Anton Vickerman has been sentenced to four years of imprisonment after being found guilty of conspiracy to defraud by ‘facilitating’ copyright infringement. Vickerman, the owner of Surfthechannel.com, was arrested in 2008 after The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) hired a private investigator to collect evidence against him.  According to FACT, Surfthechannel.com generated over £35,000 in advertising revenue and had over 400.000 visitors a month when the site was at its height in 2009. 

Surfthechannel.com acted as an index of professionally made videos. The website did not host any copyrighted materials itself, but pointed its visitors into the direction of other websites hosting content which was both legal and illegal. The court concluded that Vickerman ‘facilitated’ copyright infringement for his users and was therefore guilty of conspiracy to defraud. He was aware of the links to illegal content on his website and asked his users to share new links and keep track of existing links to make sure the websites content was up to date. 

FACT is pleased with the verdict: "Mr Vickerman knew what he was doing from the outset, having been involved in the pirate community for some time," says Kieron Sharp, the Federation’s director general. "This was not a passive search engine. Surfthechannel was created specifically to make money from criminal activity and it became the biggest site of its kind on the Internet within two years”, he continues. 

The UK Pirate Party is discontented with the courts decision. Loz Kaye, the leader of UK Pirate Party states the following: "This was not a case brought using copyright law. The interest groups involved couldn't present a case of copyright infringement and instead decided to press for the use of the common law offence of 'conspiracy to defraud',” "This is one of the most controversial crimes in English law – it criminalises conduct by two or more people that would not be criminal when performed by an individual” 

This verdict is indeed the first of its kind in the UK. In similar cases the defendants were cleared of conspiracy to defraud as the court deemed they could not be held responsible for actions of their users. However, in Vickerman’s case the court supports its decision mainly on the fact that Vickerman knew about the infringements and encouraged users to supplement new links. Whether this decision proves to be an isolated case or created substantive precedent for comparable cases remains to be seen, but it is an interesting piece of case law for the debate on online content distribution and intellectual property. 

Read more about intermediary liability and copyright infringements on Future of Copyright:

• US Court: 'Embedding videos does not result in copyright infringements'
• Founder SurfTheChannel.com found guilty of conspiracy to defraud
• Spanish Ministry of Culture starts enforcing new law on online copyright infringement

Sources: The Guardian, The Register 

Written by: Nathalie Falot