World's First Jail Sentence for BitTorrent Piracy

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.'

Comments

dangerous?

[argoff]

You know sometimes we put people in jail for reasons other than they are dangerous, like to punish them...

... or to suppress their freedoms and liberties. In which case defiance is not only a right, but a duty. If we need to punish anyone, it is the government, it is they who are being dangerous, it is they who are coercively violating peoples liberties.

Re:wow

[orasio]

Damn, I didnt know bad taste was a jailable offence.
 
If that was the case 51% of the US electorate should have been jailed after the 2004 presidential election.
And a 49% of the US effective voters, after the 2000 presidential election.