Latvian teacher arrested by police for publishing a history book for his students on his website

A Latvian history teacher was actually arrested for publishing a scan of a history book (not his authorship) on his student website. The cost of the book is $ 4, and now the teacher faces 2 years in prison, forced labor, or a fine. The site itself was created by a teacher for poor students who are unable to obtain the necessary data for study due to lack of funds for textbooks / other literature. Ironically, the same teacher had previously received praise from representatives of the Ministry of Education of Latvia for his work.

Generally speaking, for pirated copies of the books “persecution”, that is, attempts to punish the distributors of such publications, began relatively recently. Illegally distributed music / movies / software / games have been punished for a long time. But for books, or rather, their pirated electronic copies, began to be punished really recently.

On their website, Pāvels Jurs, the name of the teacher, published presentations, lessons, in general, educational materials. Of course, when Pāvels Jurs was about to leave his home for work, and he was arrested, the teacher was incredibly surprised. During the arrest, the police also confiscated a computer to check for pirated copies of the textbook Vēsture Vidusskolai. The police did not act on their own initiative, but after filing a complaint with the publisher Zvaigzne ABC and the subsequent actions of the authorities that supervise the "pirates."

It turned out a little later that the author of the book had already asked the teacher to remove some materials from the site, but a misunderstanding was created that led to current events (as far as you can understand, the teacher just did not understand what the author of the book wants to remove from the site).

Pāvels Jurs claims to have made no profit from his site and expresses sincere bewilderment at the ways in which the publisher is trying to defend its interests. Judge for yourself: the site is down (disabled), the teacher’s computer has been confiscated, and he can either go to jail or be fined a significant amount.

However, after the arrest, the representatives of the publishing company had already met with the “criminal”, and it seemed like a certain agreement had been reached. Probably, the conflict can still be settled peacefully, but so far there is no certainty.

Via torrentfreak