Eight defendants sentenced for spreading pirated copies of The Wandering Earth and other movies online

The domestic science fiction film "The Wandering Earth" won high box office and reputation in the 2019 Spring Festival movie season. In order to seek illegal profits, some pirated film and television websites used technical means to play eight popular 2019 Spring Festival movies such as "The Wandering Earth", "Integrity Storm", "Crazy Alien", and many other film and television works on their pirated film and television resource websites, infringing the copyright owner's right to disseminate works. On November 20, the Shanghai No. 3 Intermediate People's Court held a public hearing to hear this copyright infringement case. After trial, the court made a judgment in court and sentenced 8 people.

On the evening of November 20, the Shanghai High People's Court released a news report on the case, saying that the Shanghai Third Intermediate People's Court (hereinafter referred to as the Shanghai Third Intermediate Court) held an open trial of a copyright infringement case and made a first-instance judgment on the eight defendants involved in the case for copyright infringement. Among them, the principal offender Chen was sentenced to four years and six months in prison and a fine of RMB 550,000, and the other defendants were sentenced to prison terms ranging from two years and ten months to ten months in prison, and were fined accordingly. The case report also stated that the court, after deliberation by the collegial panel, pronounced the verdict in court and supported all sentencing opinions of the procuratorate.

After trial, it was found that from July 2017 to March 2019, the defendant Chen was commissioned by the overseas person "Yecao" to recruit the defendants Lin, Lai, Yan, Yang, Huang, Wu, Wu and others in China to form the "Chicken Group Studio" QQ chat group to update and maintain multiple pirated film and television resource websites for "Yecao".

Among them, Chen was responsible for issuing tasks and paying remuneration to other members of the "Chicken Group Studio" group; Lin was responsible for recruiting some personnel, training and urging other members to complete work tasks, and counting workload; Lai, Yan, Yang, Huang, Wu, Wu and others were responsible for logging into the remote server, downloading from websites such as Renren Film and Television, Xigua Film and Television, 0K Resource Network, or downloading from websites such as iQiyi and Youku and converting the format, as well as obtaining film sources through Baidu Cloud Disk sharing and other methods, downloading them to the remote server, and then uploading the film sources on the remote server to the cloud transcoding server, slicing, transcoding, adding gambling website advertisements and watermarks, and generating links through the cloud transcoding server, and finally copying and pasting the transcoded links to the above-mentioned pirated film and television resource websites, thereby maintaining and updating the content of different sections of the above-mentioned pirated film and television resource websites, including "The Wandering Earth" and "Integrity Storm".

During this period, Chen received a total of more than 12.5 million yuan in operating expenses for the pirated film and television resource website remitted to him by "Wild Grass", and Chen personally made a profit of about 500,000 yuan. Lin, Lai, and Yan participated in the above-mentioned crimes from October 2017 to March 2019, with an illegal business amount of more than 12 million yuan, and personal profits of 166,050 yuan, 98,100 yuan, and 90,800 yuan respectively. Yang participated in the above-mentioned crimes from October 2017 to November 2018, with an illegal business amount of more than 7.7 million yuan, and a personal profit of 83,310 yuan. Huang participated in the above-mentioned crimes from November 2017 to March 2019, with an illegal business amount of more than 11 million yuan, and a personal profit of 82,700 yuan. Wu participated in the above-mentioned crimes from May 2018 to March 2019, with an illegal business amount of more than 9 million yuan, and a personal profit of 82,280 yuan. Wu participated in the above-mentioned crime from October 2018 to March 2019, with an illegal business amount of more than 5.3 million yuan and a personal profit of 189,700 yuan.

After trial, the Shanghai No. 3 Intermediate People's Court held that the defendants Chen, Lin, Lai, Yan, Yang, Huang, Wu, and Wu copied and disseminated other people's film and television works through information networks for the purpose of profit without the permission of the copyright owner. Their actions constituted the crime of copyright infringement and had other particularly serious circumstances, and they should be punished according to law. The defendant Chen is the principal offender, and the defendants Lin, Lai, Yan, Yang, Huang, Wu, and Wu are all accomplices. The accomplices should be given a lighter or reduced punishment. The defendant Chen is a repeat offender and shall be punished more severely according to law. After the eight defendants were brought to justice, they all truthfully confessed their crimes, voluntarily pleaded guilty and accepted punishment, and actively prepaid fines. Each defendant was given a lighter punishment according to law and at its discretion. Based on the facts, nature, circumstances and degree of harm to society of the crimes committed by each defendant, the Shanghai No. 3 Intermediate People's Court made the above judgment in accordance with the law.