A 35-year-old man has been convicted of selling seedboxes knowing that they were used for illegal file sharing. The case contributes to the focus on the infrastructure within file sharing on the illegal market.
On February 28, the Court in Aalborg ruled against the Danish owner behind a seedbox company for, in the period November 2020 to May 2021, having sold seedboxes and server capacity to an unknown number of people, knowing that they were used for illegal sharing of no less than 3.838 copyright-protected works on the Danish and Nordic file sharing services ShareUniversity, Superbits and DanishBytes. The sentence is a three-month suspended sentence and confiscation of dividends of DKK 300.000, as well as compensation of DKK 298.660 to the Danish Rights Alliance.
The Danish Rights Alliance filed the case when our investigation showed that seedboxes offered by the Danish company were used on a large scale for the illegal sharing of Danish-produced entertainment content. By making seedboxes available to users of illegal file sharing services, the convict helped to optimize access to and use of the aforementioned illegal services.
Central part of illegal ecosystem
Seedboxes and VPN services have been of interest to file sharers as they can make illegal file sharing more anonymous by hiding file sharers’ IP addresses and replacing them with those of the seedbox or VPN provider. It can therefore be more difficult to find the identity behind illegal file sharers who use seedboxes and/or VPN services. As this case also shows, file sharers have been willing to pay for this anonymization feature, and therefore there are several providers who try to market their seedboxes to illegal file sharers.
However, it is a false sense of security, as the seedbox or VPN provider holds information about its customers, e.g., payment information, name and address and IP address. This is information that the police or aggrieved rights holders can get access to.
In addition to anonymization, seedboxes are also used by illegal file sharers because they streamline file sharing with fast download and upload speeds as well as support if the file sharer has problems using the seedbox. Thus, seedboxes has formed a central part of the illegal file sharing ecosystem in Denmark and the Nordics.
According to the Director of the Danish Rights Alliance, Maria Fredenslund, the verdict helps to show that providers of seed boxes have a responsibility:
“The Danish Rights Alliance is very happy that a verdict has been reached in this case. It helps paint a picture of the illegal market as much more than just backers and users. There are many more layers in the illegal market that have a responsibility. Providers of seedboxes have a responsibility to ensure that their services are not used for illegal uploading and downloading of copyrighted content, which the Danish Rights Alliance can clearly see that they are doing. Therefore, this case helps to send a signal to other providers that you cannot deliberately sell services to the illegal market.”
Jan Østergaard, who is a special prosecutor at NSK, says about the verdict:
“With a sentence of three months in prison, a signal is sent that the authorities take infringements of copyright seriously. You risk getting a conviction if you share or facilitate the sharing of illegal material.”