Getting any letter from a law firm can prove scary for your average citizen. In litigious societies, this is tantamount to having the string cut on the ever-present Sword of Damocles hanging above the law-abiding citizens. Now with already-shady law firm ACS:Law sending out tens of thousands of “copyright infringement” letters to scare people into settlements, one result is certain: this will make all infringement letters seem a bigger joke than they already are.

ACS:Law is now concerned with such notices involving supposedly pilfered porn, though with many such notices going out for classics such as Debbie Does Dallas, it’s unlikely that much – if any – will make it back to the copyright owner.

With myriad claims nowadays that a resident has an unpaid bill for which he can settle, it would be foolish to actually believe the claims. And why bother spending time investigating their validity? Instead, the smart money is on ignoring them altogether; there are simply too many scams out there, or companies who bought your debt for pennies on the dollar, jacked up an $83 old bill to $300 with rollover fees, and now claim they’ll take legal action unless settled. But they have little if any real legal power, nor are they inclined to enforce it, since there’s always someone else scared enough to settle.

This will be the fate of infringement suit letters if firms such as ACS: Law continue on their avarice crusade. This is doubtless why the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has denounced such blanket claims as scams: they don’t want their own infringement scare-letters to be viewed as more watered-down phishing junk mail to line the birdcage.

Of course, as with so many anti-piracy measures, this really only hurts those who are not seasoned pirates. A pirate would view such a letter as a warning to mind his downloading for a little while, to flag a certain file or site as “having a tracker”, or to move on to another host. But feeling scared enough to settle: not likely. The only ones who would settle would be the most innocent, ironically – those who read about outlier cases where teachers and mothers and grandmothers are sued for millions of dollars. These are the same types of people who would likewise wish to settle a supposed debt, certain that they are somehow in the wrong, and that anything written in legal-ese must bear some legal weight.

The result might eventually be that firms who wish to sue en masse might actually have to provide evidence, see the inside of a courtroom, and actually make a case before siphoning funds from wary and consternated consumers.