Copyright Law

Hong Kong Cops Bust Another BitTorrent User

By soulxtc

Third arrest of its kind for people accused of using the P2P program to illegally share copyrighted material there, and comes as the result of using a monitoring tool that determines who the first uploader, or Kira, of the copyrighted material in question is.

Back on May 9th, 2007 Chan Nai-ming, a Hong Kong resident, gained the distinction of becoming the world?s first person to be convicted for using BitTorrent to illegally distribute copyrighted material online. He was sentenced to 3 months jail which he long since served.

Now Customs officers of the Anti-Internet Piracy team have arrested a 38yo man for illegally uploading torrent trackers for which to seed two films on an Internet discussion forum. They apparently busted the guy using the Lineament Monitoring System, which was launched by the Customs and Excise Department back in March of 2007, and specifically designed to monitor BitTorrent transfers online and to determine who the first seeder, referred to as the “Kira.”

“The Lineament Monitoring System is a monitoring tool that searches, analyzes and reports any suspected infringement of IP rights activities over the Internet using BT technology,” reads a description. “The system searches selected forum in multithread mode and analyzes each detected torrent file. If IP address is in Hong Kong, the file content is 100%, and there is only 1 seeder, it can be deduced that the seeder is the first uploader (i.e. Kira).”

IP address in hand, authorities then arrested the man and seized a computer and equipment related to the alleged crime worth around $10,000.

Copyright Ordinance infringers in Hong Kong face four years in jail, and a fine of up to $50,000 per infringing copy.

This is apparently the second BitTorrent-related piracy case Customs officers have pursued using the Lineament Monitoring System since it was launched. The first involves an ongoing investigation of a 27yo female.

Considering they’ve only busted, or investigated, two people in 2yrs, it seems to me the system should’ve been scrapped a long time ago.

jared@zeropaid.com

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on April 30, 2009 (boomark / email).