Surfthechannel.com owner sentenced to four years for conspiracy to defraud

Anton Vickerman, the brains behind TV show link directory surfthechannel.com has been sentenced to four years imprisonment on two counts of conspiracy to defraud, due to the facilitation of copyright infringement.

Surfthechannel.com did not host any onlinve video content itself, but instead provided a detailed and up-to-date index of URLs across the internet where infringeing content could ultimately be sourced. The site’s huge database of links had been cleverly crowd-sourced, based on submissions from the site’s users themselves, rather than gathered and organised solely by Mr. Vickerman.

Third party developers were hired to build and maintain the back-end infrastructure that made the link sharing site possible, while Vickerman managed the system as a whole, financing the site with advertising revenue that exceeded £35,000 per month at the site’s peak.

With more than 400,000 visitors to the site per day, the database of links to copyrighted TV shows and films was hugely popular and thoroughly vetted for broken links, making the index extremely accurate, and therefore all the more reliable and popular amongst the site’s dedicated user base.

Due to the fact that these directory-based sites do not actually host any infringing content directly, it has been notoriously difficult to charge the owners for copyright infringement, especially if there has been no financial gain. However, that hasn’t stopped authorities from prosecuting link indexing sites that make a profit via advertising revenue.

With yearly revenues capable of exceeding £250,000, Mr. Vickerman was clearing making a small fortune from the Surfthechannel.com web site and had been looking to sell on the site for £400,000 before he was arrested. It appears profits had been held in a Latvian bank account via a limited company named ‘Scopelight’, which Mr. Vickerman ran.

This is a landmark case that sends out a clear message to site owners that maintaining similar indexes to copyrighted material can, and likely will, lead to imprisonment. Just because the content is not directly hosted by a site, it does rule out  charges for the facilitation of copyright infringement, as this case has proven.

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• the dude abides

  unsure, Gregg. Seems like there are strong grounds for appeal. But I imagine it is very difficult, when faced with the financial legal muscle of big business.

• RACINGINTIME

  Just another example of the people who can be sacrificed and those who cant. Murdoch is part of the establishment worldwide so are senior businessmen of corporations, bankers, the police, doctors etc. That’s why doctors for example get to pay back £1 million of tax evasion with no charge, whilst benefit fraud by a unemployed mum with 2 children will get her a criminal record.

  He should have got to know the police and politicians and of course got a good legal team around himself a long time ago. Still if he kept the money he earned well over a million he will after 2 years (half sentence) come out to a life of luxury.

• danskr

  Funny how there are over 190 news articles on this story, when according to the defendant not a single reporter attended the 2 month trial. Where did all these journalists get there facts from I wonder..

  In the defendants own words – how FACT is corrupting the UK justice system:
  http://surfthechannel.com/

• danskr

  Funny how there are over 190 news articles on this story, when according to the defendant not a single reporter attended the 2 month trial. Where did all these journalists get there facts from I wonder..
  In the defendants own words – how FACT is corrupting the UK justice system: http://surfthechannel.com/

• http://www.tastythailand.com Reeves

  What you’re missing is, “will lead to imprisonment in the UK”. In many other countries, not only does the government not care, they’re actually involved in the copyright infringement themselves. Besides, as long as these mega-corporations are ripping off customers with exorbitant costs, sorry, I’m on the side of the copyright infringers. Meanwhile, mega American companies that are spending millions of dollars going after lone guys like the surfthechannel.com owner, just to “send a message” can kiss my happy white ass.

• http://www.tastythailand.com Reeves

  Yet another reason I will never live in the UK again. The UK courts, now ruled by American corporations, will go after one small guy to send a message, yet scumbags like Rupert Murdoch will always get off scot free. The UK has become a country I will never live in again. It’s embarrassing to be “British” when the country is nothing more than the 53rd State.