Several admins of the site had their computers seized during the raid and some of them were even jailed for a night. Although the site never returned, the legal proceedings against the people involved would carry on for several years, becoming the largest BitTorrent-related case in terms of the number of people involved.

In separate cases both individual users and administrators of the site were charged with copyright related offenses. The prosecutor chose 24 users who had posted both torrents and shared high volumes of data, claiming criminal copyright infringement. All except one were found guilt and had to pay several thousand euros in damages and fines.

In addition to the users, 32 admins of the site were also charged. The term admin was used loosely here since some were merely moderators of the forums. Of the 32 ‘admins’, 21 were eventually convicted in the District Court. These convictions ranged from assisting copyright infringement to direct copyright infringement.

What followed were several appeals, with the cases of some of the defendants going all the way to the Supreme Court on claims that they were not guilty.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court found seven of the Finreactor admins guilty of assisting in copyright infringement. The defendants claimed that they should be found not guilty because Finractor’s users were responsible for sharing the files. The Court disagreed arguing that their role in the Finreactor network, which allowed others to share copyrighted works, was essential.

The Supreme Court sentenced the seven admins to pay 680,000 euros in damages, which will be shared among a few dozen copyright holders who joined the case. This sentence is significantly higher than the 420,000 euro fine which was handed out to the admins by the Court of Appeal in 2008.

The verdict sets a dangerous precedent according to the Finnish Pirate Party. It means that operators of web-portals could be held responsible for what their users do, which puts the people behind thousands of other sites, including YouTube, at risk.

“The Finreactor verdict is a disturbing interpretation of the liability of service providers for what users are doing, and it contradicts the principle that the postman is not responsible for the package he or she delivers,” said Pirate Party chairman Pasi Palmulehto. “The Supreme Court’s decision makes it very unclear what kind of services can be developed and when operators are responsible for what users are doing.”

The Supreme Court decision against the Finreactor admins came one day before Finland made a broadband connection a fundamental right of its citizens. As of today, every Fin has the right to at least a 1 Mbps Internet connection, one that they should use wisely.

Source: Finnish BitTorrent Admins Receive 680,000 Euro Fine

So, in conjunction with Mikko Valimaki of ‘Turre Legal’ law firm we look into the Finreactor case. Mikko is the lawyer who defended the admins at Finreactor and he is currently taking their appeal to the Supreme Court. Here is your chance to become a Finreactor expert – before the court in Stockholm does.

Part I: Finreactor Cases in Finland – the Story So Far

The Finnish BitTorrent tracker case began in 2006 and the case is currently being heard before the Finnish Supreme Court.

First some background. Finreactor was a popular BitTorrent tracker that was raided in December 2004. The request came from a local attorney firm who signed it as the representative of major software companies such as Microsoft and Adobe. Tens of admins had their computers seized during the raid, and some of them were even jailed for a night. The site never returned.

After initial reports it turned out that the exclusively Finnish-speaking site had about 10,000 registered users. It also became clear that Finreactor had nothing to do with commercial piracy, it was essentially just another community-driven tracker, which grew popular along with the rising popularity of the BitTorrent protocol. Most of the admins are15-25 year-old had no political intentions either, and most of them did not think they had done anything illegal.

So the case started in 2006, and there were essentially two ‘lines’ for the cases. One line was individual users. The prosecutor chose 24 individuals who had both posted torrents and shared high volumes of data, and claimed criminal copyright infringement. At this stage the local antipiracy bureau joined in and claimed for damages on behalf of recording companies and movie studios.

The other line was with the site admins. The prosecutor chose to sue 32 individuals who had participated in the administration as site owners, software developers, user administrators, forum moderators etc. Most of them had notoriously just edited discussions after torrent posts and managed user accounts. The admins were jointly charged with criminal copyright infringement and saw claims for damages totaling some 5 million euros.

Our law firm represented over ten individuals in the process, both admins and individual users.

Of 24 individual users, 23 were convicted in the district court. We represented four individual users. We managed to win one case, and lost three. Those who lost were typically ordered to pay 10-20% of claimed damages, ranging from c. 1,000 to 10,000 euros, plus a few thousand euros in legal costs (in Finland the loser pays the other side’s costs), and a few hundred euros in fines.

We appealed all the lost cases, but lost the appeals as well. One of our clients was then ready to negotiate with the copyright holders. We continued to appeal the two remaining cases. The Finnish Supreme Court granted us leave to appeal in July 2008. They take only some 10% of cases appealed. No other individual cases were appealed this far, as most of the convicted had agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to the right holders.

Of 32 admins, 21 were convicted in the district court. We represented eight admins, of which 4 were convicted and another 4 released. The convictions ranged from assisting copyright infringement to direct copyright infringement. The convicted admins were ordered to pay jointly some 500,000 euros in damages to rights holders plus almost 200,000 euros in legal fees, and a few hundred euros in fines each.

Some admins chose to settle, but 14 appealed, and we continued to represent 4 admins in the appeals court. The court of appeal released two more (one was our client), and for the other 12 the convictions remained essentially the same – only all convictions were now based on direct infringement, and none were convicted of assisting infringements by users. The relevant part of the court of appeal decision reads as follows:

“… a necessary precondition for the reproduction of copies through Finreactor has been Finreactor as a working system….Finreactor admins must have been aware that the aim has been to share material that is under copyright. By administering a system that serves this purpose they have together with its users participated both in making works available to the public and the reproduction of copies as noted by the district court.”

Again, we appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court took the case in quickly following the user cases. Somewhat surprisingly they gave leave to appeal only for the copyright holders, who want more in damages (they were given 10% claimed but they asked for at least 50%). The Supreme Court will decide later on whether our side of the story can be heard as well.

This was a guest article from Mikko Valimaki from Turre Legal

We will publish part two of this series of three articles tomorrow. In it we look at the relevance of the Finreactor case viewed in the context of The Pirate Bay trial. In part three we will look at why the admins were convicted and what people can do to remain within the law and avoid the same fate.

Source: The Pirate Bay Trial: Understanding Finreactor