Two weeks ago, Hong Kong resident Chan Nai-ming gained the distinction of being the first individual convicted for seeding three movies onto the Internet via BitTorrent. It was also the first time criminal charges, as opposed to civil charges, were brought up against an individual.
Although this conviction may appear intimidating for casual BitTorrent users, Chan "Big Crook" Nai-ming, was a bit more than your typical user. Mr. Nai-ming was a provider. The Magistrate overseeing the case, Colin Mackintosh, explains.
"The defendant loaded the files into his computer, he created the .torrent files, created the images of the inlay cards and imprinted them with his logo, the statuette; he published the existence of the .torrent files, and the names of the films in question, on the newsgroup. He said in effect, ‘come here to get this film if you want it’."
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