Following a joint investigation with licensing outfit PRS for Music, last September officers from the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) and Merseyside police raided an address in Everton, Liverpool.
They were looking for Wayne Evans, a local DJ who they believed was involved in the unlawful distribution of music online.
Known online as OldSkoolScouse, Evans uploaded packs of the UK’s current Top 40 Singles to torrent sites each week. They included at least 200 uploaded to KickassTorrents, which proved particularly popular with fans.
In addition, Evans ran DeeJayPortal.co.uk, a website with a membership of more than 160,000 users which specialized in unlicensed a capella versions of famous tracks. Along with OldSkoolScouse.co.uk, another of Evans’ domains, it currently displays a PIPCU seizure notice.
In October 2016, the 39-year-old appeared before Liverpool Crown Court, pleading guilty to two counts of distributing an article infringing copyright and one of possessing or controlling an article for use in fraud.
Since cases in the UK tend to be cherry-picked for their PR value, it was no surprise to learn that Evans was painted by the prosecution as a serious criminal.
According to Liverpool Echo, the Top 40 packs were downloaded more than 523,000 times. There were almost 136,000 downloads of a capella tracks from DJPortal.
As a result, the Performing Rights Society for Music (PRS), which collects and distributes royalties on behalf of artists, estimated their losses at £1.054m for a single year period.
David Watson, defending, told the court that Evans hadn’t made much money from his file-sharing activities and that the estimates of PRS were just that, an estimate.
“These losses are necessarily speculative and difficult to quantify in this case, because not every illegal download leads to the loss of a legitimate sale,” Watson said.
The court heard how Evans had failed to obtain licenses from PRS for his online distribution. Of course, none would have been granted even if he’d asked, but that was beside the point.
Judge Robert Trevor-Jones accepted that Evans hadn’t been motivated by personal gain but said that the DJ knew what he was doing and the losses to PRS from his actions were significant.
“Given your intimate knowledge of the music industry I have no doubt that you would have been aware that what you were doing here was illegal,” he said.
Despite having no previous convictions, Evans was jailed for 12 months yesterday, a sentence the Judge believed would act as a “deterrent” to others.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
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