First BitTorrent user gets sent down

A Hong Kong man has become the first person to be found guilty of using BitTorrent for piracy. 

Chan Nai-ming, 38, used the popular P2P application to distribute three films, Daredevil, Red Planet and Miss Congeniality.

He was arrested in January and found guilty on three charges of copyright infringement at Tuen Mun Magistrates' Court in a four-day trial. He will be sentenced next week.

The arrest was made by the Hong Kong Customs Service, which said that it is pleased with the verdict and that use of the software had dropped 80 per cent since the arrest. 

In the US the FBI shut down popular BitTorrent site Elite Torrents in May for alleged copyright infringement. P2P users are increasingly moving to other networks in light of the activity. 

Nai-ming's conviction is indicative of China's increasingly tough line on piracy. In July the country started to shut down websites hosting MP3 music files, but piracy remains a huge problem.

Industry pressure group the Business Software Alliance estimated recently that 90 per cent of Chinese computers use pirated software.

See also:

Opera adds BitTorrent to browser

Users get better access to controversial technology  08 Jul 2005

Microsoft takes on BitTorrent

Fastest peer-to-peer system in the West  17 Jun 2005

New BitTorrent flows across the web

Application accounts for a third of all network traffic  10 Mar 2005

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