Piracy; No you are not a criminal! The Supreme Court of Sweden has issued a very important decision about the "pirates" they use torrents and not only. After requests prosecutors seeking prison terms for violating copyright law, the Court ruled that the offense did not warrant imprisonment.
We have seen so many cases in the United States and Europe so far, that offenses related to the illegal distribution of copyright-protected content were imprisoned. But let's see what happened, as he describes it TorrentFreak:
It all started at Swepirate, a torrent site that closed early in 2013. 50manager of private Tracker was arrested and charged with piracy, as he allegedly distributed at least 125 TV shows and movies through the website. These included the films Rocky, Alien and Star Trek.
In the summer of 2015, the Gothenburg Court of Appeal sentenced him to eight months in prison for copyright infringement.
The former webmaster, referred to in the court documents as "BH," felt that his punishment was too harsh, and appealed to the Supreme Court of Sweden.
Prosecutor Hedström also asked the Supreme Court to accept the case by asking for more clarity in the law on such offenses.
The Supreme Court has delivered its ruling, claiming that the violation of intellectual property rights is not an offense justifying a sentence imposing deprivation of liberty.
"Whether a crime is punishable by imprisonment is generally determined by base its criminal value," says a summary from the Court.
"If the criminal value is less than one year, imprisonment should be the last resort. However, some crimes are considered to be of such a nature that the sentence must be a prison sentence based on reasons of general prevention, even if the criminal value is less than one year. ”
In the Swepirate case, the Swedish Supreme Court found that BH's copyright infringement had a six month criminal law, so there was no presumption of a custodial sentence in accordance with the criminal value of the offense.
This decision by the Supreme Court represents a change in navigation compared to previous case law on sanctions for illegal file sharing.
"The Supreme Court has now aligned its view on the gravity of copyright infringement. This is a welcome development, although rights holders may benefit. "
The judgment of the Court is here as a pdf but it's in Swedish.