File sharing website brings heavy damages in copyright case
|
|
|
Turku District Court sentenced 22 young men to fines and heavy damages for copyright violations involving a peer-to-peer file sharing network. The group had run a website called Finreactor in 2004.
The court ordered the group to pay damages of more than EUR 400,000 to dozens of plaintiffs.
The peer-to-peer network was used for copying copyright-protected material, such as films, games, and computer software.
A total of 33 people were charged in the case. They were accused of criminal copyright infringement, but the court did not feel that any of the acts were serious enough to merit conviction on such severe charges.
Earlier copyright legislation was applied in the case, according to which a conviction for criminal copyright violation would have required a profit motive.
Of those who were convicted, 15 were found guilty of a copyright violation, and seven were convicted of complicity in violating copyrights. The remaining 11 were acquitted.
The damages are in the form of compensatory payments totalling nearly EUR 430,000, as well as investigation and court costs totalling more than EUR 140,000.
Fines imposed by the court varied between EUR 60 and EUR 690.
The Finreactor case is the most extensive copyright infringement case in Finland so far. The Finnish file sharing network had about 10,000 users.
Plaintiffs in the case included music, film, game, and software producers, who had asked for damages totalling more than EUR three million.
Helsingin Sanomat
