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Have you ever heard of a computer game called Two Worlds? Nor had I, until last month. We weren't missing much by all accounts - outside its publisher's native Germany, reviews were lukewarm. So why are hundreds of people in the UK being forced to pay £600 for it?

The demands are coming from Topware, part of Zuxxez Entertainment AG, a small company based in Karlsruhe. Karlsruhe is historically the centre of the German justice system, and perhaps it was this that inspired Topware's novel response to the illicit copying that's always plagued the games industry. Not content with tens of thousands of retail sales of Two Worlds, Topware monitored peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks to see who was swapping it for free. Using court orders to make ISPs disclose personal information, they identified users from whom others were copying the game and then they sued them.

According to Topware's CEO, Dirk P Hassinger, they're going after 1000 sharers in the UK and even more in Germany - up to 80,000 in total. Each is asked to pay €300, or £600 in the UK- 'legal costs' are apparently higher here - with the threat of court action if they fail to comply. Hassinger, who admits P2P users may not even realise that they're acting as a download source, says a case that reached court in Germany resulted in more than €20,000 (about £15,837) being awarded. No matter that these users gained nothing from file sharing and may never have run the £20 game.

After I was contacted by a man who'd received a demand for £600 despite having no knowledge of Two Worlds, I tried

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to speak to Davenport Lyons, Topware's London solicitors and the recipients of an undisclosed portion of those 'legal costs'. I wanted to clarify a few details and ask if they thought this was in the public interest. But the person who answered the phone refused even to tell me his name.

Journalists aren't fond of that sort of thing, so I pushed. Davenport Lyons still didn't call me, but their heavyweight PR company, Bell Pottinger, did. Through them, I obtained some answers that were short on facts and long on criticism of my attitude. 'We are an open and transparent organisation,' huffed another unnamed spokesperson, declining to be quoted or interviewed or to meet me in the car park. He, she or it did confirm that they'd already approached 500 users last year in respect of Dream Pinball, another Topware game, of which five were due in court. '[Our] client has gained little financial return... but we believe the deterrent effect has been substantial.' Oh, that's all right then. But if you wanted to deter people, wouldn't you try to publicise the wrongs of file swapping rather than silently grabbing cash off random individuals?

This kind of guerrilla action is worrying enough, but meanwhile the bigger guns are being rolled out. The US Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is an international treaty that has naff-all to do with counterfeiting and everything to do with Big Copyright versus little you. Customs officers, for example, could start impounding and destroying infringing materials, such as a MacBook with an unlicensed MP3 on it. The civil liberties group IP Justice characterises ACTA as a 'misguided effort to increase government spying and ratchet up IPR enforcement at public expense', and calls for a 'distinction between the types of infringements that actually do cause the public serious harm... and those that only impact profit margins.'

Among the politicians backing ACTA is Howard Berman, a supposedly liberal Democrat from California. In 2006, his re-election campaign received $180,000 from the entertainment industry (for which read Time Warner, News Corp and Sony), and you only get one guess where their interest lies.