File-Sharing Operators Hit With Big Fines, Jail Sentences

A man and woman who operated a 50TB capacity file-sharing hub have been found guilty of copyright infringement offenses. Despite arguing that their 2,600 member system was set up merely for discussion, the pair now face paying damages to the IFPI of more than $1 million and suspended jail sentences totalling 7 months.

finland Following a music industry investigation, in June 2007 police in Finland carried out house raids against the operators of a Direct Connect hub.

The hub, which in very basic terms operated a little like a BitTorrent tracker, directing traffic between other members of the network, was known as Sarah’s Secret Chamber. It had around 1,600 users and most of them were sharing large amounts of copyrighted material.

In normal circumstances, most members of this type of network will bring some of their own content to the party, pooling resources so that the hub has a library of material. Very often bringing large amount of content is a requirement for membership. Sarah’s Secret Chamber had a fairly large capacity – around 50 terabytes.

For the purposes of a trial the IFPI converted 50TB to “750,000 illegal albums” and to compensate for this ill-gotten booty, copyright holders demanded some $2.7 million in compensation.

Yesterday, in a district court in Tammisaari west of the capital Helsinki, two of the site’s admins were sentenced. Rejecting their claims that the hub was set up for the purposes of discussion, the court ruled that the pair would have been fully aware of what was happening with their users and that copyright violations were taking place.

The 35 year-old woman and a 21 year-old man received suspended jail sentences of four and three months respectively. The court ordered the pair to pay compensation to rightsholders of 800,000 euros ($1.08 million), the bulk of it going to the IFPI.

“It is a shame to see how a private organization has the power to chase after people and can not even show any significant loss of income or any other harm to anyone,” said Finnish Pirate Party chairman Pasi Palmulehto in a statement. “Even real crimes do not normally result in such large sums of compensation.”

The fine even exceeds that handed down to seven operators of the Finnish BitTorrent site Finreactor. Last year they were ordered to pay a total of 680,000 euros in damages to copyright holders.

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TerribleTony

A bloody disgrace. 50TB? I mean come on, are the industries taking the piss? I think they are.
- Anonymous
  
  wow the English have a way with words….
  - Marcus
    
    At least he knows that you should start a sentence with a capital.
    - harry krishna
      
      why? i was able to find the start
    - Max
      
      Plus, his punctuation is impeccable.
Patent Application

In normal circumstances, most members of this type of network will bring some of their own content to the party, pooling resources so that the hub has a library of material. Very often bringing large amount of content is a requirement for membership. Sarah’s Secret Chamber had a fairly large capacity
- Anonymous
  
  Sarah’s Secret Chamber had a fairly large capacity
  :P
  - Tremor
    
    It also had a back door that only a select few were allowed to use.
    - 5318008
      
      The fourth hole, right behind the knee.
      
      #familyguyreference
Yarick

Anyways I have to say if I heard a sentence like that passed against me I would have no choice but to just start laughing. Laugh in the face of the judge, the lawyers, and the suits that decided that it was a good idea to bring me to trial. There’s no way the average person would be able to pay all that off in one lifetime, and all it manages to do is make them look more like the greedy, arrogant, idiotic, thieving, self serving pigs they are.
- Anonymous
  
  I find this news hilarious. If the music is so worthless and you think everything copyright holders release is such crap, why do you people get together to make 750,000 album copyright piracy hubs? Why don’t you just do without? Wouldn’t that be easier?
  - Anonymous
    
    I can personally garantee there wasn’t anywhere near 750,000 albums. 750k albums into 50TB comes out to albums with 96k and 128k MP3s. Terrible quality, unlistenable for some in fact. Memebers of a secret filesharing community with ulta limited membership will be sharing 320k mp3 at least, most likely lossless. At an average of, oh, 250mb per album, thats 4,000 albums per TB.
    
    Also, 50TB capacity does not mean it was filled. If the total content came anywhere near even 35TB, they would have upgraded the service to accomodate more TB. They most likely had maybe around 20TB of content. or, 80,000 albums.
    
    Also, you commited a fallacy, just like to point that out to you.
    - anon
      
      I don’t think you understand how DC works, when they say capacity it means actual data. DC clients don’t report what they “Can” handle but rather only what unique data they have. So 50TB was probably an avg among all the users.
      
      As far as album’s go, you’re absolutely right about the 320 thing, Most of those hubs require quality. But you’re also forgetting dupelicates,
      I bet 80%+ of that data is all dupes among the users. So it’s not like they’re sharing anything new.
  - Sean
    
    @11
    
    I can personally garantee there wasn’t anywhere near 750,000 albums. 750k albums into 50TB comes out to albums with 96k and 128k MP3s. Terrible quality, unlistenable for some in fact. Memebers of a secret filesharing community with ulta limited membership will be sharing 320k mp3 at least, most likely lossless. At an average of, oh, 250mb per album, thats 4,000 albums per TB.
    
    Also, 50TB capacity does not mean it was filled. If the total content came anywhere near even 35TB, they would have upgraded the service to accomodate more TB. They most likely had maybe around 20TB of content. or, 80,000 albums.
    
    Also, you commited a fallacy, just like to point that out to you.
    - Sean
      
      Sorry for double post, could someone fix that please?
  - Not an industry shill
    
    Because despite what the RIAA would have you believe, SHARING is actually a great way to get people interested in bands they might otherwise not hear.
    
    The reason the executives (I would say content producers, but the ones that seem to be so dead set against music sharing are the ones who don’t make the music at all, but profit off of the backs of those who DO make the music.) hate sharing so much is because they lose some distribution control. The “negative sales” scapegoat is used by them to add fuel to the flame. The real issue is distribution channel control. They threw the same hissy fit when cassettes “threatened to bring the industry to a halt” while sales grew to record numbers and profits soared even higher.
    
    The problem with this control that some people seem to think is the right of the RIAA to pursue is that they don’t stop there. They want the rights to ALL RECORDED MUSIC whether they are involved in it or not. They want to collect royalties on behalf on artists they do not even manage or own rights to.
    
    They’re already trying to do this with internet radio
    
    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/24/141326/870
    
    “SoundExchange (the RIAA) considers any digital performance of a song as falling under their compulsory license. If any artist records a song, SoundExchange has the right to collect royalties for its performance on Internet radio.”
    
    Are you reading this? Doesn’t it sound insane to you? Because it should.
    
    This sets a VERY dangerous precedent. What happens when the RIAA lobby legislation so that they effectively control ALL RECORDED MUSIC period?
    
    They say they will then part out the royalties to the authors of the music (the actual rights holders) upon request…
    
    If anyone is foolish enough to think that they would pay out in a fair and TIMELY fashion need look no further than the article that was on TF recently.
    
    http://torrentfreak.com/record-labels-to-pay-45-million-for-pirating-artists-music-110110/
    
    The CRIA (Canadian RIAA) PIRATED copywritten works and failed to pay out what they owed FOR YEARS even after they were busted. They still haven’t paid the full amount that they owe.
    
    Funny how this works isn’t it? The consumers ALWAYS get the short end of the stick.
    
    SO you’re asking why people SHARE music? Because we’re tired of being stabbed in the back and having NO legal recourse since the laws NEVER favour the consumer. And it’s just getting worse.
piracyq

Lol 1 million dollars

They should have stop at 1tb
- Anonymous
  
  $1 terabillion?
  
  Yep, sounds about right.
  - Anonymous
    
    one hundred billion dollars
    - Jay
      
      ?_?
    - hehe
      
      $_$
Uhm

Actually DC Hubs function a lot more like simple LANs. Imagine it like a LAN party. People open network shares and everyone can browse and download.
There is NO SWARMING. Downloads are LINEAR and direct peer2peer, not peer2peers.

Accordingly you can NOT attribute the total content of a hub to one / two people, but only the content they themselves had on their PCs and shared.
Everything else was up to each individual that joined to share, hence the “entrance fee” of sharing at least xx amount of GB usually, otherwise there is no content to share to begin with.
Again: like a LAN party.

Other than that I am shocked that people get such huge fines and jail for a system that is inherently CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC such as a DC hub that you can lock off to people outside of say your circle of immediate friends. That immediately massively restricts use compared to a public tracker for example, or even a xx thousand people private tracker.

Silly fins are silly.

VOTE PIRATE PARTY. Stop the nonsense, stop teh raep.
- Vince
  
  Learn to spell.
  - Anon
    
    If your “learn to spell” comment was based on his last sentence, then you don’t get it and need to unplug your modem for the sake of everyone else on the Internet.
    
    Look at the rest of his post. It’s virally perfect spelling/grammar/punctuation-wise.
  - mhU
    
    .pear het pots
  - Vince leads a sad life
    
    Seriously troll, go elsewhere. Cry more
toluene

ruthless bastards;
anyway it should be 21-year-old and 35-year-old with two hyphens; that mistake kind of bothers me.
- Andrew
  
  Yet you have failed to use capitals and quotes, and don’t seem to understand how to use semicolons. Not only that, but your “correction” is incorrect; correct would be “25 year old”, with no hyphens.
  
  However, we all understood what it meant, so why does it matter? Why be anally pedantic? What do you actually hope to achieve?
  - Exarch
    
    I like how the site admins upgraded to add the ability to comment on comments and the primary use of said upgrade is to correct spelling and grammar.
    - UNF
      
      Its Admin’s, and you better be on your knees when you type their name in vein, blasted Hairytick!
  - Anonymous
    
    Stop responding to grammar trolls. Someone that does not even use a capital to start with when correcting others is an obvious troll. Getting all the comments on an article to be about grammar is only something the RIAA would like to see.
    - Analnymous
      
      “Someone that does not…”
      
      Surely you mean “Someone *who* does not…”? LOL
  - Inappropriate behaviour
    
    Actually, it should be “25 year old,” the inverted commas always precede any punctuation
- Nammer Grazi
  
  I think that,were you to seek literary rules that no number is hyphenated unless it is embedded in a compound modifier that stands before a noun.
  
  .
  - Marcus
    
    There’s nothing funnier than an illiterate grammar Nazi.
    - “25 year old”
      
      u r so write about dat.
NjOI

I don’t really see what the point of this article is – they broke the law by facilitating the trading of copyright material – on a enormous scale it must be said – and now they must pay the rights holders compensation. And?

The argument that they merely set up the DC hub for “discussion” is ludicrous considering that:

a) DC is primarily a software system for transferring files although is does have chat capabilities

b) There are many other platforms whose primary use is for discussion for example IRC or BBS software.

… and it was probably laughed out of consideration of the I imagine.

More than likely the pair had rule sets that specified that no freely available content was allowed to be shared as is the case with most DC hubs.

Only a fool would argue that the pair did not have the intention of facilitating trade in copyright material. They got what they deserved in other words and if anything the suspended sentence is somewhat lenient given the scale of the operation.
- Anonymous
  
  They were fined 1 million dollars and given suspended jail sentences for a victimeless “crime”, and ironically little to none of fine is slated to be distributed to the actual artists who, according to the IFPI’s propaganda, are the ones being wronged.
  
  While their excuse about the 50TB DC hub being for discussion is indeed totally laughable, what’s also laughable is the idea that their trade in copyrighted material was damaging. Did the IFPI track down and ask every single person who downloaded an album from the hub if they would have purchased it if it hadn’t been for the hub? I’m guessing no. So what then are their claims of damages based on? Zilch.
  
  The defendants were prosecuted for doing nothing wrong, on the basis of made-up losses. You don’t see even the slightest problem with that?
  - UNF
    
    They were not fined [=cash into State coffers] at all, but ordered to pay ‘compensation’ for alleged damage done to the rights of the MAFIAA Wolf-Pack who wrote the law, lobbied it through a Puppet Parliament with the aid of U$ State Dept. threats, located the ‘perpetrators’ and shepherded the prosecution to this outcome.
    
    This is the result of a pernicious process of hybridization of criminal and civil tort law, whereby a party’s private commercial rights [e.g. copyright] are elevated to the status of public protection [=State prosecutes infringement under criminal law] simply to shift the uneconomic cost of their enforcement [as defendants are penniless and/or damages unprovable] away from the benefactor.
    
    Nor is this a ‘victimless crime’ – there are at least 3 identifiable losing parties:
    
    1. Those prosecuted under the corrupt law.
    2. The Taxpayer, who has his pocket picked to protect private commercial cartel interests.
    3. The concept of Democracy, as no consent of the governed for this abuse of the legal system was ever obtained – at best, it is ignorant acquiescence.
    
    As such, the arbitrary amount awarded for damages is immaterial – nobody is bound by an unjust law – but this is not just an aberration and the much more fundamental problem is living under a hijacked legal system now being rapidly re-programmed to produce more injustice than ever before.
    
    Also, there are various responses to this phenomenon:
    1. Make like a carpet for minimum wage.
    2. Join the forces of repression for slightly more.
    3. Refuse to be terrorized, get educated, organize the Resistance and fight back as we build the Revolution.
    
    In any case, be prepared to live with your choice, for better or worse!
    - rob8urcakes
      
      @39 & 40 by UNF
      Awfully well put comrade, and thanks so much for shedding some real light on this dark, and evil story.
      I now want to have your babies please ;)
  - UNF
    
    Addendum:
    
    If the ‘defence argument’ fielded sounds weak as DickPiss, that is probably because it was in fact neither [a defence nor an argument], but rather a plea in mitigation for leniency at sentencing, following an earlier plea of ‘guilty’ to the charges themselves.
    
    If that is true, then Enigmax’ statement that they “have been found guilty of copyright infringement offenses” is not, as the defendants preemptively confessed ‘guilt’ to avoid a trial on the facts and law for the convenience of their lazy, gutless ‘legal-aid’ lawyer who on principle refuses to bite the State hand which feeds him [maybe 'Legal-AIDS' would be a more apt label for these imagination-free types?] A correct statement would read, “the Court gladly accepted their coerced plea of ‘guilty’, skipped the trial as no legal finding on the charge was any longer necessary and moved straight on to the fun phase, pronouncing sentence.”
    
    Journallistically it would be wrong to convey a false impression that the case was contested to readers unattuned to the cryptic clues which betray it was not. If this is done in the spirit of enouraging Pirates to believe their captured compadres were forced to walk the gang-plank only after a stirring cutlass-battle against scurvey legal landlubbers, it is a great disservice unless clearly marked as romantic fiction, since it perpetuates a mass illusion which retards effectively dealing with the ugly reality of how they are actually being ‘voluntarily’ bound and sold down the river with cheap trickery and the collusion of bogus advocates.
    
    Also, the nauseating detail of any ‘plea bargaining’ negotiations entered into in order to ‘reduce’ a lengthy list of snowstorm charges to the only one they ever wanted to ‘prosecute’ would be helpful for getting to grips with reality. I say prosecute in commas, because evidently this transparent tactic is used as a lever for coercing suckers to plead guilty at the outset, thus avoiding, where it succeeds, the bother of having to prosecute any charge at all.
    
    Perhaps if Enigmax aspires to be an actual journalist he will clarify and update as necessary?
    - UNF
      
      @ rob8urcakes,
      
      on special offer this week the babies are £3 for a bag of 5, or 10 for a fiver … how many bags do you want?
    - UNF
      
      PS: In a non-surprise move, Enigmax continues to ignore the real story. So much for posing as a journalist!
- Anon
  
  The point is that they facilitated it, not that they actually did the pirating. The same can be said for any large ISP.
  
  I run a DC hub and this scares the shit out of me. I looked up laws and was fairly certain that hub owners were safe due to the “safe harbor” rule. Yes, we run the hub, but the content on the hub is all provided by third party users. We are not responsible for what gets shared, the users are.
  
  How this was allowed to happen is madness. The hub owner is not responsible in any way for what the users share.
LOL

what a bunch of industry f4ggots, they dodge their bills and always overcharge others. time for this practice to d1e
- Anonymous
  
  whoopdy doo
Anonymous

A regular person would have to actually, you know, prove a loss of income to be awarded damages.

Not the IFPI, though! They’re rich, so the laws that apply to regular people don’t apply to them. They can just make up a figure at random without any evidence that the Direct Connect hub caused them to lose money. And win the case.

Imagine if it worked that way for average joes?

“Your honor, the defendant is smarter and better looking than me. It’s people like him who deny jobs to stupid ugly people like me by getting hired instead of us, therefore he owes me 10 billion dollars in lost wages and should be sent to prison for infinity plus one.”

“GUILTY AS CHARGED! TO THE PIT WITH HIM!”
pZ

“All information located under current site is placed for private purposes only and shall not be downloaded, viewed or used whatsoever. So current site operator or internet service provider of this site takes no responsibility nor liability for the way you will use information from this site. If you`re member of any government, anti-piracy or related group or organization you cannot enter this site and view any of site contents. If you enter this site and do not agree with current terms you can not provide any treatment of our ISPs, organization or any persons storing this site information because you in violation of code no. 431.322.12 of the Internet Privacy Act signed by Bill Clinton in 1995.”
- fgsfds
  
  The “Internet Privacy Act” does not exist.
  Also, any sort of disclaimer will not void you of legal repercussions.
- UNF
  
  This disclaimer offers the same protection as wrapping yourself in bacon while fighting lions in the Roman Colosseum.
  
  Traditionally, the contestant is also armed with a lead balloon attached to his ankle by a stout chain, plus a homemade sword of tinfoil and matching helmet.
  
  It is considered a favoured Imperial sport and the only difficulty is the lions may get Alzheimer’s a few years early.
  
  Alternately, the crucifixion option is also available for you vegetarians out there.
  
  Game over and thanks for being such a ready loser!
Derp

I’m quite surprised people are getting such big fines. I don’t understand HOW do they expect them to pay this much at all. It’s like, most of the pirate sites don’t even make money – they’re not selling or earning any. And this wasn’t even a website.

And using such big fines as “scare tactics” for others doesn’t seem like it’ll help much.

All in all it’s the same thing though. Another couple caught.

They don’t want to reduce the piracy, they like it – profit for them.
- Anonymous
  
  the high damages claims are derrived from the inappropriate use of a damages structure set up to combat commercial counterfeiting
  - Anonymous
    
    Ok, so we need to set up a real research. And do it big enough so that everyone can see that it is just a market shift. I remember the last good research about pirates buy more music shutting them up for a few months. I think we should start going through their books. And demand they prove damages in a lawsuit. Because those people might have never bought that crap if it was not available as leech.
- Miz’
  
  you can’t pay it,,
  
  only “good” options are’ that you stop working and let the society to pay your living,
  or work in “black markets” what also means that you don’t pay taxes
- rob8urcakes
  
  It’s not the cash that’s important, but the message this Court decision sends to the Nation.
  
  These two innocent people now have their lives totally destroyed for a fallacy, and it’s sooooooo unfair my friends. I feel for them, and their plight.
  
  This stupid and brutal economic system has to go, and be replaced with something more social, equitable and fair. The brutality of keeping people in poverty MUST cease.
Low quality

Sounds like they had a pretty lame defence and should have claimed they were compilation albums using a different bit rate to those on CD and they had “payment pending”, but for the IFPI to claim it was the equivilent to 750,000 albums is also totally erroneous, as I am sure that music was not the only content.

50TB = 50,000,000MB / 750,000 = ~67MB per album, or a ~128 bit rate I assume. 750,000 albums is almost more than What.CD

Seriously, if they were holding that much amongst themselves, then I am sure they were into FLAC, or 320, so the overall number of albums based upon their equations would be more like 125,000.

But hey, lets make up some more random numbers, as that only equates to ~48 Albums per member (2,600 of them) and as they were only 2 members that comes to 96 Albmus of their share, for an average of 12 songs per album for 1152 songs between them.

Based upon the recent Canadian case against the music industry of actual theft by “piracy for profit for themselves” where the settlement was $45M/300,000 = $150 per song.

That should make a total of 1152 x $150 = $172,800CAD.

Considering that they were not openly sharing across public mediums like Warner Music, Sony BMG Music, EMI Music and Universal Music were, then there fine should be dropped even lower and as a first time offence it should be dropped to a suspended sentence and a slap over the wrist.

So music people, how are my random generated numbers above any different to the scare moingering crap you put out?
Anonymous

The comparison of DC to bittorrent is a bit misleading. DC is far closer to localised IRC.

The figures regarding the share size are also highly misleading as the 50TB includes all the duplicate files. It is not all unique data.

Few figures actually get posted to the hub and so long as everyone has port forwarding set up on their routers properly the vast bulk of the search data, what people are searching for but more importantly what people have in their shares is not transmitted or relayed through the server whose prime function is chat and to provide ip lookup on other hb members.
Funny

It’s just a fear campaign designed as an example to frightened file sharers and this kind of crap doesn’t work on me, now let me explain why.

If I was in this situation, they could sentence me, fine me and if they care for it give me a suspended jail sentence… And I wouldn’t care!

Even if I have a computer engineering degree, I don’t make that much money. This is by design, I’d rather work from home at my own pace than to run after riches and stuff and one day, when I turn 50, realize my life has passed me by while the surgeon performs bypass surgery on my heart.

I don’t have a house, rather live in an apartment.
I don’t have a car and have no need for one since I live downtown a major city.
I don’t think I own much more than a computer, a laptop, a bed and a microwave oven.

so, fine me all you want! I don’t care!

What about a criminal record? Well I don’t have one but don’t really care if I get one. I never travel because a) I hate it and b) Too much money for what you actually get. A couple thousand bucks for a week on the beach? No thanks.
Touching pyramids? Who cares?
Going to Disney World? What for?

My customers buy my services online, they have no clue who I am. My friends wouldn’t care if I was a felon or not. Both my parents aren’t here no more.

Bottom line, I don’t travel, I am self employed, I own next to nothing and my family is not here to be disappointed.

So bring it on!!! Please spend many thousands suing me to get nothing in return! Do it!
- EveryoneIsAnonymous
  
  WOW, I like you!
  Great attitude and living it the way you want! I’m guessing since you didn’t say, that you must have one hell of a security setup on you computer. You keep doing what you’re doing……I sit in awe at your feet.
  
  No I’m not being sarcastic!
Sara

@9 since many yeard dc hubs have hash which can now download from any hub with hash (download same file from multiple people even when not even in their hub) research revconnect I think it is, it talks about it and dc also used overnet now on revconnect so insert ed2k link and you can download same file from dc/overnet/and if you run emule first, use their sources also but you will get leachbanned though for using e mule network when not giving back
Aimee

I totally forgot about dc till I read this article. I will use it soon.
johnson

so Finland joins Sweden in bowing to the entertainment industries, without requiring them to prove losses or damage. more and more corruption of legal systems in favour of corporations. i wonder what these industries would do if there was no file sharing and still no media purchased? i suppose they would dream up some other bull shit reason they were losing money (sarcasm!), but not accept that it was their own doing. even with album sales down, but singles sales up 1000%, they are not happy. their on-line services are crap and too expensive. adapt for god’s sake!!
- rob8urcakes
  
  Dontcha know only the rich and privileged are permitted to access anything requiring effort that’s a cultural addition to the World?
  
  So music, art, movies, etc is not for the poor and underprivileged because it takes money to obtain such access, and current economic system creates and relies upon the vast majority of people being exploited for their work and in return a minimum amount of cash so that the value you create is stolen by those who own you.
  
  The MAFIAA know this, and are simply using it to their advantage as any group of sociopathic, cash-diseased servants of Mammon would.
  
  So I too am prepared to goto jail for uploading and sharing “their” so-called property that they fooled the artists into parting with by their devilish lawyers and contracts. Care to join me and the other few billion who the MAFIAA wish to deny?
herbert

they do not expect to get the money. they do not even want the money. the ideas are to shut down the sites, get a victory that they hope will set precedent in further cases and then use the ‘victories’ to convince governments and courts (with ‘ahem’ encouragements) to extend copyrights. they still think people will go flocking back to shops to buy media instead of file sharing. they are killing themselves and wont see that until it is too late! morons!
dsad

800,000€ you say?
For rape, you get 10,000€, at most. So in other words, you’d have to rape someone atleast 80 times before it’s a crime that can be compared with piracy.

I know who to vote this spring.
Miz’

Goddamn,, I know that this country is a police state, but 800,000 euros??

I’d rather live in somewhere with warm climate and more social people,,
ok folks let me clue you in how to beat them 100%

“sneakernet”

get one person out of 20 every month to grab all they can as per requests.

share offline and let them put man power into it like the war on drugs has been so successful.

USE encryption all round and enjoy.
Anonymous

@41 and @42 so what hollywood is telling everyone YOU better be profiting so when you get a big fine you come out ahead?
Rboy

I really don’t understand the purpose of a fine that cannot be paid. Most countries abolished debtors prisons now it seems like via ridiculous fines society is returning to that idea.

If i were these people i would consider finding a new country to live in.
Ninja

Ok, they might have broken a stupid law but it’s still a law. The disturbing part here are both the fines (and how they were calculated) and the jail time. I mean, real stealing don’t result in amounts that high. And as it was said in the comments you can even crush the 750k albums number.

So they can question the numbers and even claim that MAFIAA is bullying them staring a lawsuit based on such claims. With the proper arguments they might not be able to escape the guilty result but they might get the fines low enough to make it a huge waste of money for MAFIAA and end up laughing on their face.

Bottom line is that every time some trial ends up with huge fines and other excesses MAFIAA succeeds into pushing their customers further away from their products and being complete money-hungry arseholes.

Wonder when some1 will snap and enter MAFIAAs building shooting every1.
- Brandon
  
  Way their going won’t be long…
- rob8urcakes
  
  Ninja asked/commented, “Wonder when some1 will snap and enter MAFIAAs building shooting every1.”
  
  And I’m afraid to say that such a question has already passed through my failing grey cells too, and if these MAFIAA thugs keep going down the aggressive path they’re currently following (and somehow getting governments and Courts to back them so far), then they will need to increase the unit price of their movies and music tracks etc to pay for the additional security from their own customers. That would be us – the paying public.
anti-parlamentary pirate

Typo: “Despite arguing that their 2,600 member system…”

yet in the text it says 1,600 members (this should be the correct number).

Anyway, I hope all the best for the (former?) admins of this hub. There was some pretty sympathetic coverage on finnish national television also. The 35-year-old woman admin appears with her husband who she found via the hub. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7Gyb2RhwRI (in finnish and no english subs I’m afraid…)
sUckMyD!cK

now is the time for a payback! too much for the abuse…f*%k!nG IFPI, MAFFIA, RIAA….
6sixty6

It looks like they are Finnish-ed.
Pingback: File-Sharing Operators Hit With Big Fines, Jail Sentences | Systema
Rboy

I watched the video and although I do not understand finnish from what I saw these two clearly have no money.

They are young can declare bankruptcy and forget the fines. What a waste of lawsuit. I think it is pretty clear that huge fines have the opposite effect desired.

If you have no money and they are going to give you ridiculous fines that you cannot possibly pay then the deterrence is meaningless.

Sharing is here to stay when will large distributors realize they are dead. Digital copies are just not worth what the RIAA and holly stupid believes.

Sell tracks for .10 and movies for $1 and most will buy rather than bother to look for downloads. Until then fu we will continue to share download
- Mehmoomoo
  
  Unfortunately you can not declare bankruptcy in Finland just like that. Finnish system is very very different. The courts will deny the right for that based on the fact that the debts were caused by severe negligence or crime.
  
  The debt will be for those two people AD EXIT. They will be forced to formulate and follow a repayment plan. Which basically means they will be unallowed to own anything of value in the rest of their lives, and if they get jobs they will not receive the salary.
neostyles

OK, so here is what I don’t get. The pirate bay has over 20 million users and they undoubtedly shared hundreds of times more copyrighted material than this tiny thing and yet they are only demanding twice from TBH what they are demanding from this site. TPB probably caused untold millions in losses.
Fed Up

The cure for this is simple..

Kill the Judges..

Kill the IFPI lawyers..
A_E

This exactly. Unless they actually figured out the amount of unique files on the hub, which they probably didn’t.

Then it’s easily a fraction of that 50 TB in unique data.

Also, I don’t see any reason to assume it’s only music that was being shared. Sure the IFPI is involved. But who says people didn’t also host movies/tv series (Though then 50 TB cloud size is quite small). There could easily have been videoclips/recordings of shows shared, which can account by themselves for up to about 100 of songs.

But there’s just too little information here. And I’m afraid their lawyer could have made a stronger defense. Hopefully that will happen when they appeal.
A_E

hmm, my #64 should have been a reply to

#45 Anonymous on: Jan 21 at 13:32

And I guess just like that, this reply will not be put in the ‘thread’.
A Nonny Mouse

it is compensatory damages though, which are handed out for “moral damages” to the person who is doing the charges. but it is quite strange that an organisation like IFPI representing companies can have any emotional/moral damage to suffer. like, people can suffer emotional/moral damages, companies can not, so IFPI is twice removed from the only party that can have emotional/moral damages.

but the moral part, i guess, because it’s also not a “fine” doesn’t make it really comparable to a “rape” except maybe it should because rape victims also have emotional/moral damages …. i am now confused.
stinkpipe

anarchy is closer.
how long to create 50TB of digital information?
how long to delete 50TB of digital information?
as a race, we humans have great capacity for destroying all we create. for once it would be nice to create something beautiful/free/un-destroyable(ifthatisaword
torrents are close(in the digital world) and that is why the authorities are reacting , but reacting is not the way to go, to achieve their goal they have to change their tactics. let us hope governments remain in the dark and essentially quite oblivious to what is really going on, on the internet, because, if they get wind of what we are really up to, there will be no stopping them
i see us all taking to the streets in a mass protest within the next year and a half as our freedoms on the net are removed by bankrupt governments trying to rescue themselves by taxing us more trying to stimulate growth by the back door. all our governments have been walking about with bottomless pockets spending willy nilly, and now their pockets have holes and no muoney so all they do is daydream and play with theirselves through their ever increasing pocket holes
Angry Voter

When will governments arrest the big tax cheats?

Like the guy that runs the US Treasury?

Like GE, the largest US government contractor that avoids paying taxes despite the fact that the people who run it all live in the US?

The company that makes the IRS web site is incorporated in the Bahamas and pays no US tax despite the fact that all the employees live and work in the US!

Oh, but they have resources to chase down some school kid on the other side of the planet with a copy of a B grade movie?
Anonymous

“The court ordered the pair to pay compensation to rightsholders of 800,000 euros ($1.08 million), the bulk of it going to the IFPI.”

This makes my blood boil.. the rights holders are never the winners
Johnny

Two more people that will have to live of Finnish welfare for the rest of their lives, as earning money wouldn’t make any sense for them since they can’t keep it.

End result: the Finnish taxpayer gets screwed a second time, after funding the kangaroo court as well.

If you are Finnish you can thank the IFPI for diverting your tax-Euros away from say schools and hospitals. They are stealing from the Finnish people. Fins are now certainly morally entitled to pirate whatever they like in compensation.
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