UK Legal Advice - Help Needed
 

Hi

I have received a letter from Davenport Lyons saying I downloaded a game in 2006. They want £350 from me in 14 days or they will take me to court. A lot of these letters seem to have been sent out. Should I settle, or is this a scam and they have no intention of taking people to court, and are just hoping that people give them the money out of fear. Also if I do pay them I am worried they will come back in a few months asking for another £350 for another file they say I have downloaded.

Any advice would be helpful.

Well... did you?

Don't answer that, of course.

If you didn't don't bother with it. Companies do this all the time. They buy licenses to things and then charge people retroactively for using them. Or they just try to extort money from the gullible. Seems lame. I mean, what game is worth that much?

I do know the games is crap - I have played it for all of 5 mins and would not even pay 1.99 for it.

If you did download it, and you didn't do anything to hide yourself (proxies, encryption, etc...) then you might consider settling to avoid higher costs. Also, does the letter indicate what kind of information they have on you? If it is an IP, then my advice is get a used wifi router fast, set it up as an open unsecured access point, and claim it has been up the whole time. Just don't do something stupid like by a model that wasn't available in your area at the time of the download. Also, make sure the game is not on your computer anymore. This might mean manually deleting some reg keys and directories as most games are a little sloppy when uninstalling themselves.

Basically the question is whether you want to spend the time and resources either disputing this because you didn't do it (which if is the case, then do resist because you didn't do anything wrong), or you did do it and you need to make it look like it wasn't you. The latter option is risky and time consuming. So it is your choice.

Do nothing, take your letter along to your local citizens advice beauru or legal office to see what they make of it.

Seems like its a scam or they're clutched at straws and fooling the gullible.

Does 350 pounds not seem really low for an accusation of software piracy? I mean, RIAA sue people for eleventy million dollars per song downloaded. The fact that this company is asking for so little (relatively) makes me suspicious.

You could probably go buy a used copy and use the defense that you were getting a back up for software you already owned. That might only cost you a few quid.

If anyone else has one of these letters, then I have found a very good thread about it:
http://groups.google.com/group/uk.le...89dbffc4930a3a

If you sold it to others, these fools have a case. Otherwise, ignore them.