Owner of surfthechannel.com sentenced to four years over piracy
The owner of website surfthechannel.com, which has been linked to pirated copies of films and TV shows has been sentenced to four years in prison.
Anton Vickerman, 38, was convicted of two counts of conspiracy to defraud in June following an eight-week train at Newcastle crown court.
Vickerman is the first British man to be jailed in the UK for a website that linked to illegal coops of films and TV shows. The website which was set up in 2007 as an index of online videos - both legal and illegal - drew around 400,000 visitors per day.
Prosecutors claimed Vickerman had made £250,000 in profit from advertising on the site in 2008, the year in which he tried to sell the site for £400,000. He was charged on two counts of conspiracy to facilitate copyright infringement following a private prosecution pursued by the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT).
Entertainment groups have welcomed new news, saying it is a warning to those behind websites that could direct people to illicit content online.
"This case conclusively shows that running a website that deliberately sets out to direct users to illegal copies of films and TV shows will result in a criminal conviction and a long jail sentence," said Kieron Sharp, director general of FACT, one of the bodies behind the prosecution.