I've translated this from
a Finnish news article, might
not be perfect but you get the picture.
Helsingin Sanomat hs.online@sanoma.fi
11.2.2004
Bootleg collector fined for illegal distribution of un-authorized live recordings.
Tampere, Finland. The court of Tampere sentenced a 24-year old Finnish male to pay a fine of 480 euro for serious copyright infringements. The man spread un-authorized concert recordings of international top artists to many countries with the aid of his internet homepage.
The court saw the actions of the man as illegal, because the man did not have permissions from any artists or bands for distribution. The sentenced must pay around 17 000 euro of various compensations. According to the news only one induvidual artists representatives had pressed charges (Alanis Morissette), who gets 7000 euro of compensation for such hideous illegalities.
The court however took notice that the man did not earn any profit from his actions and was merely doing it as a hobby. In exchange for his recordings the man had received other bootlegs
and empty cd-r discs in the mail.
The sentenced spread a total of 1900 bootlegs during 1999-2003. This
is the first time a person has been fined for non-profit trading in Finland.
There was no mention in the story about this, but I take it that his collection and computer with burner(s) were also confiscated to be desctroyed.
I love living in Finland. Land of justice. Glad to see we OBVIOUSLY have no REAL crime. People who lose eye sight in one eye due to some violent action receive less compensation than for example "Finnish Composers' Copyright Society" for somebody spreading bootlegs...
You could say this guy was unlucky, the chances of your mail getting opened by customs are quite small and as I take it this is what lead to the authorities getting interested.
The speeding ticket was more like 170 000 euro, the fine is related to your income, so if you are rich... drive slowly :-P It might get reduced (highly likely..nobody will pay that much without a fight)
That's sad, and shame on Alanis! Of course, technically it's not legal.. but.. well, I don't wanna get into that whole debate again except to say that concert bootlegs are the legalist of the illegal in my opinion and probably beneficial to the artists involved in most cases. Anyone who's going to seek out concert recordings is most likely a paying fan to begin with.
I was in Venice recently and during the carnival time you might be fined up to 600 euros for walking into a one-way-PAVEMENT. But to be honest, I think it's almost impossible to do that since there will be about 200,000 tourists coming up to you from the other direction.