ShareReactor Admin Found Guilty of ‘Commercial’ Copyright Infringement
Written by enigmax on February 12, 2008The administrator of eDonkey link site, ShareReactor has been found guilty of ‘commercial’ copyright infringement. Following police raids in 2004, it’s taken 4 long years for the case to come to a conclusion, and after all that, Christian Riesen, aka Simon Moon, has to pay a token fine of just $4200.
With an estimated 250,000 members and around 7 million page impressions a month, ShareReactor was one of the world’s most popular eD2K link sites. Similar in operation to sites that host .torrent files, eD2K (eDOnkey) link sites carry no copyright material and merely point to data hosted elsewhere. Despite this, the site received multiple legal threats every month.
The fact that the site didn’t host any copyrighted material didn’t stop the Swiss Anti-Piracy Federation (SAFE) - backed up by major movie studios - from complaining to the police. On March 10th 2004, the site was shut down by Swiss police, who seized all of the servers and detained the site owner, Christian Riesen, aka Simon Moon.
According to an earlier interview, Riesen was initially tricked into going to Police.
“They sent me a letter requesting my presence ‘regarding finances in general’ from the ‘fraud division’ of the police here,” he said. “Since I am self employed I thought someone made some accusation. So nothing bad in mind with my documents all in order, I went there. It wasn’t about the finances, it was all about ShareReactor.”
The police detained Riesen for around 9 hours while they quizzed him about the site. He explains: “[The police] Asked about ShareReactor. Asked me where money came in and where it went to. The whole thing lost steam pretty fast as they saw how big a loss ShareReactor produced every month, and how little money in total was flowing at all. SAFE told them something about 15.000 Euros income a month, while they told newspapers that is was 76.000 Euros.”
After the police questioning Riesen recalls: “At the end of the day, the investigation judge said ‘and now we go and raid your house’ and so we drove there.” Riesen said the police took a lot of stuff from his house: “two ShareReactor servers, my private machine, my girlfriend’s private machine and my folder with all bank files, although i gave them a copy of all my bank activities of the last 4 years already. Also all my backups went with them. At the end ShareReactor was down and I had none of my data left, personal and otherwise.”
In June 2004 the ShareReactor forum reappeared (minus the eD2K links) and in September 2006 the site made a full return, albeit under new ownership. However, the return was short-lived and just a month later the site closed again.
Now, some 4 years later, the District Court of Frauenfeld, Switzerland has decided that as the ShareReactor site was the main source of income for 28 years old Riesen (through on-site advertising and donations), he is guilty of ‘commercially’ assisting others to commit copyright infringement by ’simplifying’ access to illegal content.
After 4 years of investigations the court decided that for running the world’s biggest eDonkey link site, Riesen - who now lives in Canada - should be fined 4,700 Swiss Francs - roughly $4,200.
Waste of money, anyone?
Previously: World Leader in Movie Piracy Flees from the Mounties
Next: Kuwait Government Blocks 20 BitTorrent Sites
48 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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Yeah the court case probably cost more… lucky git though, it is a small price to pay!
Let’s just hope that they won’t use the idea “assisting others to commit copyright infringement by ’simplifying’ access to illegal content” in the TPB case
[quote comment="287720"] lucky git though, it is a small price to pay![/quote]
well.
Since he was found guilty he will have to pay for his lawyer and the courts costs … so I assume the bigger part of the bill comes later …
So the precedent has been set, TPB better watch out.
Well, you can’t really say it was a “waste of money” since they now have a judge verdict to address future raids like this one too. Because then the processes won’t have to take as much time in investigating since the prosecutor just points his fingers to >this< outcome and draws parallels to this case.
And if he linked to material worth milliions of dollars and they shut it down, well, then the savings for the material owners will be greater than the cost in a short term - whatever happens next or not. These guys can’t count on counter-attacks, so their budgets is always a case to case scenario.
I’m off for some sleep now
Seen this?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7240234.stm
[quote comment="287738"]Well, you can’t really say it was a “waste of money” since they now have a judge verdict to address future raids like this one too.[/quote]
When I can think of another Swiss-hosted torrent/eD2K site i’ll post it here ;)
$4200 Canadian dollars - right now thats 4177.026 ? Hell the mental anguish of 4 years is worse than that. The p2p comunity could have easily cranked that out in six months if not one.
Lol
total idiots
and who said that filesharing is free?
Lucky guy got a better deal than those who supposedly download craptastic albums. Remember the granny who allegedly shared some rapcrap.
good, keep warez in the scene where it belong. tpb next and then all you lamers are fucked.
That dude should be thanking Jesus or some other invisible deity for not landing in jail over it, despite 4 years of worrying or not. Good for him, though.
I think you forgot the fact that Simon himself, tried to boost up ShareReactor in 2006 in order to sell it on an site auction :/
(I was one of the refugees from the community back then)
[quote comment="287734"]So the precedent has been set, TPB better watch out.[/quote]
LOL no its not a precedent u smuck!
Learn that there are different countries, different court systems and different laws!!!!!
for clarity: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“and in September 2006 the site made a full return, albeit under new ownership.”
Well, the ownership of Sharereactor has often been up for debate, hasn’t it?
http://www.p2p-blog.com/item-493.html
It’s more than just the money though. He has a criminal record regarding computer crime. If you want to work in the computer industry or immigrate to other countries (he doesn’t even live in Switzerland now), that’s going to hurt more than the fine.
[quote comment="287777"]Lucky guy got a better deal than those who supposedly download craptastic albums. Remember the granny who allegedly shared some rapcrap.[/quote]
That was because she actually did something illegal, so in this case they are not “all sure” about what the law says. They therefore makes it a “middle-thing”. When that lady uploaded copyrighted music the law is clear that distribution of copyrightet stuff is illegal.
this ruling doesnt sound good for tpb ;.;
fuck they spent more money on the investigation then he was fined
It’s irrelevent for the pirate bay, as it is a swiss ruling in a swiss court, so has no effect on a swedish court.
Different countrys different courts.
yeah, keep telling yourself that.
[quote comment="287892"]yeah, keep telling yourself that.[/quote]
Can’t you tell the difference between Switzerland and Sweden
Unfortunately this shows us it can be done .
Doesn’t Switzerland have the same laws with giving personal data to the police. The police can’t force a isp to give up personal data unless the crime caries a prison term. If so torrents stites will be safe Switzerland now
[quote comment="287961"]Doesn’t Switzerland have the same laws with giving personal data to the police.
The police can’t force a isp to give up personal data unless the crime caries a prison term. If so torrents stites will be safe Switzerland now[/quote]
I meant same laws as sweden sorry about that.
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