Two men were recently convicted of serious copyright infringement. This is the first court ruling where the legislation regarding serious copyright infringement has been used. The Rights Alliance worked hard to get this new legislation, called Lex Pontén, in place. The penalty for serious copyright infringement is in line with other serious financial crimes, i.e. imprisonment for a minimum of six months and a maximum of six years. With this scale of punishment, more investigative tools are also opened up for the police, which in this case used secret interception of phone calls. The legislation applies to crime periods after September 1st 2020.
The men are convicted of running an illegal IPTV service with many customers and large incomes. The evidence was good, and during the trial it was shown that the network had over 10,000 customers. During the police raids, the police secured large sums of cash, whiskey bottles worth around SEK one million, 47 gold bars and bitcoin to a value of approximately SEK 450,000.
In addition to being sentenced to prison for two years and six months, the criminals must also pay damages to the plaintiff television companies totaling SEK 196 million.
2023-10-17