Anton Vickerman has become the first man in Great Briton to be sentenced to prison for owning a website that linked to content hosted elsewhere on the internet.  His website, Surfthechannel, did not host infringing content, so Vickerman was not charged with infringement.  Rather, he was charged with two counts of conspiracy to facilitate copyright infringement.  His prosecution was pursued by the anti-piracy group Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), and Vickerman was found guilty in June.

In a statement, FACT Director General Kieron Sharp said:

“This case conclusively shows that running a website that deliberately sets out to direct users to illegal copies of films and TV shows will result in a criminal conviction and a long jail sentence. Mr Vickerman knew what he was doing from the outset, having been involved in the pirate community for some time. This was not a passive search engine. Surfthechannel was created specifically to make money from criminal activity and it became the biggest site of its kind on the internet within two years.The sentencing indicates the severity of the offences committed and the sophistication of his criminal enterprise and should send a very strong message to those running similar sites that they can be found, arrested and end up in prison.

The UK Pirate Party was quoted in TorrentFreak on the sentence:

“The way this issue was investigated, prosecuted and the resulting sentence are, deeply concerning, inappropriate and disproportionate given the activities that Anton Vickerman was engaged in. A four year prison sentence is twice the maximum that could have been handed down if Vickers had been charged with online copyright infringement.  As we have said before, this was not a case brought using copyright law. The interest groups involved couldn’t present a case of copyright infringement and decided to press for the use of the common law offence of ‘conspiracy to defraud’. This offence is incredibly controversial in English law as it criminalises conduct by two or more parties that would not be criminal when performed by an individual.”

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