Topsite Operator, Who Admitted To Operating Servers With Tons Of Pirated Movies, Gets Off With Just Probation
from the compare-that-to-the-pirate-bay dept
TorrentFreak reports on a somewhat unexpected end to a criminal case against an (oddly unnamed) 50-year-old Swedish man who was accused of and admitted to running the servers for the topsite known as Devil. As anti-piracy folks always like to remind us, topsites "sit at the top of the piracy pyramid" in the warez scene, as that's where pirated content is usually first leaked, before making its way out to the wider internet. In this case, investigators seized the actual servers with 250 terabytes of content and arrested the guy who ran all the servers out of his home. Slam dunk case, right? So that's the odd part: He ended up receiving just probation and some community service.The article admits that the guy may still face civil trials which could come with huge damages, but it's instructive to look at the results of the criminal case here and compare it to another case.Given the scale of the case it was expected that punishments would be equally harsh but things did not play out that way.
Despite admitting that he operated servers at his home and in central Stockholm and the court acknowledging that rightsholders had suffered great damage, the man has just been sentenced to probation and 160 hours of community service.
Remember, this is the same country that sued four guys who were no longer associated with The Pirate Bay -- which hosted no infringing content and was more of a search engine -- and not only found them guilty, but gave them jail sentences and millions of dollars in fines.
That seems... weird. The case against this topsite operator seems like exactly the kind of case that's actually a slam dunk. It's not going against a third party or intermediary. It's going against the people actually doing the infringing. One can question whether it's a worthwhile business strategy, but the legal strategy against this guy seems to make perfect sense -- as compared to the weird nonsensical legal strategy against The Pirate Bay -- which, again, hosted no infringing content and only acted as a search engine.
So why the different results?
If you've ever watched the documentary about the trial, TPB AFK, it quickly becomes clear that a big part of the trial against the four people loosely associated with the site was more about the fact that they didn't "respect the system." The situation with Peter Sunde is particularly striking. He had really, really strong legal arguments for why he was innocent. Beyond the fact that the site didn't host any infringing content, his role was as a spokesperson for the site, and he had little to do with the site's actual operations. But -- and this is the important part -- he recognized the whole trial was a joke and treated it as such, making fun of the proceedings and of the lawyers and judges for not understanding very basic things about how the internet worked.
To some extent, you could argue that he and the others were convicted for being smartasses in responding to the "very serious" lawsuit from a bunch of lawyers who clearly didn't understand the technological issues at play.
However, in this case -- involving an actual infringer where it was quite clear that he was, in fact, breaking the law -- things were different. This guy cooperated and treated "the system" with the deference it thinks it deserves:
According to Mitti.se, two key elements appear to have kept the man’s punishment down. Firstly, he cooperated with police in the investigation. Secondly – and this is a feature in many file-sharing prosecutions – the case simply dragged on for too longThe Pirate Bay case dragged on for quite a long time as well. Yet it still ended with huge fines and jail time. It's hard to look at the results of the two cases as anything other than the tax one pays for actually calling out a ridiculous system for being ridiculous, rather than sucking up to the system whose own credibility is called into question.
I'm a big supporter in the idea of an impartial judicial system with due process, and especially the idea that the judicial system is "blind" to all but the facts before it. But we all know that's an ideal that is too frequently not met. The widely different results in these two cases further highlights that divide. Play along with the system and get a slap on the wrist -- even if your actual activities clearly violate the law. Don't play along and mock the system, get a huge sentence -- even if your actions don't actually violate the law. In the end, all that seems to matter is the "proper respect" for a system whose own actions shows it deserves none.
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Filed Under: copyright, crime, devil, prosecution, sweden, topsite
Companies: the pirate bay
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Since they'd already badgered Aaron Swartz into suicide trying mfgr. such an example, KDC was next on their list of potential victims. Business as usual.
I wonder what Diaz and Heymann are up to nowadays.
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"Mess with the US 'entertainment' industries and we will destroy you, no matter where on the planet you live" was the message intended, and whether it ever makes it to a US court or not, I'd say it's been pretty successfully sent.
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No, but his stuff has.
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Nice - no one else can every be charged with copyright violations again...
If you don't "treat" all violators the same way, the law cannot be upheld as valid.
Either guilty party members are charged and spend their time and fines, or they are let off with probation and community service. When a known and admitted guilty person gets the lighter penalty, that just made the highest penalty that lighter penalty - otherwise it's prejudicial and invalid.
At this point TPB and DotComm's lawyers now have legal grounds for reversing any and all charges levied against their clients with this decision.
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Re: Nice - no one else can every be charged with copyright violations again...
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It's a real banana republic court system
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Re: Nice - no one else can every be charged with copyright violations again...
So the question is did the Topsite Operator pay for the privilege of preferential treatment?
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Re: Nice - no one else can every be charged with copyright violations again...
We could wish it applied to the Corporate States of America, long live our Bribery Coerced Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches. May their wallets never be empty, or their consciences be a burden throughout the rest of their immoral and unjust lives.
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Re: Nice - no one else can every be charged with copyright violations again...
Why, because the Swedish courts are going to suddenly be very concerned with applying the law consistently?
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You're just wrong, Masnick
Masnich just hates it when lawyers enforce law enforcement.
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Re: You're just wrong, Masnick
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Re: You're just wrong, Masnick
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Re: You're just wrong, Masnick
Masnich just hates it when lawyers enforce law enforcement.
First, how is anyone supposed to enforce law enforcement? Maybe you meant to just say "enforce [the] law." But the bigger problem is that lawyers are in no way obliged or expected to enforce laws. That's the job of the police, aka Law Enforcement Officers.
Where did you get such a silly idea?
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Re: You're just wrong, Masnick
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Lets see, they say/said this about:
Google
Megaupload
Cassettes
VCRs
DVDs
The Internet
Just about all technologies
Is there a good reason why anyone should ever take them seriously?
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What they always object to is any means by which people may distribute what they create without handing control and most of the profits to them.
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Player Pianos. (Will be the death of sheet music.)
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And Mike explicitly admits that he has absolutely no respect for the judicial system whatsoever. Kudos on the honesty. Care to admit that you have absolutely no respect for the copyright system too?
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Any system dependent upon fear for compliance is doomed to be torn down.
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Copyright is only a recent development.
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"The Pensacola News Journal said, "The saddest thing: Had they cooperated with the agents, they probably wouldn't be worrying about prison sentences now."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Hovind#Legal_problems
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Did you never hear that if you lose a sense the remaining ones increase?
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What an embarrassment this would have been.
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I listened to large parts of the TPB case proceedings and I feel the need to object to this commonly held view that the judges didn't understand the technical matters. There really wasn't much to indicate any technical misunderstandings and the technical walk-throughs by experts were clear enough.
I think the real misunderstandings were of culture - not technology. For example, for the old school judges it was difficult to comprehend how it's possible for a very loosely coupled and leaderless group to achieve concrete results via the internet. They tended to instead use a traditional hierarchically run business as their frame of reference.
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In other words, they didn't understand the technology.
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Yeah, Kim Dotcom
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Perhaps read it as suspiciously unnamed? Perhaps he was turned and is selling out those he was supplying, or he was always a plant owned by the rightsholders?
He was sentenced, if only to community service, so this is a bit hard to believe, but stranger things have happened. We don't know what's really going on or what really happened. I find it hard to believe they gave him a pass for not acting the way TPB acted.
Yes, you have an interesting name, and I'm missing your point on purpose just to speculate.
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No, actually naming him would have been odd. Swedish media typically does not name people sentenced. This is a different tradition from US media. I work in Swedish media.
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I also find it strange that someone convicted for a crime is not being named. Do I trouble you greatly too?
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Political Prisoners
Who says Sweden doesn't have political prisoners? Doesn't every country?
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