Founder SurfTheChannel.com found guilty of conspiracy to defraud
Wednesday, the Newcastle Crown Court convicted Anton Vickerman, the founder of SurfTheChannel.com, of conspiracy to defraud by facilitating the infringement of copyright. SurfTheChannel.com provided access to 5,000 pirated films and TV shows and was the 500th most visited website across the world with 400,000 visitors everyday. Members of the SurfTheChannel.com community were encouraged to provide new links to pirated material to keep the site up-to-date. The site made a $50,000 revenue each month.
Prosecutor David Groome argued that SurfTheChannel facilitated mass copyright infringement, resulting in massive losses for the movie industry. The lawsuit of the British Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) against SurfTheChannel.com is the finale of an unprecedented international criminal investigation into copyright infringement. In this case, the US and British authorities worked closely together, while FACT provided information from a private investigation. According to the British Video Association (BVA), this trial demonstrates that copyright theft will not be tolerated and that pirate websites are criminal operations.
On 30 July, the court will decide on Vickerman's sentence. The maximum penalty for conspiracy to defraud is 10 years in prison. Previously, a BitTorrent administrator and one of the founders of The Pirate Bay were sentenced to prison. It seems like the golden days are over for those who hope to earn a fortune by running piracy websites: the chances of being prosecuted seem to increase because the fight against piracy is taken more and more seriously.
All in all this is quite a unique case due to the fact that on the one hand criminal law has been used to address a so called 'conspiracy to defraud' in the context of large scale copyright infringement. While, on the other, criminal law has been used to thwart the negative effects of linking to illegal files. In the past, linking to copyrighted files was only discussed in the context of a duty of care of site operators, who had been asked to remove infringing links in a timely fashion.
This raises the question whether judges will now also start to look differently at other online crime. One does wonder whether cases such as the Surfthechannel case make it possible for complainants to act against the distinct activity of linking to illegal files, rather than only the mere possession or illegal distribution of the files linked to. Subsequently, one could pose the question whether or not site operators have indeed timely responded to requests for deletion of material posted or uploaded by third parties in a case of mere linking. The ratio behind prosecuting on the basis of mere linking could be the fact that website operators, like Vickerman or for example operators of pornographic platforms, generate profit by displaying links to obscure content. If such a legal precedent can be deduced from this case, this could be a new way to tackle an economic incentive behind online crime.
FutureOfCopyright will keep you posted about this lawsuit.
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Comments(2)
roy
i have been made a moderator on a movie site , due to me adding movie links from other movie sites over the past 6 mths . now ' after what i have just read above , am i breaking the law ?
Henry
Seriously?
I have seen the "FBI anti-piracy message" at the start of enough videos to know ownership or broadcast of copyrighted material segments or in their entirety is illegal. This being said the streaming websites are the ones that should be under attack and the police should use websites like surfthechannel.com , which give a directory of links for several copyrighted material, in order to track the people uploading in the first place.I also don't understand why the website's revenue is even discussed as there is no membership fee or such on that website and that all the money was given as "donations" to keep the website going. Therefore on a purely technical point of view , surfthechannel.com did not own,broadcast,rent,or sell any copyrighted material.
Imagine you knew a drug peddler and a friend of yours asked you where to find drugs.It would not be illegal I believe to give out the information , however unethical it would be. However if the police really wanted to uphold piracy laws they would shut down googlevideo , youtube,etc... however as it seems they are unable they decide to go for the small fish? To go back to the drug reference , the police is going after the bottom of the line dealers and their customer contacts rather than going up to the main suppliers and their network. All they are doing is removing bottom feeders (surfthechannel.com) which are the easiest to replace. If they wanted to make a difference it wouldn't be a worthwile move as any internet savy person out there will tell you that if a site like surfthechannel.com goes down , another like it will come up shortly as long as the supply and demand is there. Unless they make it illegal altogether to even view copyrighted material on the internet then something could change, but for the time being they are still playing the small leagues.
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