Golden Eye International, Pre-action letter little more than “Phishing”

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Despite assurances from GEILs “Commercial Director” Julian Becker that he is NOT connected to ACS:LAWs Andrew Crossley, the release of the template of their Pre-Action letter, shows that he is at least a fan of the format of letter that was developed by Davenport Lyons, and licensed by them to ACS:LAW , who then in turn let Tilly Baily Irvine use them.  TBI were the Solicitors for GEIL/BDP.

It is watered down for sure, as I have said all along, it would be a “Refinement”, but it is still essentially the same format with the same evidence, or should that be, LACK OF EVIDENCE.

The letter is really an exercise in Phishing, you would have thought a company who had gone to Court and gained a Norwich Pharmacal order, would at least have some kind of concrete evidence, right? Err no not quite.

The letter states that

“This letter assumes that you, as the internet account holder at your address, were the user of the relevant computer on the day and time in question,” the letter states under the title “Infringing acts.”

“In the event that you were not responsible for the infringing acts outlined above because, for example, another member of your household was the user of the computer, you should make full disclosure to us of the other parties at your residence using your internet connection to make the Work available for download,” the letter states.

“A failure to make such disclosure may lead to a claim being made against you with the court being asked to conclude, on the balance of probabilities, that you were the user of the computer.”

 ACS:LAW in their desperation issued a questionnaire that covered the same criteria, GEIL are using it in their initial letter!  One thing is missing though and that is a demand for money,(GEIL had wanted to demand £700 per letter, but were slapped down by the High Court), this on the face of things seems a good thing, however, it almost certainly guarantees at least a second letter.

We know from the ACS:LAW cases that when they got to court, they were laughed back out.  Judge Birss said of ACS:LAWs client Media C.A.T,

“Media CAT don’t know who did it and know that they don’t know who did it,”.

The letter also contains another similarity to the ACS:LAW letter, the “Forensic computer analyst”, Hmm that would be Alireza Torabi, the same one that ACS:LAW used, of course Becker has already stated he had no problems with Torabis system, only Crossleys use, but that is the issue, a lot of the captured data was duff.

One final concern, is that in the Solicitors Regulation Authorities report, they stated,

“Neither MCAT nor the Respondent had evidence that the “Work” had been made available. They had a report from the monitoring company which showed that its software had captured pieces of the two pornographic videos being made available from an IP address at a particular second in time.”

What was true a year ago is as true as today, there IS NO EVIDENCE, that is why the letter is designed to trip up a person who has not infringed but at least could be hoodwinked into paying up.  It is a scare tactic being used by a failing pornography business to generate money.. PURE AND SIMPLE

Now what was it that Lindsay Honey (Ben Dover) said? Ahh yes..

“At the end of the day, if I can’t make money out of porn, the only way I can make money is to get to the people who are not buying it”

Says it all really

EDIT: If YOU receive a letter from Golden Eye International, then contact your local Citizens Advice Center.  Citizens Advice Consumer Service (08454 04 05 06) or your local Citizens Advice Bureau  And of course post comments here or on the Slyck forums!