Court of Appeal Convicts File-Sharer
The Helsinki Court of Appeal has upheld the earlier decision of a regional court when it found a man guilty of file-sharing. The punishment stands at 3,000 euros for sharing more than 150 albums.
The man from Finland was earlier accused of sharing music files totaling 768Mb on the Internet – around 164 albums. A search of his computer turned up 1,850 tracks which had been downloaded from unauthorized sources.
In February 2008, the Porvoo District Court found the man guilty of copyright infringement and ordered him to pay approximately 3,000 euros in fines.
However, the man disagreed with the verdict and took the case to appeal. In his defense he admitted that illegal sharing had taken place from his computer and although it wasn’t him who was responsible, he was aware of it. Not a particularly wise move.
The Court of Appeal decided that his explanation wasn’t credible, and instead found him personally responsible for the copyright infringement which took place from his computer, upholding the decision of the original court and fining him 3,000 euros.
pity
While we can disagree with lawsuits for filesharing, this man was fined 20$ by album, which is equivalent to the retail price of most albums. This means he was fined what it would had cost him if he bought all the albums, nothing more. Now compare this with the outrageous 25,000$ a song which Joel Tenenbaum was fined in the US recently. Seems like Finland is not buying the argument that filesharing is destroying the music industry and that filesharers should be fined considerable damages. Hope to see other countries take this stance, maybe the US would change it’s mind.
@Sébastien Duquette
I have to agree with you here. The fine is a very reasonable amount considering what he was accused of. The price people are forced to pay in the United States is absolutely insane, and that in and of itself should be illegal. I can fully understand a price mark-up, I mean, if you only pay retail for the albums, why would you bother buying them retail? But $25 000/song is… Well, there just aren’t words to describe how insane that is.
Sharing is good. Community is based on sharing. Saying “you are guilty of file sharing” is the same as saying “you are guilty of being good to your neighbour”.
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