Welcome to the Torrent Lawyer – Federal Criminal Defense Blawg.
The contents of this blog will be posted on behalf of Cashman Federal Criminal Defense, which is a computer crimes defense branch of the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC.
FEDERAL CYBERCRIMES is fourth area of practice which the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC does not actively advertise. This area of law is broadly defined as federal criminal law and federal civil practice, and we specifically deal with internet and computer crimes on both the state and federal levels. At the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC we take part in protecting your privacy rights through political discussions regarding net neutrality, and we protect the internet user against internet service providers (ISPs) and companies who assert that the user was involved in illegal movie-sharing, seeding, or illegal downloading of songs, programs, or movies.
The reason we do this is two-fold. Firstly, we are staunch believers in privacy, and we will take whatever steps are necessary to protect the rights of internet users. Secondly, we believe that there is a technology gap between the laws and how they relate to today’s internet user. It troubles us that the application of the laws as they are effected today often leads to multiple individuals being charged with one or more federal and state computer crimes they often did not commit. These companies approach individuals threatening prosecution, civil fines and penalties in a law suit, and even threaten jail time with the hope of eliciting thousands of dollars in settlement fees from each individual regardless of whether they are guilty of the crimes they are accused of committing. Without attorney assistance, these accused individuals often pay thousands in settlement fees in fear that they would have to spend just as much money if a lawsuit were filed. This is simply unacceptable. People should not have to pay someone a ransom for protection from a lawsuit.
Technology has advanced to the point where the correct application of justice is possible; we would like to push the law in the direction of properly charging users with crimes they are sure to have committed rather than accusing whole scores of users in a pool (or for alleged participation in one or more bittorrent swarms) without knowing who is guilty and who is not.
In the coming weeks and months, we will be tracking the law as it relates to protecting internet users against computer crime accusations and civil lawsuits. We will also post interesting articles clarifying the law so that the average user will understand how and why their defense is properly based upon hiring an attorney who is conversant with the technology and who understands federal court procedures.