Nobody was very surprised when the judge at the centre of the infamous ACS:Law and MediaCAT copyright infringement trial delivered a scathing seventeen page report detailing every single error, omission, factual flaw and misrepresentation in the cases brought by ACS:Law and MediaCAT against twenty seven alleged illegal file sharers.
As part of his lengthy judgement in the ACS:Law case, Judge Birss was heavily critical of what he described as “copyright exploitation” and he suggested it was entirely possible that ACS:Law had made more than 1 million from speculative invoicing letters sent since the inception of the scheme.
However, although the long document makes for interesting reading for those who have been following the case, it also has huge implications for the Digital Economy Act that was pushed through hastily in 2010. As part of the judgement, doubt has now been cast on the theories and assumptions that lie beneath the DEA, most notably the technical process by which an alleged “offender” is identified by IP monitoring processes.
The Digital Economy Act is now the subject of a judicial review next month, so it remains to be seen what the outcome is given Judge Birss’s comments in light of the ACS:Law copyright case.