Site Admin To Pay $185,000 Damages For Providing Keywords
The administrator of a file-sharing related site has seen his sentence upheld by the Court of Appeal. The man, who was arrested back in 2007, operated a site which didn’t offer links but provided users with hints on keywords which would help them find movies and TV shows. He has received a one year suspended sentence, fined 3,000 euros and ordered to pay 130,000 euros ($185,000) in damages.
Legal procedures against file-sharing related sites and services are regular events and hardly a week goes by without a handful of stories appearing online. Most are the usual affairs with sites hosting illegal material directly or, as is most often the case, offering links to material, or even links which link to material.
The latter is often spoken of in rightsholder circles as “structural” infringement and a case outlined by Numerama takes the concept to a whole new level. In 2007, Sébastien Budin, the former administrator of Station-Divx.com, was arrested for his part in running the site. In September 2008 the court hearings against him began, based on allegations of contributory infringement.
