14 DAY TRIAL // The British anti-piracy Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) is taking five men suspected of being involved in the early release of various movies to court.
FACT, which has taken an active approach to dealing with online piracy, firing lawsuits left and right, as well as issuing letters asking downloaders to stop any such actions, is now taking another private prosecution to the criminal court in the United Kingdom, TorrentFreak reports.
Five men will face charges related to their involvement in unauthorized online distribution of movies that were recently released.
FACT chose not to share too much information about the identities of the five men, but did mention that back in 2013 they were all arrested. While the organization has not spoken about who is getting sued, TorrentFreak notes that back in February 2013, FACT and police from the economic crime unit raided four addresses.
Four men with ages between 20 and 31 were arrested at the time on offenses that fell under the Copyright Act. The details were never released to the public.
It seems, however, that the men were members of some movie release groups that were known online as 26K and RemixHD. For its part, RemixHD last released a movie on January 29, 2013, while the raid in question took place on February 1, 2013, solidifying the belief that they were the target.
Four became five
While at the time the reports indicated that only four men were arrested, now there are five on the list of suspects that will be put to trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court later this year. It is unclear who the fifth person is or whether he/she is part of one of the two groups that were taken down by FACT last year.
This is the first time that an early-movie release group is going to court in the United Kingdom. It is also quite interesting that it is FACT, and not the police, who is prosecuting the case. Furthermore, it doesn’t look like the five of them will be facing charges of copyright infringement, but rather conspiracy to defraud.
“A private prosecution is a prosecution started by a private individual, or entity who/which is not acting on behalf of the police or other prosecuting authority. […] There are a number of organisations that regularly prosecute cases before the courts of England and Wales but they do so as private individuals, using the right of any individual to bring a private prosecution. One example is the RSPCA,” reads an explanatory page about private prosecution on the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) website, explaining how it is possible to avoid getting the police involved and still get the case to court.