Gill and Ken Murdoch, aged 54 and 66 from Scotland: “did not even know what ‘peer to peer’ was”. That didn’t stop lawyers acting on behalf of Atari of accusing them of illegally sharing the game Race 07: Official WTTC Game and threatening the Murdochs with court unless they paid £500 in compensation.

According to the pair, they have never played any videogames, much less shared them. And Atari have since dropped the action.

In a Which? Computing investigation, following the pair and others, Lawdit solicitor Michael Coyle says that he has been contacted by “hundreds” of people who have been wrongly accused of file-sharing: “Some of them are senior citizens who don’t know what a game is, let alone the software that allows them to be shared.”

According to the report, the two most common problems are pirates “piggybacking” on others’ unsecured wifi networks and canny file-sharing sites such as Pirate Bay littering their records with randomly generated IP addresses – to send investigators on wild goose chases. “Piracy is only established beyond doubt if the hard-drive is examined” said Coyle.

Race 07 out now | £30 | Atari (via BBC)