TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Online Movie Pirate Gets 3 Months in Jail

Online Movie Pirate Gets 3 Months in Jail

Reuters News Wire (reuters@telecom-digest.org)
Mon, 7 Nov 2005 10:30:05 -0600

A Hong Kong court sentenced a local man to three months in jail on Monday
for trying to illegally distribute movies using BitTorrent software.

Chan Nai-ming was convicted last month for trying to distribute three
Hollywood blockbusters -- Daredevil, Red Planet and Miss Congeniality
-- on the Internet without licences. He pleaded not guilty.

"He was sentenced to three months for each count but they will run
concurrently," a court clerk said. Chan filed an appeal and was freed
on HK$5,000 (US$645) bail.

It is believed to be the world's first intellectual piracy case
involving the file-sharing technology.

BitTorrent, created by programer Bram Cohen, distributes large files
quickly by breaking them into many pieces, sharing the pieces among a
large number of users, and reassembling them upon delivery.

It is widely used to trade copyrighted materials like movies and
television shows. It also has many non-infringing uses.

The Hong Kong government has said the case was the first successful
enforcement action against peer-to-peer file sharing. The maximum
penalty is four years' jail and a hefty fine.

(US$=HK$7.8)

Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily.

Post Followup Article Use your browser's quoting feature to quote article into reply
Go to Next message: Monty Solomon: "CSL Launches Asia's First Commercial Video Sharing Service"
Go to Previous message: Associated Press News Wire: "Google Offers Software for Mapping Service"
TELECOM Digest: Home Page