Last year, on December 15, 2015, five UK defendants received sentences, together totaling seventeen years, for conspiracy to defraud by copying, distributing or making available online infringing copies of such Hollywood films as Skyfall and Argo. Last week a Court dismissed the appeal brought by the two defendants with the longest sentences and upheld the more than four year sentences for each defendant stating that: “Whilst we accept that the sentences passed on these two young men were stiff, we are unpersuaded that they were manifestly excessive.”

The case was the culmination of a three year investigation by the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), the UK’s leading trade organization established to protect and represent the interests of its members’ intellectual property. Based on publicly available data on ExtraTorrent, one of the world’s leading torrent sites, FACT determined that the defendants were jointly responsible for approximately 4.2 million illegal movie downloads. FACT translated that figure into an allegation that the defendants had put £52,000,000 “at risk”, resulting in £4,200,000 of “actual loss” based on the average price of a cinema ticket or DVD or Blue-Ray disk.

This case marks one of the few instances in which individuals engaged in filming content and releasing the content on the Internet have been prosecuted as opposed to the websites that host the content.

For more information please see: http://tinyurl.com/gnoghwr.

E-TIPS® ISSUE

16 11 02

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