The war against internet file sharing has crossed the line of what is acceptable more than once already. Those who take on the job on of policing the huge population of people who download music from the internet seem to think they are battling the ultimate evil. But even many artists and music companies are against abusive pursuit of file sharing violators. You cannot put every 12-year-old kid in jail that downloads a song or two. So some restraint and intelligent thinking of the problem is in order.

Recently the music industry giant, BPI, came out against some abusive forms of going after internet downloading that were so far beyond what is acceptable that some of them could only be seen as scams. One company that became far too aggressive was the UK firm ACS:Law who mailed out literally thousands of threatening letters to people alleging that they were guilty of illegally downloading protected material, primarily music from the internet.

This kind of scattershot intimidation is not condoned by most music industry organizations like BPI. Not only does it create an adversarial relationship with their audience, it is overkill to send a letter to anyone associated with an internet addresses that may have at one time or another downloaded something online. It is overkill at best and it borders on harassment and scandalous behaviour at worst.

It is of very small consideration that there are laws in the works that in theory would allow this kind of abusive harassment of the internet community. Parliament is currently reviewing a piece of legislation called the Digital Economy Bill that would spell out how this kind of prosecution of internet piracy ought to be conducted. The problem is that the Digital Economy Bill is not law and even if it was, there are reasons why sending out a letter to a broad population who may have downloaded music is not condoned by the music industry. It is an extreme application of the spirit of laws being crafted with the intent of protecting artists from losing income to illegal file sharing.

One reason why no reasonable person would condone this kind of behaviour is that the software used to track potential internet music pirates is not accurate enough to positively prove that every flagged IP address represents someone who is involved in serious music theft. Even the music industry does not condone going after the occasional internet citizen who downloads a song every so often. They would prefer to target those who are serious culprits of music piracy and who can be positively identified and prosecuted for their crimes.

ACS:Law maintains that the methods used to identify internet music thieves is totally accurate and it stands behind its methods. But there are a number of lawyers who are collecting complaints from people who are being bullied by ACS:Law who maintain complete innocence of the crimes they are charged with. Not one case has gone to court so far from this list of alleged evil doers and that statistic alone tells you who is in the wrong here.

The story takes an even stranger twist because some of those targeted have also been contacted by a company called MediaCat that alleged that the internet user had been guilty of downloading pornography and that if they took the case all the way to court, there would be hefty fines, which they could pay off to MediaCat to avoid the problem.

Now we have situations where those who alleged to be doing the duty of an internet privacy watchdogs have stepped over and become scam artists cheating innocent people out of money in the name of stopping the abuse of internet downloads. The reasons these abuses are wrong are diverse. These ugly abuses throw a nasty shadow over the genuine efforts of legitimate companies to protect the intellectual property of musicians and music companies.

Be aware that there are such scam artists out there and that legitimate agencies would not conduct such underhanded campaigns against innocent internet citizens. Hopefully the law will target them as much or more than they go after internet pirates and put a stop to this despicable behaviour.