Hong Kong Charges Man With Online Piracy

HONG KONG – Hong Kong customs officials on Wednesday filed copyright violation charges against a 38-year-old man who allegedly uploaded three movies onto the Internet using the popular file-sharing program BitTorrent.

The suspect, who has only been identified by his surname, Chan, faces three charges of attempting to distribute copies of copyrighted material without authorization, the government said in a statement.

The suspect is due in court Friday.

If convicted, the suspect faces up to four years in prison and a fine of 50,000 Hong Kong dollars ($6,400) for every illegal copy.

The BitTorrent user, arrested in January, allegedly uploaded the films “Daredevil,”"Red Planet” and “Miss Congeniality” onto a Web site so that others could obtain them.

BitTorrent software lets computer users share large chunks of data. Unlike other popular file-sharing programs, the more people swap data on BitTorrent, the quicker it flows. Because of its speed, BitTorrent steadily gained in popularity after the recording industry began cracking down on users of Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster and other established file-sharing software.

Separately, a Hong Kong movie industry trade association said it plans to send letters to 100 BitTorrent users through their Internet service providers threatening legal action unless they stop using the software.

Information technology experts hired by the industry tracked down the network addresses of the users and passed on the information to their Internet service companies, said Woody Tsung, chief executive of the Hong Kong, Kowloon & New Territories Motion Picture Industry Association.

Highlighting the BitTorrent’s threat to the movie sector, Tsung said a recently released Hong Kong movie, “House of Fury,” has already been downloaded 1 million times.