26 year old Daniel Dove has been jailed for 18 months for his involvement with illegal downloading.
Ignoring those warnings about illegal downloads could prove costly, as Daniel Dove has found out. A jury found Dove guilty of conspiracy and copyright infringement, and has been handed a jail sentence of 18 months and a US $20,000 fine.
Dove was an administrator of a private torrent tracking site called Elite Torrents. He’s the third member of the site to be convicted. The US Department of Justice said this is the eight successful conviction from their anti-piracy project called Operation D-Elite.
The threat of lawsuits isn’t confined to the United States either. American movie companies have been pressuring Australian ISP’s to warn users about downloading illegal content in the past year. Last year the Australian Federal Police raided an internet cafe in Sydney suspected of harbouring large amounts of illegal downloads.
In 2005 an Australian court ruled in favour of the Recording Industry Association of America after they sued Sydney-based Sharman Networks, creators of the software Kazaa, for copyright violations. Kazaa was forced to pay the majority of the RIAA’s legal fees as a result. But the biggest precedent for breaking the law was set in Italy, where a DJ was fined 1.4 million Euros for pirating over two thousand songs and five hundred video clips.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry earlier this year said billions of dollars were being lost due to piracy,
with illegal downloads outnumbering the legal ones sold online by a factor of 20 to 1.
Source:
Australian Personal Computer Magazine
Additional Material:
Sydney internet cafe raided by AFP (CNET)
International Federation of the Phonographic Industry
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