World’s first BitTorrent pirate jailed after appeal fails
HONG KONG - The world’s first person to be convicted of illegally pirating movies onto the internet using BitTorrent technology has been jailed for three months after losing his appeal in Hong Kong Friday.
Chan Nai-ming, 39, was found guilty of distributing three Hollywood films using the peer-to-peer file sharing program in 2005. Chan served 24 days of the sentence before he was freed pending appeal, but in an unanimous verdict five appeal court judges dismissed his appeal.
The judges said that by using the BitTorrent file-sharing program to upload the movies onto the internet for other users to download, Chan had succeeded in distributing the movies and had broken copyright laws.
Chan had argued that he had just put the movies on to the internet, the distribution was done by the people who downloaded them.
But this was rejected by the appeal court.
Speaking afterwards, assistant commissioner of Customs and Excise, Tam Yiu-keung, said: ‘The ruling will generate a strong deterrent effect on Internet piracy activities.’
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