10-year-old girl's laptop
confiscated after copyright offense
Devin Coldewey / NBC News 11/27/2012
Police in Helsinki seized
the laptop of a young girl during a search of her family's home last week,
according to her father. The alleged offense? Using the popular BitTorrent
website The Pirate Bay to download a single album.
Last year, 9-year-old
Julietta came across a torrent on The Pirate Bay after searching on Google for
Finnish pop star Chisu's latest album. The download failed to work, and she and
her father went and bought the album together shortly afterwards. Unbeknownst
to them, Finland's Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre (known as
CIAPC, as well as its Finnish acronym, TTVK) had already taken notice.
The events are related by
the girl's father, Aki Wequ Nylund, in a public Facebook post. (Though Google
Translate's Finnish is not very good, an account of the translated story was
posted at copyright and BitTorrent news blog TorrentFreak.)
That spring, a letter
arrived from the TTVK alleging that the Nylund's account had been linked to a
copyright infringement. The letter gave the option to pay a settlement of €600
and sign a non-disclosure agreement — a common tactic used by copyright holders
that removes the need for formal charges.
Nylund contacted the TTVK
lawyer to contest the matter, but the TTVK continued its pursuit of damages. Last
Tuesday morning, he found a pair of Finnish police officers standing at his
doorstep.
The police presented a
search warrant, entered, and identified the girl's Winnie the Pooh-decorated
laptop as the object of their search, and confiscated it.
Unsurprisingly, the events
have drawn criticism locally and abroad. Finnish Internet rights watchdog
Electronic Frontier Finland denounced the actions of the TTVK in a statement
and blog post, calling attention to the arbitrary nature of the settlements and
their use as a scare tactic. They also point out that Nylund's acknowledgment
in this case notwithstanding, an IP address used to track an infringement
cannot be linked to a person's identity.
The TTVK's executive
director defended the actions in comments to Finnish newspaper Helsingin
Sanomat, saying that TTVK and the police were only working to enforce the law.
Chisu, the pop star whose
album was at the center of the controversy, expressed in a Facebook post that
she supported copyright law but apologized for the situation.
Niko Nordström, CEO of
Warner Music Finland, acknowledged (also via Chisu's Facebook page) the limits
of IP-based enforcement, but said "this procedure is currently the only
way to tackle illegal downloading" (translation by Google).
Had the TTVK known that
the infringing party in this situation was a young girl, might they have taken
a softer approach? In past cases, U.S. media associations have not made
accommodations for minors, either.
As for Julietta's lost
laptop, an anonymous benefactor sent a brand-new MacBook Pro to replace it. Her
father reports that she is already putting it to use, playing online with her
friends. An administrator at The Pirate Bay promised VIP privileges to her as
well if she wants them — although after
this experience, it would be understandable if she opted not to take advantage
of the offer.
Devin Coldewey is a
contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.
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