Swedish Man Fined $650,000 For Sharing 1 Movie, Charged Extra For Low Quality

An anonymous reader writes "A 28-year-old man in Sweden has been fined 4.3 million SEK (~650,000 USD) for uploading one movie. 300,000 SEK of that was added because of the upload's low technical quality (Google translation of Swedish original). The court ruled that the viewer watching the pirated version of the movie had a worse experience than people watching it legally, thereby causing damage to the movie's reputation (full judgement in Swedish)."

ONE movie?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the second paragraph of TFA:

The then 25-year-old was a moderator and uploader and between April 2008 and November 2011 allegedly obtained huge quantities of content from the warez scene and shared the titles with the site’s users.

ONE Movie!?? C'mon Slashdot.

Try reading past the third paragraph

[alexhs]

[T]he court ordered the now 28-year-old to pay $652,000 in damages for the unauthorized distribution of just one of the movies in the case. For the other 517 the man was handed a suspended jail sentence and ordered to complete 160 hours of community service.

Re:What the hell is the point of these huge number

[Assmasher]

Unfortunately you can have your home seized in a forfeiture if you default on paying back a judgement, so if the judgement is large enough, yes, you can lose your home.

Maybe all file sharers should incorporate into Subchapter S or LLCs ;)...

Re:What the hell is the point of these huge number

[Anonymous Coward]

>they can't take your house in the US

No, but in the US they can file a lein on the house which puts them ahead of you whenever the house is sold. And if you have a mortgage, some lenders add a clause to the loan that allows them to require full repayment of the loan immediately if a lein is attached, with foreclosure to follow soon after.

So no, technically they cannot take you home, they just get the bank to do it instead.

Re:Try reading past the third paragraph

[alannon]

This entire thing really only makes sense if you take a look at it in terms of court costs. He was being prosecuted on 517 counts, which makes him, in my mind, much more than just a casual media pirate (as suggested by the summary). If the evidence was pretty much equally clear on each of the 517 movies, it probably saved a lot of court time and money to pin all of the substantial penalties on a single count and then suspend the rest of them. The downside for the court is that a huge amount of publicity it generated because of the "$650,000 for one movie" angle, whereas this might have caused less outrage if it had been a $1250 fine per movie, even if the total had been the same. If somebody else has another explanation as to why they would choose this bizarrely lopsided penalty, I'd like to hear it. Okay, scratch all of that. I read the related article, http://torrentfreak.com/largest-ever-bittorrent-tracker-movie-uploader-trial-concludes-131120/ [torrentfreak.com] and it says that only a single producer seeked damages. What an asshole, destroying someone's life for the sake of a 25 year old shitty horror movie.

Re:Sweden?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is. From the ruling:

"Skada på filmens anseende
Omdömet av en film påverkas tydligt av den tekniska kvalitet, ljud och bild, som
den visas i. En film tillgängliggörs först i de sammanhang de tekniska
förutsättningarna är bäst, bio eller dvd/bluray och därefter tv och lagliga
nedladdningstj änster. Att se en illegalt nedladdad film, ofta på datorskärm med
väsentligt lägre upplösning än dvd/bluray och med undermåligt ljud, försämrar
filmupplevelsen betydligt. Den som har sett någon av de illegalt nedladdade
filmerna far typiskt sett en sämre filmupplevelse än den som har sett originalet och
detta påverkar de omdömen som skrivs på internetforum av dem som har sett de
illegala filmerna. Dessa omdömen sprids mycket snabbt på internet och far ett stort
genomslag. Sammantaget innebär detta en skada på filmens anseende. Denna skada
har värderats till 300 000 kr."

Google Translate because I'm lazy:

"Damage to the film's reputation
Reviewed by a film greatly affected by the technical quality of sound and picture, which
it appears in. A movie is made available first in the context of technical
conditions are best, cinema or dvd / bluray and then television, and Legal
nedladdningstj eft. Seeing an illegally downloaded movie, often at the computer screen with
significantly lower resolution than the dvd / bluray and with substandard sound, impairs
movie experience significantly. Anyone who has seen any of the illegally downloaded
movies father typically a worse movie experience than those who have seen the original and
this affects the ratings given on internet forums of those who have seen the
illegal movies. These reviews are spread very quickly on the internet and father a large
impact. All this means an injury to the film's reputation. this injury
have been valued at SEK 300 000. "

Re:Good

[Ragzouken]

don't be so sure about that - there are cases where something in the public domain has been recopyrighted and removed by changes to the law

Re:Good

[Desler]

A derivative of a public domain work can be copyrighted. Unless retroactively copyrighted by Congress, the original work is not.

One company that makes derivatives

[tepples]

First, in 1996 a large swath of works were "retroactively copyrighted by Congress" in the United States. Second, one company that makes derivatives likes to sue other companies that make derivatives. Third, one company that makes derivatives often applies for trademarks for dolls and the like based on names of characters in the original public domain (according to copyright) story, so that no other company can make and sell merchandise based on the original public domain (according to copyright) story.

Re:Good

[rockout]

Uh, hang on. Oz the Great and Powerful was a Disney movie. The Wizard of Oz (1939) was an MGM movie. Just wanted to clarify that for anyone that's confused, like the previous two posters.

4.3 million for a movie nobody wants to see?

[Misagon]

4.3 million SEK is probably a large portion of the movie's total revenue, if not surprassing what it has already made.
It was made for ad-funded free TV for Chris's sake ...

It got low reviews from critics, and the series was already a trite.
Would filesharing it at low quality really degrade it's quality? Sorry, but you can't polish a turd.

(No offence to my cousin's husband who plays the lead in this movie. He's got to eat too...)