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World's First Jail Sentence for BitTorrent Piracy

Posted by Zonk on from the ouch-three-months-for-miss-congeniality dept.

Rob T Firefly writes "Hong Kong newspaper The Standard reports on what seems to be the world's first case of a BitTorrent movie pirate being sent to jail. (Others have been jailed for related crimes.) After losing his appeal against a November 2005 conviction, Chan Nai-ming, a 38-year-old BitTorrent user known as 'Big Crook,' has begun serving a prison sentence for making the films 'Daredevil,' 'Miss Congeniality,' and 'Red Planet' available for download via BitTorrent. His appeal was based on the fact that he did not profit from the piracy." From the article: "[Appeals Judge] Beeson noted [convicting magistrate] MacIntosh, in handing out the sentence, was fully aware of the noncommercial nature of the case, but measured the seriousness of the case by the harm done to the moviemakers — not by the gain made by the offender. Chan, and those in the chatroom, 'were aware of the possible criminal implications of uploading films to the system,' Beeson wrote. She also noted the sentence was already drastically reduced, from a maximum of four years, to three months, in order 'to reflect the novelty of the conviction.'

7 of 280 comments (clear)

  1. Please remind me again by Psionicist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Please remind me again how this man is so dangerous to society he must be locked up in jail.

    1. Re:Please remind me again by AndersOSU · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You know sometimes we put people in jail for reasons other than they are dangerous, like to punish them... Otherwise a "white collar criminal" would never have to do jail time.

    2. Re:Please remind me again by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You try telling anyone whose life savings were vaporized by the fallout from Enron and such that white-collar criminals aren't dangerous.

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    3. Re:Please remind me again by AndersOSU · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, but we didn't send the Enron guys to jail because they're dangerous. We sent them to jail because they were bad (among other reasons.) We could make Enron execs effectively harmless in the future by banning them from certain business positions.

      When we talk about sending someone to jail because they're dangerous it usually means preventing them from physically harming people in society at large.

    4. Re:Please remind me again by AndersOSU · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Jails are for lots of things, rehab is perhaps the aspect they are least effective at.

  2. Re:wow by ggwood · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ya, and since "[the judge] measured the seriousness of the case by the harm done to the moviemakers" the sentence should be the movie makers handing cash to this guy. He's advertising their crappy movies for them, for free.

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  3. Re:wow by RKBA · · Score: 4, Insightful
    What else can you do to him that hasn't already been done?
    Hanging for treason against the American people and the United States Constitution?
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