breach of court injunction.

WikiLeaks has of course been in this business for a long time – but I suspect rather more of the UK population than before has just begun to wake up to the world in which court gagging orders are simply a waste of time.

She’s right of course; once information is out on the net, you can’t gag it and trying to is a waste of time. This and the case of Peter Connelly (aka Baby P) are just examples of something that will only get more widespread. Similarly with libel laws — when people like Alisher Usmanov try to suppress derogatory information about themselves, that information instead becomes known to more people.

Is this really, finally, the transparent society, and if so, do we like it?

Society will continue to become more transparent; whether we like it or not is irrelevant because it will happen anyway.

Lolgriffin

Haz you seen mai supporterz list?…

More here.