The owner of Surfthechannel.com has been convicted after "facilitating" copyright inf

This is just another sickening example of big business influencing every day law in my opinion. What next?

Surfthechannel owner sentenced to four years over piracy

Anton Vickerman, whose surfthechannel.com had 400,000 users a day, sentenced on two counts of conspiracy to defraud

A 38-year-old Briton who made £35,000 a month through a website that linked to pirated copies
of films and TV shows has been sentenced to four years in prison.

Anton Vickerman, whose surfthechannel.com website had around 400,000 users a day, was convicted
of two counts of conspiracy to defraud in June following an eight-week trial at Newcastle crown court.

He is the first British man to be jailed in the UK for a website that linked to illegal copies of films and TV shows.

Vickerman, from Gateshead, set up the website in 2007 as an index of online videos – both legal and
illegal – hosted elsewhere on the internet. Prosecutors said Vickerman made £250,000 in profit through
adverts on the site in 2008, the year in which he tried to sell it for £400,000.

He was not charged on copyright offences, but was convicted on two counts of conspiracy to facilitate
copyright infringement following a private prosecution pursued by the anti-piracy lobby group Federation
Against Copyright Theft (FACT). He faced a maximum sentence of 10 years.

Vickerman was first arrested over Surfthechannel in 2008 following an elaborate sting operation by a
private investigator hired by FACT, the court heard during the trial.

The private investigator posed as a prospective house buyer and filmed computer equipment in Vickerman's
home. Other private eyes had already obtained detailed information about his bank accounts, cars and telephone
records, the court was told. His wife, Kelly Vickerman, was also arrested and cleared in June of charges of conspiracy to defraud.

Entertainment groups immediately heralded the jail term as a warning to those behind websites
that could direct people to illicit content online.

"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," said Kieron Sharp,
director general of FACT, one of the bodies behind the prosecution.

He said that unlike other search engines such as Google and Microsoft's Bing – which have been criticised for
pointing people to pirated material – surfthechannel.com "was created specifically to make money from criminal activity".

However, critics of the private prosecution described the jail term as "deeply concerning, inappropriate and
disproportionate".

Loz Kaye, leader of the Pirate Party UK, said the prosecution should never have been brought and was driven by private interests.

David Walbank, for the defence, told Newcastle crown court on Tuesday that Vickerman was now financially ruined
and would likely be declared bankrupt. The court heard that the stress of the conviction had also caused the breakup of Vickerman's marriage.

It is unclear whether the verdict will have any effect on appeals being made by the family of Richard O'Dwyer,
a 22-year-old Sheffield student, whose TVshack.net site was closed down in November 2010 after it linked to places
where people could watch US TV and movies online. O'Dwyer faces extradition to the US, where he could face 10 years
in jail. Prosecutors in the UK have not charged O'Dwyer, whose site had about 300,000 users per month and
collected £147,000 in advertising revenue over three years.

Bit that makes me laugh is that Private Investigators and Eyes lol seemed to have the free for all to obtain and look for what evidence or so called evidence they wanted!

So evidence was brought to court from a Paid source???? Also they seem to have better investigative techniques then the POLICE or better at it anyway!

• You guys really need to read it from someone who was at the trial:
http://surfthechannelfraudtrial.word.../2012/06/28/5/
Highlights:

*Judge leaves jury little choice after directing as a matter of law that knowingly linking to infringing content is illegal despite no such offence in the UK;

*Judge ignores SportsRadar High Court judgement that states if an infringement takes place it takes place in the country the server is based (linking to infringing content legal in Spain where SurfTheChannel was based);

*Judge states “if I have got the law wrong then a higher court than this one will sort it out”;

*FACT Ltd staff admit to “around 15 surveillance operations a month” carried out on UK citizens but say “we are a private company so don´t have to abide by the Regulatory Investigatory Powers Act”;

*Pascal Hetzscholdt admits that senior MPAA personnel including John Malcolm contacted NBCUniversal to pressure them into terminating A&E Television Networks partnership agreement with SurfTheChannel;

*Jury not told of DeBeasi´s ownership of paedophile site “JailBaitBox.com” which contained images of “girls under the age of consent that you want to fuck” according to DeBeasi´s blog;

*Vickerman provides unchallenged evidence that Anti-Piracy company´s, in particular Aiplex Software, are responsible for automated adding of around a million links to the STC website.

In addition, at the beginning of the trial, the Private Prosecutors (MPAA/FACT) sought and were granted a Public Interest hearing with the Judge. This private cozy 3 hour session excluded the defendents and their lawyers. After that session the judge's hostility towards the defendents increased quite dramatically. Any quesses as to what they discussed in private?

surfthechannelfraudtrial.wordpress.com is no longer available.

Should get off on appeal, as it's all BS.