Customs Officials Arrest 14 Year Pirate
Written by enigmax on September 22, 2008In their infinite wisdom, customs officials in Hong Kong have arrested a child for sharing music on the Internet. The 14 year old boy, who is too young to be named, is alleged to have uploaded Chinese language pop songs, known as Cantopop, for others to download for free.
In order to better understand the position of this teenager and the craziness of today’s society, I’m reading this news through my memory of what it was like to be 14 again. School, friends, acne, the opposite sex – and computers, I loved them, in all their 8-bit glory.
So, customs officials in Hong Kong have arrested a 14 year old boy. The boy is suspected to have uploaded 2,000 Chinese-language pop songs onto the Internet. I’d love to be able to tell you this kid’s name, but (un)fortunately the law says he’s too young to be named. I’m sure kids today are much smarter and advanced than I was, so hopefully he’s not too young to understand what’s happening to him. The ‘not knowing’ would add considerably to his ordeal.
According to customs spokesman Michael Kwan, the teenager had been sharing Cantonese pop songs, known locally as Cantopop. When I was 14, I had cassette tapes filled with pop music too, all of it copied from anyone who had a copy. I doubt I had 2000 tracks, but I certainly had an impressive arsenal of jam-packed C90’s, and I happily copied them for anyone with a blank tape. In fact, faced with no money but a thirst for pop music, all my friends copied off each other, and the recipients of those copies all shared those with everyone else. It never crossed our minds that we would be arrested for it. Not once, since arrests seemed to be reserved for the glue-sniffing vandals who my parents warned me to stay away from, which I did, happily.
Copyright infringements in Hong Kong apparently carry a maximum penalty of four years in jail and a fine of HK$50,000 (US$6,400) for every item violated. A worrying amount for an adult, even ones who have the means to raise the cash. I once ran up a $30 telephone bill for my parents through my generous use of a 1200/75 modem. Through my kid’s vision it seemed like the end of the world, even though the phone company was the boogeyman, not the police or entertainment companies.
Mr Kwan, a head at Hong Kong’s Copyright Investigation Division, told at a press conference that the boy made a post on a forum indicating he had the songs for download. A press conference? For a 14 year old kid sharing music? Could I have imagined being arrested at 14 for taping music, taken away and then be the subject of discussion at a government press conference? Hardly. But maybe I should’ve been – they say standards are slipping in society, maybe the police and media companies coming down hard on children is the solution?
The Kid With No Name has been set free on a bail of 2,000 Hong Kong dollars, roughly US$260, and has not been charged while the police make further inquiries. Hopefully the investigation won’t interfere too much with his school work and revision at this crucial point in his education. Or maybe any diversion away from school work is cool in the eyes of a hormonal teenager? I think I’d have been happy to have a few disrupted maths lessons, but there again, in hindsight I didn’t understand how important they were. After all, I was just a kid.
But of course, eventually all kids grow up. We leave school and start earning our own money and start making those important decisions about where to spend it, which are probably shaped by previous life experiences and dreams for the future. We also decide who to vote for. I didn’t grow up in a ‘lock up pirates and throw away the key’ environment yet i’m still disturbed and concerned at how copyright enforcement is heading. Going to war against today’s potential customers seems foolish. Punishing and polarizing children – tomorrow’s customers – at the behest of big-business, is in a completely different league.
Previously: Top 10 Most Downloaded Movies on BitTorrent (wk38)
Next: Uganda Sued for Pirating its National Anthem
65 Responses
LOL sick fucks
ABSOLUTELY SHOCKING! THIS POOR KID. =(
Now, thats called pirating, now if this boy is let free, maybe all 14 year olds should start pirating!
In the 21st Century no one is too young to suffer!
Everyone worked very hard to get them out of child labor and so at least they can get the adult sentences. This clearly shows how way out of it’s bounds the music industry is digging right now. A drowning rat will claw at anything to stay afloat.
Just take a few steps back and wait until the struggle is over. We’ll see it’s bloated corpse again soon enough.
Shouldn’t the police be using there time catching people with kiddy porn…or catching murders and rapists? Governments, police departments, justice systems, need to get there priorities straight. Why don’t they try and catch people who are doing real internet crimes. There are far worst things happening on the internet.
Way to go, you brought down a kid sharing some probably shittily ripped songs. The world is now a safer place for us all.
Finally his illegal corporation has been taken down. Yes the entire chinese governement should focus on this 14 year old boy. Yes, they should have stopped that 14 year old boy earlier … They should have poisoned him while he was a milkdrinking baby!!
Hey r0ck,
The human rights abuses and labor abuses are still ongoing. See a documentary called “China Blue”.
Some of the people live in the same physical compound as their employment.
Forced overtime, nearly every day. 6 cents an hour.
it’s simply ridiculous
“When I was 14, I had cassette tapes filled with pop music too, all of it copied from anyone who had a copy. I doubt I had 2000 tracks, but I certainly had an impressive arsenal of jam-packed C90’s, and I happily copied them for anyone with a blank tape. In fact, faced with no money but a thirst for pop music, all my friends copied off each other, and the recipients of those copies all shared those with everyone else.”
My friends and I concur completely (exept we were doing it when we were about 10 years old thanks to my brothers twin deck amstrad stereo)… and the music industry profited from the blank tapes and expensive hi-fi equipment they sold us…
… which kinda reminds me of a camcorder advert I saw in a magazine years ago… the camcorder screen showed a scene from Jurassic Park on it (which was obviously being recorded). The advertisers really dropped the ball on that one!
ha ha tat kid is a f***ing legend lol he should keep it up y pay for it wen other ppl are gettin it for free .
HELL YEAH GUYS! WE GOT OURSELVES ANOTHER ONE! HOLY SHIT THIS 14 YEAR OLD WAS CRAZY!!! UPLOADING SONGS OMGG!!!! CRISIS ADVERTED!!!!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!
I am so FUCKING HAPPY that we have a government to protect us from 14 year old song uploaders! OORAHH!!
What would we have done if we continued to share music?
Omg did anyone think about that?
omg serious?
omg.. … im so scared..
government.. please help me!! SAVE ME!!!!!!!
The world can rest in peace now.. this 14 year old song uploader has been stopped.. and we can all sleep easy.
Lets all VOTE for our government that helps multi billion dollar industrys sue us for trying to entertain ourselves.
YAY!
If i ever get a kid im going to make him/her a master pirate by the age of 8 :)
Yarr!1
Any nice girls out there to provide for my evul plan full of leet rebel kids?
@6
FYI, there is a very big difference between Hong Kong and the rest of China. Yes, there is child labour in China, but not HK.
ahahahahah! So freaking hilarious!
14? Arrested? Sounds like those guys are trying to ruin the kid’s life over some really crappy music.
It’s them who should go to jail, imho.
enigmax, your childhood tape-copying crimes are unforgivable. You’d be better off now if you sniffed that glue ;-)
you just dont get it… you are taking away pop stars one more shoot of heroin, and you are not allowing big media companies to break another annual profit record.. leave the poor stars alone!!! i wish.. nvrmnd
Shite, I recorded Ant & Dec’s Lets Get Ready to Rumble when I was 14 from a friend. I suffered then & will suffer again when the authorities find me.
Good, another pirate got arrested, rofl. lol
oprah: our piracy network has over 9000 penises
Good, another twat who can’t spell & insists on using shitty acronyms. laugh laugh.
Damn, arresting a 14 year old kid, is there no limit to the greed of the entertainment industry or the stupidity of these idiots who inforce these laws? I’m betting that kid wont buy a single album or movie even if he lives 90 more years. Maybe they thought they need to ruin peoples lives much earlier so they wont ever even have a chance to buy their crappy music or movies.
Right… Let’s see.
This kid gets a criminal record for sharing music with people. He can’t get a job because of it, he can’t make money because of it, now one of two things happens;
a) He goes without music and movies because he can’t afford them.
b) He downloads all the music and movies he wants, because he can’t afford them.
HMM. Even so, after this I’d be surprised if he ever paid money for a single CD or movie ever again.
‘Potatos’ said: (post 18)
“Good, another pirate got arrested, rofl. lol”
—————————————————-
The ONLY PIRATES, PARASITES and THIEVES are the RIAA industry which has made its fortune of STEALING and EXPLOITING the hard work and talent from the musicians, paying to the musicians only 7% to 14% from the sale of each album in the last 40 years!!!
They (the RIAA) are the only ones who obligatorily must be in the jail.
BTW; are you an UNETHICAL person, Potatos?
For you, this is “cool” that a 14 years old kid (that has not committed any crime) is abused for a corrupt industry of criminals?
Or maybe; are you a CHEAP WHORE that was paid by the record industry for putting UNETHICAL comments here?
ThePirateBay should help the kid out.
Won’t somebody think of the children.
Your a pirate.. YARGH LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Omg that was a close one..
im so glad i have the government to protect me from 14 year olds uploading pop music.
do you guys feel safe now too?
I do.
FEAR NOT PEOPLE! THE 14 YEAR OLD HAS BEEN APREHENDED!
You can all sleep easy now.. the danger is over.
Does the change our national threat level to orange? Or what? Can sombody wake that guy up and tell him to change it?
Imagine if we had to live in a world where 14 year olds could upload whatever they want to the internet.. omg i cant even think of it.
HA HA HA!
another CRIMINAL that is going to jail to taste som HUGE chocolate poles!
torrentfreak thinks they are cool earning cash off the sh!!tty ads!
OMG! This news is amazing!! WHEN CAN I START VOTING AND DONATING MONEY TO A GOVERNMENT LIKE THIS!
When my child gets sued for sharing his favorite music.. why WOULDNT I want to vote and pay tax dollars?
The mere thought of hating my government and promoting anarchy is just ABSURD! Why.. they have our best interest at hand! SURELY we can all live in a better world after this hardened criminal has been put to rest!
I am so glad I live in a world where criminals are not allowed to run free and just upload whatever they want.. the sun is shining bright today my fellow humans.. but not for that kid.. ahaha what with his pop music interests.. DISGUSTING I SAY!
Do you know what would be vastly more moral than this? If a squad of armed and trained people got the kid out of HK safely and transported him to a safehouse.
Really. We should start opposing illegitimate with legitimate force. No immoral law can withstand the power of determination and the means to defend what’s legitimate.
A press conference for a 14 year old. They’re getting desperate.
This 14 year old was thought to be a terrorist working for Osama Bin Obama.. and was deemed a national threat to our society.. uploading those songs could of killed us all..
Good job government! Our world is now terrorist free.
He’ll probably just get a fine (or his parents will.)
Poor kid, stupid customs agents. Leave the poor kid alone man, keep it FREE!
Jiff
http://www.anonymize.us.tc
Your slant on this is annoying.
Report the facts, no one cares about your anecdotes.
I’m upset by how you have portrayed glue sniffing vandals in a derogatory fashion, I feel this is unfair and smacks of generalisation as I’m sure not all glue sniffing vandals actually sniff glue and vandalise.
greedy thieves are getting younger and younger…
@22
I doubt that there’s much chance 11 would get irony… And he’s probably some bastard troll who’s probably never had to pay for anything himself. Or the fun times when you spend a bit more than you should and are broke for the rest of the fortnight…
We keep getting told there’s so much we can spend money on, but they never want to help us afford it…
“Report the facts, no one cares about your anecdotes.”
Whatever do you mean? He’s an EXCELLENT writer and COMPLETELY impartial and he’s got the typos down to about half a dozen per article. Surely this is someone we can all look up to and respect for their exemplary journalistic abilities….
LOL!
Our country kills 14 year old Iraqis as “insurgents” daily.
We killed 12 year old Volksjugen in 1945 during the fall of Berlin.
Who says Children are except?
Fuck, we killed over 1 million Vietnamese children during the “Starve” them out campaign of the Tet’ offensive. Seriously, who are we all kidding.
Look in the sky, its a Bird, its a plane? it IS a plane… its a B-52G dropping Napalm drums!
Damn, Daddy’ why do you have to be a rice farmer? Damn, why do you have an opposing view? You have condemned us all! When I grow up I want to work for 3 cents an hour to make shoes for Nike :)
title is misleading but the story is scary. this just shows how crazy groups are to stop piracy.
They saved the world from ever listening to Chinese pop music.
Instead of catching terrorists like Bush, they’re catching kids swapping music. Great.
It is difficult to understate how extreme copyright has gone, even internationally, yet how could people be so blind to what is happening there? People keep on saying that it is not a big deal, yet those people are very much without perspective in the entire picture of what exactly is going on. The more you learn, the more you know that something about this system must change.
Roze
http://www.28chan.org/apstdt/
What is a 14 year pirate? A very long binge of pillaging on the high seas?
Tom and Rootkit both raised extremely good points.
He uploaded the songs? All I saw was that he had them on cassette tapes. Looked like he went on a message board offering to make copies for people.
Copyrights historically have meant a right for entities to legally copy art. In the modern age, it seems that an augmentation of this towards a protection against plagiarism would be better for society.
*
I knew it.
Kids are evil!!!
Evil I tell you.
So – while 50,000+ Chinese babies are poisoned by tainted milk, at least the Canto music industry will be safe.
Strange to see the response to pirating so …. interesting. Pirating means stealing, am I right? Taking pirated goods not allowed in any civilized society, am I right?
Or….. am I wrong?
“School, friends, acne, the opposite sex – and computers, I loved them, in all their 8-bit glory.”
enigmax you had an 8-bit girlfriend?!
i am jealous. i have only ever found the 1-bit version :-/
“Strange to see the response to pirating so …. interesting. Pirating means stealing, am I right? Taking pirated goods not allowed in any civilized society, am I right?
Or….. am I wrong?”
Bad intent of manipulating words and concepts…
The chinese kid was not ‘pirating goods not allowed in any civilized society’.
The chinese kid was SHARING some songs with other persons with similar music tastes and hobbies… you know, SHARING is something innate in the human nature and ALLOWED in any civilized society and DEMOCRATIC country.
That you are talking applies only to UNDEMOCRATIC regimes, as in China and in this moment in USA for example.
You are another corrupt moron trying of justify a corrupt industry based in the speculation and theft of intellectual property, and worse, now abusing children.
ALL THIS SHOWS IS THAT OUR WORLD IS FUKED. MORON CORPORATIONS RUNNINTG THE WORLD. INSTEAD OF KILLING BINLADENS AND OTHER SHITS THAT ACTUALLY HARM PEOPLE, THESE ASS MUNCHERS DO THIS. WHAT A WAIST OF TAX DOLLARS AS WELL. FUK
Free Tibet & f*ck China, polluting oppressive bast*rds.
Having said that the west is as bad they just dress it up in a different way (watch Adam Curtis: Power of Nightmares)
should be obvious by now that the government is merely a lapdog to corporate profit.
the people are things to harvest. and destroy when they become fallow.
when you pass on the responsibility of saftey and freedom to a small group of people, you basically gave away any rights you had at that point.
“Strange to see the response to pirating so …. interesting. Pirating means stealing, am I right? Taking pirated goods not allowed in any civilized society, am I right?
Or….. am I wrong?”
First I must congratulate on your being one of the few (if not first) anti piracy poster here with a civil tone. I, for one, always welcome a fair “fight” such as it is.
To keep this semi-short, ip rights have some place in the world no doubt. Due compensation for creative and/or beneficial works makes sense lest there wouldn’t be as great an incentive to invest the time to make them.
However, in an age where replication and redistribution can be made at a cost of virtually nil the method of compensation needs to change. To criminalize anyone who is essentially allowing another to listen in on a work, which the new consumer may or may not like, is certainly not the way to go about it. Would any reasonable company turn down free advertising? There are several artists that had the name not come up in some random browsing of torrent sites I would likely never have heard of much less purchased any works of.
Rather than go on for miles I’ll nip this off here, but real quick I’ll add that the old bit of “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” is no longer an altruism. Public perception is the driving force behind your markets and those leaving a bad taste with the public seldom benefit from it.
Bad taste? More like blood from all my punches they throw at there customers.
Hey guys! Lets go support the music industry! They sued my mom last week and now were homeless but who cares! I want that new brittany spears cd!
the law is the law.
if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.
this happened coz stupid hong kong just recently had photos of naked celebrities leaked to the public.
hong kong is really stupid about these laws, they enforce it only after something big happens
the whole edison thing cause “lost of face” for the division so they are grasping at straws to get back their reputation..so stupid
Gay
That must be the best written piece I’ve ever read on TorrentFreak. Congrats Ernesto, that was really nicely put together.
Now the kid must be told to go and find his music on MySpace Music, or else…
damn..words fail me.
Yay another commie.
what the fuck. stupid ass hoes every fucking government can suck my dick. Im 15 and i been downloading from warez, torrent since 12. If I ever get caught ill piss on the judge and tell him to shut the fuck and go eat a dick and try to catch weed smugglers instead
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