Pirate Party condemns $ 5.4 million lawsuit against file sharing server owner

The Finnish Pirate Party condemned an unprecedented claim for damages against the owner of a file sharing server. The anti-piracy association is trying to recover 3.6 million euros from a private individual, despite the fact that there is no direct evidence of copyright infringement, only a powerful traffic flow, based on the statistics of the provider.

Today, the Finnish Pirate Party condemned the "astronomical" lawsuit against the owner of the file sharing server. The total amount of the claim is $ 5.4 million.

The lawsuit affects the events of 2007, the plaintiff in the case was the Finnish anti-piracy association CIAPC (Information Center for Copyright and Anti-Piracy), and it was directed against the owner of the server, known as BAWD Rinkeli. The defendant resident in Espoo claims that he used the server to communicate with other Internet users and that no copyrighted material was ever transmitted using it.

The anti-piracy association, acting on behalf of Teosto (an organization for the protection of performers' rights that helps Finnish composers and songwriters to receive royalties due to them) and IFPI (International Federation of Phonogram Producers), require direct compensation for losses incurred from an individual.

"Demanding such a huge sum, the pirate fighters seem not even going to get anything," said the Pirate Party. "Their only intention is to turn the life of the accused into a nightmare, so that he becomes a terrifying example for other people."

The pirate party claims that the anti-piracy association is still not able to provide at least any convincing evidence of illegal activities in which the server owner is allegedly involved. Instead, they point to powerful flows of traffic passing through its server, considering it evidence of wrongdoing.

“CIAPC only backs up its allegations with data about the high volume of traffic generated by the user. They are not able to provide any other evidence, ”said the Pirate Party.“ With only this information, they have the right to claim that they suffered losses of several million dollars when the international scientific community could not confirm these losses even after much more careful studying the data? ”

The party’s leader, Pazi Palmulekhto, said that he himself used his computer as a file-sharing server at one time, and the data on the generated traffic do not mean anything by themselves. In his opinion, even with simple communication, you can fully download the megabit channel.

Direct file sharing through such servers is not carried out, they work according to a scheme very similar to the principle of operation of torrent resources, that is, file sharing is carried out between users. All such servers work just like this: users make their materials visible and available for exchange with other users. Despite the fact that the server owner can theoretically do the same, this is prohibited.

“No one can demand compensation from one person for what completely different people did,” the defendant told the Finnish press.

Posted on 10/15/09
Posted by : Enigmax
Translation : Talim