Piracy Topsite Operators Ordered to Pay 2200% Damages

[Harry-Potter]

A few years ago the world knew that a so-called “topsite”, an operation at the top of the piracy food-chain, was operated by people working for Finnish Internet companies. Those had hidden the website within a leading ISP’s infrastructure, and when caught were sentenced to prison and ordered to pay damages. However, the plaintiffs still weren’t satisfied and today the court of appeal has agreed to boost the damages award by 2100%.

A 2012 legal case in Finland was quite intriguing – it involved a “topsite” known as Hayabusa / Rainbow (HBR / RBW), used by well-known movie and TV show release groups like MEDiEVAL and DoNE. It is known that the topsite had just 50 members and was run by 4 people, 3 of whom worked for Finnish ISP in positions enabling them to hide the website. The servers were installed by people working for Saunalahti, owned by Finnish ISP Elisa, while the topsite itself was operated from Helsinki citizen, also working for Elisa and having access to its fastest fiber connections.

Elisa employees were able to modify the company’s network monitoring software and hide the existence of their topsite, but the police were already on their trail to accuse them of illegally distributing copies of films like The Bourne Ultimatum, Spiderman 3 and Ratatouille. Eventually, the operators were arrested. Three of them were handed suspended jail sentences of 4 to 6 months and ordered to pay compensation, while the 4th received a fine equivalent to 60 days pay.

In the meantime, copyright owners had originally demanded 70,000 euros, so this compensation was a relative drop in the ocean. This is why the entertainment industry took the case to appeal. Now the Finnish court increased the amount awarded by the district court from 1,000 euros to 22,000 euros.

Despite the fact that the amount was considered low, fortunately for the defendants the industry’s claim for over 72,000 euros wasn’t accepted in its entirety. The court took into consideration that the topsite operators had limited possibilities to control how much the works were copied and pointed out that the rightholders’ claim didn’t directly relate to items which had been electronically created and distributed via the Internet.

The Court of Appeals only overturned the previous ruling on compensation, while leaving other issues relating to the original sentencing untouched, because the defendants only cared about money, not a punishment.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article

[Draximum]

What does this have to do with the Tech Center?

 

This looks like it should be in a news feed.

[lemmingllama]

What does this have to do with the Tech Center?

 

This looks like it should be in a news feed.

Well, it does have to do with technology. Although it could probably go into Balamb just as well (general stuff board)

As for the article, the amount they have to spend is still minimal. It could have been much worse, and this is why most people work around legality by letting others upload elsewhere. Either way, I never used the site so no huge loss.

[professa X]

What surrounds the their problem is that they were working for the ISP companies and did something i wouldn't agree with and that is hiding the ISP. If you work for a company and do things against their policies like that then your wrong. Issue with piracy is different becuz of the theory of information thats why we can argue the lagality of piracy but the legality of doing something underhand for a company that's paying for your salary is just pain wrong. You might have as well stealing from the company and it would be just as bad. Like if one of the uploaders would steal Anime BD's from the store that they are employed (and trusted with merchandise) at and upload them then i dont think any one of us would appreciate such behaviour. An the reason for that is you broke someone's trust and messed with something you have no right to mess with.

[Tanis]

W-T-F?!!???!???!??