60 Year Old Swedish Man Gets Sentenced To 'Conditional' Two Years In Jail For File Sharing

from the punishment-=-crime? dept

While yesterday we wrote about how a Swedish court acquitted a 15-year-old for file sharing some movies, today a court gave a 60-year-old man two years of conditional jail time along with a pretty large fine. The "conditional" jailtime appears to be like a form of probation, where if he meets certain criteria, he might never spend time in actual jail, but it's still quite a sentence.

As Rick Falkvinge notes in the link above, even if this guy never sets foot in jail, the Swedish court has now established a ridiculous precedent for what file sharing can get you in terms of jailtime. Copyright issues like this should, at most, be a civil issue, rather than a criminal one, and it seems like a very dangerous move by Swedish law enforcement to start trying to sentence people to jail over something done so widely. When the punishment does not match at all with the real "harm" of the crime, people respect the law even less. I'm sure the supporters of such a move think that this will help with "education." There's almost no evidence to support that. Ridiculously punitive punishment does not do anything to stop infringement.

Instead, it seems likely that a ridiculous ruling like this merely helps undermine the respect that citizens give to copyright law.

Earlier today we compared a discussion on whether or not the punishment fit the crime for copyright infringement in France. Falkvinge provides a similar set of info for Sweden. This guy was sentenced to two years and a big fine. What other verdicts have come out recently in Sweden?

• Severe negligent homicide, six months.
• Rape, one year and four months.
• Sexual abuse of a child, ten months.
• Armed robbery with a firearm, one year and nine months.
• Homicide by strangling, six months.
• Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, ten months.

When you make the punishment way out of line with the crime, you're not doing yourselves any favors. You just make people respect the law even less...

Filed Under: file sharing, jail, sweden

Pro Tip: If You Run A Prison, Maybe Don't Give The Guy In Jail For Computer Fraud The Job Of Reprogramming Your Computers

from the just-a-suggestion dept

Let's see.... you run a prison and you need to do some work on the computer system. Do you (a) hire a competent professional or (b) hand over the computer system to an inmate who's in jail for computer fraud, involving phishing scams? Apparently, a prison in the UK went with option (b) and then had to deal with being entirely locked out of the computer system, after the guy hacked around and changed everyone's passwords. Apparently, that prison-work program needs a few tweaks...

Filed Under: fraud, jail

If You Thought Your Mobile Phone Contract Was Bad... This Guy Got 60 Years In Jail...

from the phones-in-jail dept

It's no secret that prisons are having a tough time stopping inmates from getting contraband mobile phones, which they use to communicate with others, and often to continue committing crimes. So, in an effort to send a message to prisoners, one Texas inmate who was caught with a mobile phone just had an extra 60 years tacked onto his sentence. It's unclear from all the reporting what the guy's initial sentence was, but no matter how you add it up, it's difficult to see how 60 years in prison for a contraband mobile phone fits into the confines of a sentence that matches the crime.

Filed Under: jail, mobile phones

Prisoner Sues Because Prison Confiscated And Destroyed His Contraband Mobile Phone

from the good-luck-with-that dept

We've seen plenty of stories over the past few years about prisoners getting contraband mobile phones -- even to the point that many prisons have been asking for exemptions against mobile phone jammers. However, here's a new one: a former prisoner in the UK is suing the prison system for destroying the contraband phone they discovered he had. He claims that the phone should have been just taken and kept in storage, but instead, it was used to train dogs, who chewed it up. Perhaps the rules governing the UK prison system are a bit different, but it's difficult to see how any prison system should be expected to hang onto contraband for the prisoners until after they're released. No word on how he got the phone in the first place, but perhaps it was specially trained carrier pigeons (or not).

Filed Under: confiscated, contraband, jail, mobile phone

NZ Censor Threatens To Jail Parents Who Buy Violent Video Games For Kids

from the shock-value dept

Tony Eaton points us to the rather disturbing news that New Zealand's "chief censor" (quite a title, there...), Bill Hastings, is interested in prosecuting parents who have bought their kids violent video games. Apparently parenting is no longer for parents, but for Bill Hastings to determine what is, and what is not appropriate:

"There would certainly be some shock value to prosecuting a parent who gives their under-18 child access to a restricted game. It would send out a message that the enforcement agency means business."

Based on the law, parents prosecuted could face $10,000 fines or be put in jail for three months. Which do you think would do more harm to a child? Playing GTA or having their parent dragged through a show trial, for "shock value," and dumped in jail for three months?

Filed Under: censor, jail, new zealand, parents, violent video games

Jailtime Seems A Bit Harsh For Online Music Store Owners Who Didn't Get All The Right Licenses

from the why-not-just-make-them-pay-up? dept

Most readers here probably know the story of Allofmp3.com -- a Russian website that signed a licensing deal with a Russian music licensing group ROMS. The site was immensely popular because (a) it sold un-DRM'd files (back before that was common) and (b) sold music incredibly cheaply. The recording industry should have taken this as a lesson in how to create a super popular online music store -- but instead it freaked out, and nearly created an international diplomatic incident in threatening Russia with economic sanctions unless it shut the site down. The problem was that since it had the ROMS license, it was legal in Russia. In fact, Allofmp3.com even tried to pay the record labels some money -- which they refused. The record labels, of course, insisted that the ROMS license wasn't sufficient, but no Russian court ever agreed. Eventually the site was shut down, though it lives on at MP3Sparks. However, it's lost a lot of steam because the site has been blocked from accepting most common forms of payment.

Law Professor Michael Scott points us to the news of what appears to be a similar offering in Italy -- except that, in this case, the operators of the site have been sent to jail. The only news that I can find on this is from the IFPI site -- which is obviously a bit biased, but it does look like the owners of the site did get a license from the Italian Authors' Society (SIAE), which they believed was sufficient. A lower court agreed, but the appeals court has sided with the record labels.

But here's the kicker: the operators of the site have now been sent to jail for criminal copyright infringement. Already I have problems with most criminal copyright infringement cases -- because, by any reasonable standard, copyright is a civil dispute -- it's an issue between two businesses. In this case, it's even more egregious because it seems clear that the site wasn't just some random guy selling MP3s he had no right to, but had clearly tried to obtain the correct licenses. However, these days, when to do just about anything with music you need to get numerous different licenses (Peter Jenner, back at MidemNet, claimed that you needed 33 different permissions to do pretty much anything with music in Europe, though others disagreed), it seems fairly ridiculous to throw someone in jail for not being able to figure out every single party that has to sign off on something -- especially when you were lead to believe that you had what you needed via the Authors' Society.

Filed Under: copyright, downloads, italy, jail, licenses
Companies: ifpi

Officials In Hong Kong Arrest 14-Year-Old For Music Sharing

from the how-dare-you! dept

TorrentFreak has the story of how a 14-year-old boy in Hong Kong has been arrested for sharing Cantonese pop songs online. He may now face up to four years in jail. As the author of the story notes, when he was 14 he had plenty of music on cassette tapes that he would share with friends, and how ridiculous would it be to think of going to prison for that? Kids share music -- it's part of what they do, and in most cases it's because they love the music and want more people to hear them. They're not "stealing" the music (and, at that age, probably can't afford most of it anyway.) They're simply expressing how much they enjoy the music -- and now at least one may go to jail for loving music too much. This isn't to defend unauthorized file sharing, but to simply question the response to it, compared to what's actually happening. Something does not seem properly aligned when kids who are expressing their love of music by trying to get others to listen to it are facing jail time.

Filed Under: file sharing, hong kong, jail, music

One Spammer Sentenced To 4 Years In Jail As Another Escapes From Prison

from the revolving-doors dept

Last week, we asked you how you would sentence a convicted spammer, and you came up with all sorts of colorful solutions. I doubt it influenced the judge much, but she's now sentenced the spammer in question to almost four years in jail, noting that she hopes it will serve as a warning to other spammers, especially unrepentant ones like Robert Soloway:

"This individual has refused to stop his criminal conduct, notwithstanding two separate civil judgments and an injunction by a U.S. federal court judge. I suggest to you the only effective way to stop Soloway is a long prison sentence during which he'll be incapable of continuing this criminal activity."

Of course, on the very same day the sentence was handed down, another spammer escaped from the minimum security prison where he was serving a 21-month sentence. Federal Marshals and the FBI are apparently now searching for him. Perhaps Soloway will have a bit more security.

Filed Under: jail, robert soloway, sentences, spam, spammers

Click This Link, Go To Jail

from the wide-open-to-abuse dept

Declan McCullagh has written up an article about a questionable tactic used by the FBI to go after people looking for child porn. It set up a honeypot server and then posted links to it on a forum frequented by those who are looking for child pornography. It then used the IP address of people who clicked on the link as enough evidence to charge them with a crime. In the specific case McCullagh discusses, the guy was found guilty of simply clicking on that link. Of course, it's always difficult to separate out legal discussions like this from the fact that it involves child pornography -- which immediately sets off an emotional response. The problem here, though, is that the evidence on which the guy was found guilty could be used to find many people guilty of many things. The FBI didn't even track the referrer log -- just who went to the site. In other words, if someone had taken that link out of the forum and posted it on another site, a blog or sent an email around -- and anyone clicked on it without knowing anything about the link, they could have broken the law. This is open to tremendous abuse. If all you need to do to get someone convicted of child porn charges is get them to click a link, that doesn't seem right. Furthermore, in this case, the only other evidence was two small (admittedly questionable) thumbnail images, that there was no evidence that the guy looked at. In other words, to have enough evidence to convict someone and send them to jail for years (and get them listed as a sex offender), you could just send them an email with a link and some thumbnail images attached. If they click on the link (even if they don't ever look at the attached files), that's enough evidence, according to this case. That seems incredibly problematic.

Filed Under: evidence, fbi, jail, link