A law firm involved in sending out fine letters to those accused of illegal filesharing has claimed today it will no longer be drafting the documents for its clients.
Tilly, Bailey and Irvine Solicitors (TBI) was one of three companies reported in The Guardian this morning to have already been sending out letters and fining ISP customers upwards of 500 for allegedly illegally filesharing copyrighted material.
However, the firm decided the negative reaction it received was enough to stop it sending out another filesharing letter again.
John Hall, managing partner at TBI, said in a statement: "We have been surprised and disappointed at the amount of adverse publicity that our firm has attracted in relation to this work and the extra time and resources that have been required to deal solely with this issue."
"We are concerned that the adverse publicity could affect other areas of our practice and therefore following discussions with our clients we have reluctantly agreed that we will cease sending out further letters of claim," he added.
"We should stress that this decision is based on purely commercial reasons and does not alter our view that our conduct has always complied with the Solicitors Code of Conduct."
The move has received praise from consumer groups campaigning against such letters, which were often sent out to innocent parties.
Deborah Prince, head of legal affairs at Which?, said in a statement: "We're really pleased to hear that TBI has seen sense and decided to move out of the volume litigation business. Hopefully, other law firms thinking of going down a similar route will refrain as we believe the practice is inherently unfair and unethical."
The move by TBI comes just days after the Digital Economy Bill was passed into law, which could see users' connections cut off after three warning letters.
The act has drawn much criticism from ISPs, web companies and online users alike for its measures, along with wide-scale criticism for the speed it was pushed through during the wash-up stage at the end of parliament and the fact that it is set to come into force within months.
