Last week, the prosecution in The Pirate Bay case referred to the earlier legal action against a Finnish BitTorrent tracker. Based in Finland, many administrators of Finreactor received heavy fines totaling 500,000 euros. It is believed that the prosecution may start referring to this case later in the trial since Finland’s and Sweden’s copyright laws are almost identical.
So, in conjunction with Mikko Valimaki of ‘Turre Legal’ law firm we look into the Finreactor case. Mikko is the lawyer who defended the admins at Finreactor and he is currently taking their appeal to the Supreme Court. Here is your chance to become a Finreactor expert – before the court in Stockholm does.
Part I: Finreactor Cases in Finland – the Story So Far
The Finnish BitTorrent tracker case began in 2006 and the case is currently being heard before the Finnish Supreme Court.
First some background. Finreactor was a popular BitTorrent tracker that was raided in December 2004. The request came from a local attorney firm who signed it as the representative of major software companies such as Microsoft and Adobe. Tens of admins had their computers seized during the raid, and some of them were even jailed for a night. The site never returned.
After initial reports it turned out that the exclusively Finnish-speaking site had about 10,000 registered users. It also became clear that Finreactor had nothing to do with commercial piracy, it was essentially just another community-driven tracker, which grew popular along with the rising popularity of the BitTorrent protocol. Most of the admins are15-25 year-old had no political intentions either, and most of them did not think they had done anything illegal.
So the case started in 2006, and there were essentially two ‘lines’ for the cases. One line was individual users. The prosecutor chose 24 individuals who had both posted torrents and shared high volumes of data, and claimed criminal copyright infringement. At this stage the local antipiracy bureau joined in and claimed for damages on behalf of recording companies and movie studios.
The other line was with the site admins. The prosecutor chose to sue 32 individuals who had participated in the administration as site owners, software developers, user administrators, forum moderators etc. Most of them had notoriously just edited discussions after torrent posts and managed user accounts. The admins were jointly charged with criminal copyright infringement and saw claims for damages totaling some 5 million euros.
Our law firm represented over ten individuals in the process, both admins and individual users.
Of 24 individual users, 23 were convicted in the district court. We represented four individual users. We managed to win one case, and lost three. Those who lost were typically ordered to pay 10-20% of claimed damages, ranging from c. 1,000 to 10,000 euros, plus a few thousand euros in legal costs (in Finland the loser pays the other side’s costs), and a few hundred euros in fines.
We appealed all the lost cases, but lost the appeals as well. One of our clients was then ready to negotiate with the copyright holders. We continued to appeal the two remaining cases. The Finnish Supreme Court granted us leave to appeal in July 2008. They take only some 10% of cases appealed. No other individual cases were appealed this far, as most of the convicted had agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to the right holders.
Of 32 admins, 21 were convicted in the district court. We represented eight admins, of which 4 were convicted and another 4 released. The convictions ranged from assisting copyright infringement to direct copyright infringement. The convicted admins were ordered to pay jointly some 500,000 euros in damages to rights holders plus almost 200,000 euros in legal fees, and a few hundred euros in fines each.
Some admins chose to settle, but 14 appealed, and we continued to represent 4 admins in the appeals court. The court of appeal released two more (one was our client), and for the other 12 the convictions remained essentially the same – only all convictions were now based on direct infringement, and none were convicted of assisting infringements by users. The relevant part of the court of appeal decision reads as follows:
“… a necessary precondition for the reproduction of copies through Finreactor has been Finreactor as a working system….Finreactor admins must have been aware that the aim has been to share material that is under copyright. By administering a system that serves this purpose they have together with its users participated both in making works available to the public and the reproduction of copies as noted by the district court.”
Again, we appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court took the case in quickly following the user cases. Somewhat surprisingly they gave leave to appeal only for the copyright holders, who want more in damages (they were given 10% claimed but they asked for at least 50%). The Supreme Court will decide later on whether our side of the story can be heard as well.
This was a guest article from Mikko Valimaki from Turre Legal
We will publish part two of this series of three articles tomorrow. In it we look at the relevance of the Finreactor case viewed in the context of The Pirate Bay trial. In part three we will look at why the admins were convicted and what people can do to remain within the law and avoid the same fate.
