Court Rejects Appeal of First BitTorrent Convict
Written by Ernesto on December 13, 2006Chan Nai-ming, the first man ever convicted for using BitTorrent has lost his appeal. Chan was charged last year for copyright infringement for uploading the movies “Daredevil”, “Miss Congeniality” and “Red Planet”. He was eventually sentenced to three months in prison, but was released on bail pending appeal, which he now lost.
Chan was arrested at his home on January 12, 2005, by a special anti-internet piracy team. One of the officers ran into Chan at one of the popular BitTorrent sites. The officer then downloaded three movies Chan (who ironically called himself “Big Crook”) was seeding, and tracked down his IP-address.
Initially the number of Hong Kong people using BitTorrent dropped over 80% after Chan was arrested in April 2005. One of the main reasons to uphold the the original ruling was this deterrent effect of the sentence, according to the judge.
The strange thing about the ruling is that High Court judge Clare-Marie Beeson believed that Chan did not share the copyrighted material with others on purpose. Despite this strange statement, Chan’s lawyer announced that there will be no further appeal, and Chan will sit out his three months. At least it’s not as bad as the seven year the “screener pirate” has to spend in jail in the U.S.
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5 Responses
Was he convicted for using BitTorrent? SO merely using BitTorrent is acrime? or was he convicted for distributing copyrighted material without a license to do so?
It said that he was arrested for seeding the files, not actually downloading them.
Though I’ve heard that some police will seed the files then record the IP’s of whoever is downloading them.
“the first man ever convicted for using BitTorrent”
He was caught, booked and charged 3 times on multiple charges. Each arrest for the same felonies. Some states just put you away forever when you have 3 felony strikes. Like california where he was at I thought did that. But 1 disk from 1 movie is less than 1000 dollars if resold, so misdameanor charges probably applied in the 1st couple arrests. Just think if they would of found him in production with 1800 newly burned disks. And then what if he had them packaged too with false labels,…
Then would they of given a sentenace of 120 years? Im sure his private collection could of been counted and tallied up so high his sentenace could end him up in an iraq prison 4life, but 1800 counts of counterfeiting isnt probation time either.
But with theatre movies that is stealing potential revenue, I just dont see whats wrong with unreleased cartoons which dont even generate revenue for the owners,
will they tally all those disks up and make 7 years look like peanuts? Ill have to let you know …….
The guy didnt disable his sharing folder, it could of been an honest mistake? Hong Kong must have a strict law thing going on, 3 months in jail on a 1st offense, gulp.
When you share the stuff you download its concidered distributing. But its not done commercially or for a profit. So ??? The program defaults automatically set the program to allow sharing, so unless obvious other details pointed in the direction of CHAN knowingly and maliciously sharing the movie files, the case could of been fought better and atleast plea out of a 3 month jail term.
Community service would of been more suited for the charges.
The screener dude i bet didnt get any jail time on his 1st charges, or on his 2nd set of charges, its bad enough he gave his lawyer the slip when they let him out the 3rd time, so they revoked that priviledge.
By no means am I a MPAA lover, not after they invaded the toon collectors circle.
When the court orders the 1932 - 2002 toon collection destroyed, remembering its all unreleased cartoons documenting the TV CARTOON history of america, not available in any other form, its NO different than the TALIBAN destroying all of the afganhistan history.
MPAA wants cartoons to be a mere memory forgotten, new movies are illegal, so why did they go after cartoons 5 to 75 years old? And proceed in a criminal fashion instead of a civil one?
Maybe the local law guys who are more on a peoples level will laugh it off? (Previously they were thanking a guy) And give em back? Or maybe this NEW world democracy will be shoved way down my throat influenced by the corrupt politicians that run the market.
out of all the crazy laws we hear about around the world, the usa tops them all.
SHARING is illegal my friends, if you have 2 of something you should keep them both.
CHAN wasnt selling the movies, nor did he make a profit, nor was it on a commercial basis, nor is the value over 1000 dollars, so he got screwed.
Im not even sure of what statue he was charged under, he wasnt counterfeiting, wasnt providing false labels, wasnt involved in a fraud scheme, all he did was have a copyrighted work in a folder enabled to share with others.
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