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A man who agreed to design a web site for a Swedish torrent site has been found guilty of copyright offences, despite there being no evidence he had anything to do with the running of the site. He just did the design. That was enough.
The case covers a chap who was contracted to build a web site for StudentBay.se back in 2008. The court initially found him not guilty of being a copyright abuser, due to there being no proof or inference that he had anything to do with the running of the textbook sharing site.
However, prosecutors weren’t happy and took it to the court of appeal, where he was found guilty of assisting in copyright infringement and aiding attempted violations of copyright law, with prosecutors claiming he must’ve known the site’s intentions and was therefore knee deep in the crimes, even though all he did was designery stuff like decide on the colours and where the navbar should go.
Perhaps his key error was in agreeing to be payed on a forward commission basis, earning his fees based on the success of the site. That’s a bit like making money from piracy, isn’t it? [TorrentFreak]
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Maybe in the old days ship builders were hung next to the real life pirates as well
If they built the ships for free and gave them to the pirates in return for a cut of the booty then I’d say that’s a fair indication of involvement.
Indeed, this fact changes things. If you sell balaclavas to someone, that’s fine. If you give balaclavas to someone and sign a contract saying you get 1% of whatever they steal in return, that’s completely different, and that’s what this guy did.
As “all he did was designery stuff like decide on the colours and where the navbar should go” he may not have had any idea as to the illegality of the service the website was going to provide and definitely didn’t demonstrate the intent required to make his actions criminal.
I expect this will be overturned on appeal unless Swedish law is very different from English law.
I’d take that quote as journalistic interpretation – if he’d agreed to a slice of the income then I doubt a UK court would accept that he we ignorant of the business model.
if the ships were built for pirates and paid for in stolen treasure that would seem only fair, except pirate ships were never built they were stolen, but that’s beside the point
Wonder if he designed it or a pirated web template..
I assume therefore, if they had used Apple computers to build the site, they’re also going to charge Apple as an accessory?
Crazy precedent, where does it stop? The webhosts that store the site, the isp that delivers the site, the browser code that renders the site? The coders behind the torrent protocol? There is a designer behind every possible item complicit in any criminal act…
“Perhaps his key error was in agreeing to be payed on a forward commission basis, earning his fees based on the success of the site. That’s a bit like making money from piracy, isn’t it?”
If he knew how the site made its money, then yes.
If we continue this logical, then we should be able to sue the music producers for cast the talented-less likes of Posh Spice, Justin Bieber, Nappy (sorry) Dappy and his friend that appeared in that video/X-Factor whose name escapes me on us…
I reckon we’d have pretty water-tight case.
Talk about shooting the messenger.
mmmmm…. do web design work for torrent site & get busted = new precedent
maybe now someone will start suing british taxpayers for funding a government that helps the americans kill loads of iraqi people & steal their oil?
(not that i’m assuming we actually get any oil. i mean we might. or not. depending on the americans…)