Danish anti-piracy agency throw in the towel

Posted on | November 7, 2009 | 12 Comments

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Just now it has been announced in the press by the official Danish Anti-Piracy agency, Antipiratgruppen, that they are throwing in the towel and will seize cease their operations completely; to find and convict music copyright offenders. In todays news, in an article on the website of national daily Politiken, the story reads:

(rought translation from Danish – read original piece here):

PIRATES ONLINE ARE GIVEN FREE HANDS

Published Nov 06 2009 23.00 (11pm) on politiken.dk
By Dorrit Saietz and Rune Eltard-Sørensen

It is illegal, but still you will not be punished.

In practice it proven almost impossible to prosecute the many Danes who infringe copyright online, when they download music, film, games and software for free.

This says Antipiratgruppen (Anti-Piracy Group), who in behalf of the movie- and music industry since 2002 has worked to stop illegal piracy and file sharing. And there they now throw in the towel and drop the cases against privates suspected of illegal file sharing.

“We have to, because it is has been announced by the state court, that it takes very strong and concrete evidence to have these people prosecuted. We have simply not been able to establish the necessary evidence,” says
»Det har vi været nødt til, fordi det er kommet frem i landsretten, at det kræver meget stærke og konkrete beviser at få dømt de her folk. Vi har simpelthen ikke kunnet løfte bevisbyrden«, siger paralegal Maria Fredenslund from Antipiratgruppen.

STATE COURT ACQUITS PEOPLE
An overview of Danish trials shows an extremely small possibility of getting sentenced – unless the the accused confesses. Four principal state court trials last year lead to three acquittals and only a single sentence for illegal file sharing. And this sentence only came into place because of a confession.

Per Overbeck is the lawyer of the accused and tells, that cases against two more of his clients these last six months has been dropped.
“Antipiratgruppen has recognized that they cannot get people sentences without either catching them in the act or threatening them to confess. In practice, that means that if there is no confession – then there is no case,” he says.

Illegal file sharing is immensely popular. In a recent survey from Aarhus University is shows that 70 per cent of youths between 15 and 25 years download illegal music from the Internet.

The music industry label association IFPI estimate that 95 per cent of all downloads happen without the consent of copyright owners and that this cost the music business billions in lost revenue every year.

REPORT: ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO PROSECUTE PRIVATES
A recent report from the Cultural Ministry support defence lawyer Per Overbeck and Antipiratgruppens estimate, that last years’ state court sentences makes it practically impossible to have private citizens sentenced for illegal file sharing:

“Out of the four cases we can establish, that the courts do not sentence owners of Internet connections simply because of technical identification of IP-adresses and technical recognition of files,” they say.

The report also points out that if a copyright owner for instance wishes to stop file sharing in a network, it demands that they make contact with every single user of the Internet. And this, as it is diplomatically put, “requires a significant amount of resources, both economically and in regard to time consumption.”

The politicians in the Cultural Board of Folketinget (the Danish parliament) admit that it is “up hill”, as the party Venstre (moderate right wing party) cultural spokesman, Troels Christensen, put it.

“We cannot prosecute, we’ve seen many examples of that”, he says.

Cultural Minister Carina Christensen (Conservative party) was not available for comment, as she was out travelling.

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