ACS LAW fucked themselves real bad over this stunt they pulled. They could have been a very succesfull law company because they had a pretty good profile before the letters they started sending out demanding money from alleged file sharers.
ACS:Law was a United Kingdom law firm specialising in intellectual property law.[1] Prior to 2009, its most notable case was the defence of a British national accused of public indecency in Dubai.[2] The firm is best known for its actions against persons allegedly infringing copyright through peer-to-peer file sharing. The firm ceased pursuing file sharers in January 2011[3] and ceased trading on 3rd February 2011.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACS:Law
On 21 September 2010, the website of ACS:Law was subjected to a DDoS attack suspected to be coordinated by online group Anonymous as part of Operation Payback. When asked about the attacks, Crossley said: "It was only down for a few hours. I have far more concern over the fact of my train turning up 10 minutes late or having to queue for a coffee than them wasting my time with this sort of rubbish."[18][19]
When the site came back online, a 350MB file which was a backup of the site was visible to anyone for a short period of time. The backup, which included copies of emails sent by the firm, was downloaded and made available as a torrent.[20][21] Some of the emails contained unencrypted Excel spreadsheets, listing the names and addresses of people that ACS:Law had accused of illegally sharing media. One contained over 5,300 Sky broadband customers whom they had accused of illegally sharing pornography,[22][23] while another contained the details of 8,000 Sky customers and 400 Plusnet customers accused of infringing the copyright on music by sharing it on peer-to-peer networks.[24] This alleged breach of the Data Protection Act became part of an investigation into ACS:Law by the Information Commissioner's Office.[25]
In May 2011, ACS:Law was fined £1000 for the privacy breach, with the Information Commissioner Christopher Graham commenting: "Were it not for the fact that ACS:Law has ceased trading so that Mr Crossley now has limited means, a monetary penalty of £200,000 would have been imposed, given the severity of the breach." Graham criticised ACS:Law for having computer security measures that "were barely fit for purpose in a person's home environment, let alone a business handling such sensitive details." The consumer group Which? described the £1000 fine as "paltry".[26]