Five Men Indicted For Uploading Movies, Then Extorting 'Pirate' Downloaders

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Prosecutors in Taiwan have indicted five men for running an operation that uploaded movies to the internet and then extorted cash settlements from the BitTorrent users who downloaded them. One of the men is former ultramarathon runner Kevin Lin, who founded a copyright consultancy company after graduating from law school in 2020. According to reports, Lin's company enticed users to download the torrents, tracked their IP addresses, and then filed copyright lawsuits in an effort to profit from cash settlements. Lin said that due to his support for the opposition government and his criticism of its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the investigation against him is politically motivated. In May 2021, licenses were obtained from Vie Vision Pictures Co. and Applause Entertainment Ltd, which led to 18 movies being uploaded to BitTorrent networks, to tempt users into downloading them. After capturing their IP addresses, Lin's company obtained their identities from ISPs and sued them. The goal was to obtain out-of-court settlements. Since August 2021, Lin's company filed 937 lawsuits for copyright infringement. In just 25 of those cases, the company managed to "extort" settlements of $29,207, FocusTaiwan reports. In addition to Lin, several other people have also been indicted for their part in the operation.

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