Internet piracy: Conviction of a portal site operator
The Federal Supreme Court has upheld the conviction of a computer scientist who posted links on his website to sites offering illegal file-sharing of movies and video games. According to the court, he was correctly found to be an accomplice to copyright infringement.
The man himself had not placed any pirated copies online. However, he provided information on his homepage about currently available films and games and offered hash links on the website that led to file-sharing networks (P2P networks) or to the computers on which the sought-after data was stored. In 2010, the Thurgau High Court convicted the man of aiding and abetting the infringement of copyright on a commercial basis. It punished him with a conditional fine of 90 daily rates of CHF 30 each and a fine of CHF 2,000. However, this sentence also included a conviction for pornography.
The Federal Supreme Court has now dismissed the man's appeal. He had essentially argued that the information he provided should be understood as harmless everyday actions. Otherwise, the circle of possible accomplices would be opened up immeasurably. In the opinion of the judges in Lausanne, however, his contribution to the downloading and uploading of pirated copies was rightly assessed as active assistance and therefore as aiding and abetting copyright infringement. This is because it does not matter whether the users still
would have had to install a P2P program in order to carry out the download process. Furthermore, according to the court, the existence of commercial activity was also rightly affirmed. Finally, the person concerned could not invoke a prohibition error: Admittedly, an earlier criminal case concerning the same matter had been written off. However, this was only due to the withdrawal of the
penalty application.
