Norwich Pharmacal

peter_the_piper

Interesting piece from a totally unrelated item, file sharers, which could put a major hurdle in the way of ppc's claiming to ask for a NPO

""Judge Birss also questions the process used and suggests that a neutral, experienced supervising solicitor be appointed when a copyright owner or someone acting on their behalf requests a 'Norwich Pharmacal order' (which is used to force an ISP to identify who owned the IP address at the alleged time of infringement), to ensure that these are not abused. The intention here seems to be to avoid such companies just performing a letter-writing campaign without an intention to bring cases to court.""

Full text:--http://www.thinkbroadband.com/

HO87

peter_the_piper wrote: »

Interesting piece from a totally unrelated item, file sharers, which could put a major hurdle in the way of ppc's claiming to ask for a NPO

""Judge Birss also questions the process used and suggests that a neutral, experienced supervising solicitor be appointed when a copyright owner or someone acting on their behalf requests a 'Norwich Pharmacal order' (which is used to force an ISP to identify who owned the IP address at the alleged time of infringement), to ensure that these are not abused. The intention here seems to be to avoid such companies just performing a letter-writing campaign without an intention to bring cases to court.""

Indeed an interesting judgment - trying to see if its available in full, although I doubt it, yet - PPC's and their fellow travellers from certain debt-collectors and solicitors firms are all too fond of letter writing and were they able to NPO the RK for details of the driver will just write more letters.

That having been said I believe the cost of launching an application for an NPO, the fact that this would lift the case out of the SCC track and the uncertainty of success would be such that most PPC's will wilt at the thought. I'm firmly of the belief that the threat of use of an NPO is entirely empty.

The full link directly to the article itself is below:

Click Here

[EDIT - for further detail] An interesting aspect of the ACS:Law story is the mysterious company, who were collecting the so-called debts, called GCB. Have a read of this story - Click Here. Does this sort of thing ring any bells in terms of a business model?