Finland is known to be at the head of the movement that aims to curb online piracy by slapping users with lawsuits and by forcing them to relinquish sharing content online. However, the country’s copyright moves have reached the point of absurdity now that they have targeted a 9-year old girl.
Finnish authorities seem eager to appease the content producers. CIPAC, the company that tracks users of The Pirate Bay, has been digging out these users and contacting them, asking them to pay a token sum of money so as to discourage them from online piracy.
As it turns out, copyright and anti-piracy laws know no age limits. So even if a 9-year old girl ends up downloading a piece of music through a torrent, CIPAC wants her to pay for it. Initially, CIPAC had a letter sent to the home of the person on whose internet account, illegal files had been downloaded.
The person refused to pay the 600 euros that CIPAC had demanded. However, CIPAC had no plans of giving up on the case. It apparently instigated the police to raid the house much like is done in high-profile cases. The police came with a warrant to turn his house upside down in search for evidence linking him to illegal downloads.
What they could find was a Winnie the Pooh laptop which was used by that man’s 9-year old girl. The girl was unable to gather money to buy a latest music album and ended up downloading it on The Pirate Bay. While confiscating her laptop, the police told her father that it would’ve been a lot easier had he quietly paid the fine and agreed to what CIPAC had proposed.
In other words, CIPAC is using its influence to bully people into accepting its version of copyrights, something which event the artists it claims to protect don’t agree with. The big question is, where will this slipper slope of anti-piracy measures lead to, already starting to infringe on the basic rights of the citizens.
Courtesy: Torrent Freak
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