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Court Rejects Massive Torrent Damages Claim, Admin Avoids Jail (torrentfreak.com)
A former torrent site operator has largely avoided the goals of an aggressive movie industry prosecution in Sweden. Against a backdrop of demands for years in prison and millions in damages, the 25-year-old owner of private tracker SwePiracy was handed 100 hours community service and told to pay $194,000, TorrentFreak reported Tuesday. The torrent website in question is SwePiracy, and it has existed since 2006. Naturally, it became the target of many anti-piracy outfits. In 2012, the website was shut down in a coordinated effort with anti-piracy group Antipiratbyran. The report adds: Earlier this year its now 25-year-old operator appeared in court to answer charges relating to the unlawful distribution of a sample 27 movies between March 2011 and February 2012. The prosecution demanded several years in prison and nearly $3 million (25k kronor) in damages. During the trial last month, SwePiracy defense lawyer Per E. Samuelsson, who also represents Julian Assange and previously took part in The Pirate Bay trial, said the claims against his client were the most unreasonable he'd seen in his 35 years as a lawyer. After deliberating for three weeks, the Norrkoping District Court handed down its decision today. SwePiracy's former operator was found guilty of copyright infringement but it appears the prosecution's demands for extremely harsh punishment were largely dismissed. The torrent site operator avoided a lengthy jail sentence and was sentenced to probation and 100 hours community service instead.
That should be 25M Kronor - 25 MILLION.
Yes, it is. That is why people are going to jail. Wrong is a subjective term, and he who has the gold makes the rules.
Corporation rips off millions of people = $100K fine, don't do it again.
One guy in a basement copies a movie = $100,000,000,000 KERBILLION SQUILLION fine, whole family goes to Guantanamo.
Yeah I don't see how he was infringing copyright by running the site no matter what it was called.
Helping possibly but doing it? Not unless he actually shared the videos.
Except for the obvious. (Powerful Hollywood got the laws they paid for).
<ObPedantic>The word you're looking for is "illegal". Hyperlinking is illegal. Gold buys laws, which makes things illegal.
That has nothing whatsoever to do with right or wrong.
Being black in the front of a city bus in Selma, Alabama, in 1955 was illegal, but it was not wrong.
You don't get how corruption works over historical time, basically big media in most western states successfully conquered public domain and their big idea is to take away our right to own anything. Corporations of the world use United states as a testbed to policies they want to impose on the world, given the stupidity and gullibility of the american public.
So logically, he was what we'd call (here in the UK at least) an accessory? He is (and this is stretching the definition of theft a tad...) the getaway driver for a bank robber? The reason for asking being that being an accessory to a crime is still a crime, if you're facilitating without actually 'doing'.
Nor that he's right. Should we agree that it is a worthless statement?
Can anyone explain why copyright infringement is a criminal offense?
For contrast, note that Comcast was fined $2.3 million for ripping off customers with fraudulent charges.
Comcast's statement on the fines reads:
[Comcast's statement] "...also alleged that the FCC "found no problematic policy or intentional wrongdoing, but just isolated errors or customer confusion." When pressed about that phrasing, Comcast representatives clarified that "there was no finding or admission of liability in this Consent Decree."
(Emphasis mine.)
As someone pointed out, Comcast recovers $2.3 million in revenue in about 15 minutes.
Our government is completely against the people, and for the companies. This has to stop, whether by election or armed revolt is, at the point, immaterial.
he is more like the getaway car manufacturer or the contractor that made the road.
or in a more us example the gun manufacturer. lets see when was the last time any of them were held accountable!!
He's more the whiteboard manufacturer, who's whiteboard was used by person-2 who wrote down where to find person-3 who is giving away one part of a gun that person-4 used in a fully built gun that was used during a crime.
Naturally he deserves prison time, not unlike you deserve prison time for typing his name into your posting and thus referencing him and all the people in the above chain of events ending with a crime four steps disconnected
How can a 25 year old be expected to pay $194,000? Is he going to be a slave for the rest of his life?
Important detail.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Comment removed based on user account deletion
he said with the gun, that implies that means of getting said money was using the gun in some way
The reason it is considered illegal is the same reason knowingly and willingly providing a service for any illegal activity is considered illegal
I would argue that a link provides information, not a service.
The classified ads provide information, not illegal services.
The anarchist cookbook provides information, much of which serves only illegal purposes, but we protect that speech (at least where I'm from).
I do support going after those that are distributing the copyrighted content. However, if that content never even touches the defendants servers, I don't believe he should be held liable for those other peoples actions. In the same vein, I don't believe search engines should ever be forced to remove links (remove the source, and maybe force the search engine to update said link, which now has no content to quote).
You're giving him too much credit. If he made the car or gun, it would be like him making and distributing and profiting from the bittorrent client software.
He is more like a magazine ad for the gun show where someone bought a gun that was used in a crime.
Of course it is insane and of course copyright laws should be revised (IMHO - it isn't the opinion of everyone). However claiming indirectly making money on illegal things aren't illegal in themselves is wrong, going further and comparing willingly doing a thing that have repeatedly been judged as aiding an illegal activity (making the person doing it an accessory) with protesting racist laws is again ludicrous.
Also observe that he didn't get a $3M fine, I think the current judgement is still too harsh however we are still talking about someone that knowingly and willingly put himself in this situation. As he is 25 years old and not mentally he should be treated as an adult and adults have to take the consequences of their actions.
that is an interesting pov. what happens if you take out a print ad with site addresses?
The owner is 25 years old and it has been operating since 2006?
I was mowing yards and doing odd jobs saving up for a car when I was 15.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I suspect that would be similar to the decss tshirts, or the decss haiku, or the dramatic readings or songs: http://decss.zoy.org/
The copyleft.net decss tshirts did get sued, but I don't know what the outcome was. I though it come out in their favor, but that site is long gone now.
If the anarchist cookbook provided a link that a user could click to make an illegal substance (it would have to be illegal for the comparison to work at all) then yes, it is comparable. But that isn't the case.