In the first-ever bittorrent file sharing criminal prosecution, a Hong Kong man, Chan Nai-Ming, was sentenced to three months in jail November 7 for making available online copies of the movies “Miss Congeniality”, “Daredevil” and “Red Planet” without the owners’ authorization.
In the ruling, the judge acknowledged the man did not gain financially from making the files available, but said that fact and the high prices of legitimate DVDs are no justification for infringing copyright and do not allow him to escape liability. The judge also indicated that future convictions could lead to even stiffer penalties.
Customs officials claim that bittorrent use in Hong Kong has dropped by 80 percent since Chan’s arrest.
The ruling did not extend liability to downloading files, only uploading them–a fact that upset the entertainment industry, which wanted liability for both.
But that distinction does not seem applicable to bittorrent. From the South China Morning Post:
“Kevin Pun Kwok-hung, associate professor of computer science and law at the University of Hong Kong, pointed out that BT technology works with the downloaders also automatically becoming uploaders, and questioned the wisdom of launching criminal prosecutions against users of such technology instead of leaving it to businesses to take civil action. ‘If you say by placing something on the internet, you are committing a crime, you are saying all BT downloaders are criminals because their computers are downloading and uploading,’ he said.”
“‘The key issue is whether placing something on the internet amounts to distribution, but I personally don’t find the legal argument convincing — it amounts to authorisation but not distribution.'”