Pirate-bothering ACS:Law lawyer goes bankrupt Andrew Crossley, the man/lawyer behind file-sharer-botherers ACS:Law, has been declared bankrupt. Crossley's last known address according to the High Court is worth in the region of £700,000, says Zoopla - so let's hope he's kept his hands on that. London's High Court of Justice declared Crossley bankrupt on 20 May 2011. This …
More like: Don't file lawsuits on shaky legal bases where you can't even prove that the person you sued is the one who committed the offence you're referring too, and where you basically demand money with menaces (Give us £500 or we'll drag you through the courts) before people even have a change to defend themselves.
I know someone who received one of those letters and I advised them to ignore it, because there is no way the case could ever be proven and it was *incredibly* unlikely that the person accused had downloaded what they were accused of (or anyone in their household, for that matter). And yet the letters were offering an "easy-way-out" if you admitted the offence and didn't defend try it but ONLY if you paid them lots of money (some hundreds of times more than the cost of the thing they were claiming was infringed) first. If you didn't pay, they were going to take you to court and you'd have to defend or hit a default judgement, and there was no guarantee that they'd be around long enough to pay your legal fees in that case (think of the thousands of accused who now won't see a penny of their legal expenses paid because this guy went bankrupt?)
And all on the IP address scraped from a bittorrent tracker, IIRC, which is about as technically and legally reliable as a plumber's estimate.
> So it is okay to break to law to catch people who _might_ be breaking the law?
That's your decision, nobody else's.
If you break the law, and you get caught, you are likely to face prosecution over your actions.
If you think you are justified in breaking a law to achieve some greater good, you can bring that up in court as a defence.
If the jury agrees with you, you get a "not guilty" verdict. If they don't, you might[1] be sentenced for your unlawful activity.
It really comes down to how convinced you are that your idea of "the greater good" is shared by a jury of your peers...
Vic.
[1] With the CPS, of course, anything could happen...
AC, you're missing the point. A good bunch of these lawsuits, maybe all of them, were based on shaky "evidence", followed by a threat of "pay 500 quid or we'll bust your ass!" which reeks of mafia-like activity. Had this happened in the US, ACS:Law would have been slammed with a RICO lawsuit. Because it mostly fills the "racketeering" part of that one...
... are there many people in the travelling community that have good enough internet access to be downloading anything. Is there any evidence that any of those people were part of the ACS:Law fishing expedition? If not, your use of the perjorative "pikey" is entirely unjustified.
But then, you are just a troll, and don't know any better.
Good riddance, hope this Crook doesn't rear his head in another form a year or so from now with another scam. Can't believe someone on here was trying to stick up for him and 'the man' - ffs these people are bigger crooks than somebody downloading a film or mp3, they make serious money (e.g. His house Is worth £700,000) from trying to shaft the working man, all the 'pikey freetards' as you call them are doing is 'sharing' files which harms no one but greedy bastards who want to overcharge and monopolise a service or product. Stick it to the man.
Some locales in order to provide some level of protection for the person declaring bankruptcy allow you to keep your primary home. It seems this is the case here. Now what the people should do now is file suit against him since he has already declared bankruptcy and its discharged, his home is no longer protected since he will have to cover his legal fees. Even if the person suing him loses.. if enough people attempt to sue him he will have to cover his own expenses for each and every person who does attempt.. Forcing him to sell that 700k house!
The first commenter was right... Karma....
speaking from (unfortunately) personal experience, where I managed to avoid this fate only by finding a UK Supreme Court decision that specifically covered my situation. I was able to point that getting round the case I referred to would cost far more in legal fees than they might recover, and that they therefore should accept the settlement offer I put forward.
You may be able to keep your home by sorting out some form of repayment agreement or other maneuver, but only if the creditors believe they'll recover more money this way.
"Some locales in order to provide some level of protection for the person declaring bankruptcy allow you to keep your primary home."
Although this obviously works in favour of habitual scoundrels who obviously couldn't possibly part with their residence with the gold taps dispensing mineral water and its five-car garage. Meanwhile, people with more limited means are dragged over hot coals for bankruptcy which didn't involve something closely resembling extortion.
(700K? Jesus Christ! I know property was inflated in Britain but surely 700K would buy quite a decent place after the banks turned off the easy money and the prices started to move in the direction of sanity.)
I can understand an element of protection for "primary residence". But does he need a £700,000 house?
The £700,000 house should have been seized and sold to pay the £200,000 fine. After costs he could still afford a very very very nice home.
Never forget that Crossley was a bigger pirate than anyone he accused.
"discharged in one year". Next year he will be cleared of all his debts and allowed to mount exactly the same con operation if he so chooses. Or a different swindle.
As I said in another comment, that is a common technique among crooks. Mount a con operation, hide the cash where it can't be taken ("primary" house, gold and jewels for someone not legally responsible for your losses, create another company (legally independant of your person and the previous company) and give it all your money, etc... depending on the local laws there are MANY ways to hide the loot -or at least to make it legally protected).
Then file for bankruptcy, wait for one year to be discharged, retrieve cash. Repeat as often as you want until one of your victims sticks something pointy through some of your bodyparts (which rarely happens).
The sentence "This will be automatically discharged in one year" in the original article is incorrect (or incomplete) - this discharge only exists if he collaborates with the people handling the bankruptcy. If he doesn't, an application can be made to court to stop the automatic clearing.
I know this from a crook who tried to sue me maliciously, he hadn't counted on me finding out (he was aiming for a default judgement which he would then have used to harm my company). He didn't pay the fine imposed by the court, and after a good year of "I don't live in the UK" he was declared bankrupt. As he still wasn't collaborating the solicitors turned him into a pet project. Last thing I heard was that his family house was being sold to cover costs..
"so let's hope he's kept his hands on that"
No, I hope not. Freetards, whatever your opinion of them, are doing nothing worse than taping something off the radio. This cunt, however, is using the law/establishment to deliberately inflict suffering for his own ends. I'd be happy if the fucker were strung up in public as a warning to other scum of his type. Maybe he could be kept alive I suppose, just forced to wallow in shit with "Shithouse Lawyer" branded on his forehead.
--"Freetards, whatever your opinion of them, are doing nothing worse than taping something off the radio. "
That's not *really* accurate.
What many of them are doing is
a) seriously different in quantity
b) significantly different in the quality of the content they copy
c) massively different in that they can get pretty much anything they want - taping off the radio didn't really give people the chance to record entire /albums/ - if you *really* liked someone's work, you didn't have much choice - you pretty much had to buy (or borrow) the album.
There really is a meaningful difference, and that difference isn't affected in the slightest by any amount of righteous indignation over precisely what kind of pondlife Crossley might be.
*Whatever* he'd been up to wouldn't make bulk copying and sharing of content any more legal or moral an activity, even if quite a few people would clearly like to pretend it did.
Heck, *I'd* like to pretend it did, but I know it doesn't.
"That's not *really* accurate.
What many of them are doing is
a) seriously different in quantity
b) significantly different in the quality of the content they copy"
I worked in the music biz for years as a recording engineer. The most important thing was the master tape. You never gave it to *anyone*, only copies of reduced quality. Then with the advent of CDs they basically were selling the master copy and made a fortune as the production costs were lower than vinyl but the retail price was much higher. Suddenly it dawns on them, Oh no, we've flogged the master and anyone can copy it! Too fucking late, morons.
Being a former Tape op then Mastering engineer back when there was a music industry I couldnt agree more.
They are getting all pissy cause the master tapes are out there while for years you lapped up their x6 speed pre-recorded cassettes @ premium prices by the bucketload while they sat in their A&R offices snorting the GDP of bolivia.
If you buy into this entertainment industry woe is I then your more than a mug than they are.
Mines on PCM-1630 U-Matic tape
Really?
a) Different in quantity? Do you have any evidence that the average freetard post torrents/internet has more content (that they would otherwise buy) pirated compared to pre torrents/internet. I would suspect not.
b) Better quality? Well yes, pirated stuff is better quality than it used to be, but so is paid stuff. Better technology is better I suppose, doesn't really make pirating any worse than it used to be. (and I would suggest the vast majority of pirated songs / movies etc are piss poor quality anyway)
c) Pish, Albums are dead anyway. Yes it is easier to get (pirated and to a lesser extent legal) movies and TV shows now (I don't have to wait for them to be shown on BBC/ITV anymore) but again this is better technology being better, not really making the modern 'home taping' any worse than it used to be.
But you are right Crossley's actions don't really have much effect on the morality of pirating content.
... than your train being late, isn't it?
Lest we forget, Mr Crossley's downfall was as much due to his own ineptitude as to his work. His site was hacked once, and the subsequent restore of his site was how his e-mails leaked out.
He's not a martyr to pikey freetards dragging him down - he's a lawyer who couldn't keep confidential information safe. If he hadn't had the initial attack, he would be on 'Watchdog' by now, having to defend his work. The hacking was just a catalyst.
that ACS:Law £200,000 fine was against a limited company. If that was the case, then UK law says that he *personally* is not liable for the company losses unless he was a director, and then only if he was negligently running the company (and although he was a con artist, this does not amount to negligence in UK corporate law).
This article says that he has been declared *personally* bankrupt, so the two things are not necessarily linked.
When it comes to personal property, as long as the money used to buy it was extracted from the company in a legal manner, then there ain't much that can be done to link the company losses against him personally. That is what a limited company is all about.
Of course, he could have been stupid, and set it up as a partnership (trading, not legal - although who with is a moot point) or as a sole trader, at which point he would be liable. But he wouldn't be that stu..... Oh, wait. Maybe he would.
If you had bothered to read any of the previous stuff, it was established that he was running ACS:Law as a sole trader. He didn't have any other choice as solicitors can't have limited liability. If the ICO believed he was bankrupt then they wouldn't have got their £200K but would have a chance of recovering £1K as a nominal act.
And if you'd read the previous stuff or done a little research you'd know that solicitors can be limited liability - thats why so many solicitors firms end with LLP which stands for Limited Liability Partnership.
More details at the link below :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_Liability_Partnerships_Act_2000
"Section 2(1)(a) of the Limited Liability Partnerships Act 2000 requires that there must be at least two members to incorporate an LLP. The members could be, for example, an individual solicitor and a recognised body. The Solicitors Regulation Authority will not recognise an LLP with only one member."
Piece of advice. Wiki is not always correct and does not always give you the complete picture. When lambasing someone for not doing research, doing a bit of research beyond Wiki is usually a good idea.
currently I am working and living in Africa, and I saw few of those "bankrupt" officials and business people. They take the money and never pay it back, then when you take them to court, they are suddenly bankrupt! Or, in the case of officials, they never owned the money in the first place, the money were a donation to a not for profit charity that is ran by their wives, and this charity only looks after the house hold!
you still see them living in there big houses and driving nice cars..... but they suddenly do not _own_ any of them! All those items are owned by their wives, brothers, sisters and/or uncles and aunties. The person him/herself no longer own anything except the cloth on their backs, legally they are free loading on the property of their relatives! They just make sure that their relatives have signed an "I owe you" document before giving them the property.
one thing that came up in Kenya few years ago to address this "sudden bankrupt" problem that many local banks were facing. There is an option in the Kenyan law that allow you to send a person to jail if they can't pay you. I don't know how it is working out for them, but you really need something in the law to address those "sudden bankrupt, yet living a rich life" people!
"Crossley's last known address [...] is worth in the region of £700,000 [...He was fined] £200,000 last month [...] This was cut to just £1,000 due to his reduced circumstances."
I have to admit that I know little about laws, and when I read stuff like that, it only gets me more puzzled. How the heck does that work? Does that mean that if I ever get fined, I just have to capitalise all my money and I won't have to pay anything?
we'll probably discover that the house etc is all in his wife's name or something (with the transfer 3 days before the declaration)
How can we check that?
Also, I can't think of anything worse than my hard earned taxes going to support him, can we vote on some kind of deportation or something?
*allegedly
'so let's hope he's kept his hands on that.', NO! lets hope he is such a poor Solicitor he has lost his house as well, not because I support file sharers but because this man was just as much a freeloader as them. He saw a route to a quick buck and without irrefutable proof decided to blackmail people he thought were pirating software or media. His sole interest was in his enrichment he wasn't an upholder of the law merely a cheap Con-man and in my book he deserves whatever happens to him.
Also I notice a considerable number of posts supporting his original position, I would love to see an analysis of the posters and their families and colleagues computers as regards their software legality.
Looking at the bankruptcy documents it appears that it was forced by HMRC.
Now there is an organisation you don't want after you.
I would suspect that the moving of assets to a third person in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings is looken on very dimly and may even be a criminal offense when the person you are attempting to defraud is the Government.
Although I don't doubt for a moment that Andrew Crossley is not bankrupt in the sense that most people would mean (ie assets he controls < liabilities) all of this will have been a chastening and humiliating experience.
Two years ago he was riding a wave, boasting about how much he was earning. Now he is a declared bankrupt who will almost certainly not be permitted to practise again by the SRA. In addition he how has a wide reputation for being a worthless piece of crap, has been lambasted by the courts and laughed at by the likes of us. So I don't think it has turned out too badly.
PS Can we refrain from calling people cunts please? I am perfectly happy with swearing but as someone who is generally rather fond of women and their bits, I regard this as offensive in any event but even more so if the word is used to describe the lowest of the low (ie Andrew Crossley).
Yeah cunt's are useful,crossley isn't except maybe as a punchbag,I read some of those e-mail's and that house has a massive rear garden to it but there was some shared access to part of it ,which that selfish twat didn't like and wanted sole access, the fucker was looking at big houses and flash cars in the infancy of ACSLAW he was a shark I hope some of those he robbed /harassed find him That would be interesting to watch when they demand a refund
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