A Swedish court has sentenced a 28-year-old to a $650,000 fine, a suspended jail term and 160 hours of community work for uploading over 500 movies to a torrent tracker. The man has to pay the damages for uploading a bad-quality, pre-release film.
The Västmanland District Court said the unnamed Swedish Internet
pirate was guilty of sharing 518 movies and TV shows on
BitTorrent tracker SweBit, SvD Näringsliv reported Wednesday. The
2004-founded tracker specialized in Swedish-language content and
closed down in 2011 after one of its users was arrested.
While rights holders, represented by anti-piracy outfit
Antipiratbyran (now Rights Alliance) that carried out the
investigation, dubbed the man Sweden’s “worst ever”
individual movie pirate and demanded at least one year behind
bars for the man, the judge ruled out a real jail term,
TorrentFreak reports.
However, a single movie was found particularly precious by the
court, as its rights holder, Nordisk Film, claimed to have
experienced huge losses due to the fact it was uploaded about a
month prior to the official release.
In total, Nordisk Film wanted 7.05 million Swedish crowns ($1.08
million) in damages for the illegal pre-release of the detective
movie Beck – Levande Begravd (Beck – Buried Alive).
The entire theatrical revenue of the 2010-released Beck – Levande
Begravd amounted to 9.25 million crowns ($1.4 million), according
to the Swedish Film Institute. The film has been rated 6.2/10 by
the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and got average reviews from
Swedish critics.
What fueled the company’s calculations was the poor quality of
the uploaded copy of the movie. The court document published by
SvD Näringsliv cited The Pirate Bay case and alleged that
“poorer audio and image quality” damaged the reputation
of the film.
The judge eventually lowered the fine to 4.3 million crowns
($658,000), but this nevertheless made it “the largest
ever” damages award for a Swedish movie, according to Rights
Alliance lawyer Henrik Pontén, cited by TorrentFreak.
The staggering sum “is equal to what the man would have paid
if he had bought a license to distribute the movie for free
downloads,” Pontén said.
“The man also has to pay damages for other losses such as
disturbing the market and goodwill losses. This shows what
damages are caused to the creators and rights holders by the
illegal file-sharing of one movie,” the lawyer added.
The Swedish Pirate Party has been outraged by the decision, which
coincides with The Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm
Warg’s appearance in Danish court on hacking
charges.
“To receive such a harsh penalty for doing something carried
out by millions of Swedes shows how outdated our legislation is.
The only way forward is a radical reform of copyright law that
allows for the sharing of culture,” said Gustav Nipe,
chairman of the Young Pirates.
However, the Rights Alliance said it plans for more similar cases
to be opened.
According to the group’s lawyer, “in the future a number of
criminal cases are up for trial and damages will be brought
forward for one or several movies.”