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Legal
Bedroom CD bootlegger given suspended sentence
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 27 October 2011
Some more conventional music piracy now, albeit aided by the internet. A 60 year old man from South Yorkshire has been given a suspended sentence for selling pirated CDs online.
David Finney from Barnsley downloaded music from the internet, burned it to CDs, and then sold them via the web. After the BPI discovered the operation, police seized his computer equipment and found he had illegally copied 200,000 items. That said, compared to many bootleg CD operations, Finney’s enterprise was pretty basic, and despite the high quantities of copies he was making it’s thought payments taken via PayPal amounted to just over £12,000.
According to Sheffield newspaper The Star, prosecutor Elizabeth Martin said the 200,000 copied items had a retail value of £197,000, and that “this kind of activity is costing millions of pounds a year to the [music] industry which has a knock-on effect on employment and clearly is a matter of concern as well as concerning HM Customs and the taxpayer”.
But Finney’s defence lawyer stressed the cottage industry nature of his client’s operation, and that the income from it was relatively small, adding “he is 60 and of previous good character and is not a well man. He is terrified of the prospect of going to prison”.
The judge hearing the case accepted that there was a ‘degree of naivety’ about Finney’s piracy pursuits, proven by the fact he made no effort to conceal his identity when selling the bootlegged CDs online. But, he said, given the number of tracks illegally copied, and the fact the venture ran for four years, a custodial sentence was required, albeit a suspended one.
Finney was given a nine month suspended jail term, and ordered to wear an electronic tag and adhere to a night time curfew for four months. Money and kit associated with the piracy operation will also be confiscated.
