Italian judge seizes 2.4 million off long accused Pirates
The ruling related to a long running campaign by the country's Federation Against Music Piracy working alongside the Italian Fiscal Police. They had targeted a number of websites which were making unlicensed digital music available over the net, including one called MP3download.it. The investigation led to 54 people being charged for copyright infringement crimes, and various sites targeted being taken offline. However, true to form, the Italian legal system took rather a long time to deal with the action, and a six year window for prosecuting the pirates passed without the case being resolved.
However, a judge has nevertheless ruled that assets belonging to the accused, including 2.4 million euros in frozen cash reserves, can be seized for good, on the basis he is satisfied the offences of which the alleged pirates were accused were in deed committed.
In related news, a local Italian prosecutor, based in the northern town of Bergamo, is still trying to bring a criminal case against the founders of The Pirate Bay on the basis they are committing copyright crimes in his jurisdiction by providing access to their BitTorrent search engine in the country. The three founders and primary funder of the Bay, of course, have already been found guilty of copyright crimes in their home country of Sweden, though they are appealing the judgement and are yet to serve any of the jail time they were given or pay any of the damages they were ordered to pay.
According to paidContent:UK, the Italian record label trade body FIMI has confirmed that that Bay action is unrelated to last week's anti-piracy ruling, adding that the Pirate Bay case is expected to reach Italy's Supreme Court in November.
