Hong Kong man appeals Internet piracy verdict

James Delahunty
10 May 2007 15:33

The first man to be convicted of distributing movies illegally over the Internet using BitTorrent software, has appeared in Hong Kong's highest court on Wednesday to appeal the verdict. Chan Nai-ming was sentenced to three months in prison in 2005 for uploading Daredevil, Miss Congeniality and Red Planet using P2P software. It was "distributing" and not "downloading" that got him a jail sentence.
Chan used the screen name "Big Crook", which probably didn't help his case and is presumably why he was such a good candidate to pursue as an example. The lawyer for the 38 year old said that he uploaded the movies but did not distribute them. Interestingly, his lawyer seems hopeful that the court will determine whether the uploading done by Chan can really be considered as distribution.

He said that if any distribution took place at all, it was the downloaders who initiated the process. Since sharing of files on BitTorrent is done in chunks, users may have downloaded only very small amounts of any movie from Chan. An earlier appeal from Chan was rejected.
Source:
Yahoo

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