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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday December 11 2018, @11:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the what's-next? dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Three Sentenced For Placing Advertising on Pirate Sites - TorrentFreak

While there are several business models that are able to keep pirate sites up and running, advertising is one of the most popular.

With huge amounts of traffic landing on both torrent and streaming platforms, even with low-quality adverts it’s possible for both site owners and advertising companies to generate decent profits.

Until now, pirate site operators have been the main targets for law enforcement agencies but a recently concluded case in Germany shows that the authorities are prepared to extend their reach when required.

According to Germany-based anti-piracy group GVU, the Leipzig District Court has now sentenced three employees of an Internet advertising agency to prison terms for aiding and abetting copyright infringement.

The investigation was led by the Integrated Investigation Unit Saxony (INES) at the Saxon Attorney General’s Office and supported by the GVU with analysis and insights.

“The defendants had brokered advertising space on well-known piracy portals such as kino.to or iload.to and displayed lucrative banner ads on a large scale,” GVU reveals.

“In this way, they achieved profits of more than 350,000 euros. They were aware that they were involved with structurally infringing sites, which apparently offered almost exclusively copyrighted files for download and streaming.”

The sentences for the trio were considerable, despite not being directly involved in the running of the sites. The manager of the agency received a sentence of one year and eight months, with two programmers each receiving one year and four months in prison. However, since the defendants confessed, all sentences were suspended.

“The verdict sets a significant precedent because up to now no advertising agency in Germany has ever been prosecuted for its support of illegal portal sites,” GVU concludes.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @03:59PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @03:59PM (#772905)

    people need to stop sucking up to the establishment goons and quit registering your companies and quit funding them through income taxes. we need to operate with privacy coins and decentralized exchanges. develop coop protection forces to keep them out of our business. fuck the "authorities" of the world.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @04:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @04:27PM (#772920)

    Yeah!

    Obviously we'll need to pay the coop protection forces somehow.
    I understand the mob calls it protection money, so that's bad.
    Governments call it tax, so that's bad.
    Maybe we should call it "Contribution to Organized Anarchy Protocol".
    Then when people ask how you are dealing with the lack of government, you can say you're COAPing.

    Oh. And we need to have a proper democratic process where we vote for the people who lead the coop protection forces.

    Not sure, but this all sounds somehow familiar.

  • (Score: 1) by easyTree on Wednesday December 12 2018, @12:14AM

    by easyTree (6882) on Wednesday December 12 2018, @12:14AM (#773201)

    But but but but but they have self-nominated themselves to be in-charge!