Czech Pirate Party Launches Movie-Download Portals in Protest Against Prosecution of File-Sharing Teenager

Under the slogan “Linking is not a crime”, the political party called the Czech Pirate Party has launched two movie-downloading websites in protest against the prosecution of a 16-year-old boy from the northern Czech city of Liberec, who is facing a EUR 5 million (USD 7.2 million) damages claim brought by the Czech Anti-Piracy Union for posting links to copyrighted works on his website.

The first website launched on July 28 by the Czech Pirate Party is Tipnafilm.cz. It does not host any copyright infringing material, only links to where it can be downloaded. The second website launched in early July by the Czech Pirate Party is Piratskefilmy.cz, and it carries approximately 20,000 links to over 5,800 movies.

The Czech Pirate Party Chairman Ivan Bartoš stressed in a statement, “We denounce that the police should be run by the propaganda of the Anti-Piracy Union and that it should harass anybody who puts a video on his/her web page or Facebook page. We challenge the Anti-Piracy Union to stop bullying the under aged and to aim its preposterous claims at the Pirate Party.”

The Czech Pirate Party says that, although no one has contacted them so far regarding the two newly launched websites, they are preparing a team of lawyers to deal with any potential lawsuits.

According to the current law in the Czech Republic, copying something for one’s own use and downloading it from the Internet is not illegal. However, sharing copyrighted material, like a movie or a CD, is illegal.

The Czech Anti-Piracy Union, which represents film and music distribution companies and which instigated the proceedings against the 16-year-old, has not released any statement regarding the two websites so far, noting that they don’t want to reveal their strategy.

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Source: Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international broadcaster; blog TorrentFreak