The highly unpopular anti-piracy laws have been dealt another heavy blow this week after the suspect of an illegal downloading operation turned out to be a 9-year-old girl. Police raided the girl’s home, seizing her Winnie The Pooh laptop and losing a whole lot of credibility.
Since the introduction of the laws, enforcement companies have been put in place to track down digital pirates, and in order to avoid lengthy and costly court cases, to issue a letter of demand requiring that the culprit pays a fine. So when CIAPC, the Finnish anti-piracy group responsible for blocking The Pirate Pay in Finland, issued a fine of 600 Euros to one IP address holder who declined to pay, they got pissed.
As promised in the letter of demand, things would only get worse should the fine not be paid. Police soon rocked up to the address associated with the owner of the IP address, where they found their villain – a 9-year-old girl who had downloaded an album of her favourite pop artist.
According to the girl’s father, the download didn’t even work, so the next day they went to the store and bought the same record. Not good enough says CIAPC, who will still be enforcing the fine to demonstrate the severity of the crime, but more so just coming off like douchebags. Furthermore, they confiscated the poor girl’s ‘smoking gun’, her Winnie The Pooh laptop.
According to Torrent Freak, the girl’s father has spoken out, stating: “We have not done anything wrong with my daughter. If adults do not always know how to use a computer and the web, how can you assume that children or the elderly – or a 9-year-old girl – knows what they are doing at any given time online?”
If that’s not good enough, the artist whose album the girl downloaded, pop star Chisu, has vigorously condemned the actions of CIAPC, commenting that no artist wants this to happen to the fans: “I hope that the matter will be resolved soon and sorry to my 9-year-old girls,”
It’s clear that the public do not appreciate the laws and potential crack-downs that could happen. It’s hard to understand why they continue to draw blood from the stone given the many instances in which enforcing the laws have made them look petty, or just plan wrong.
