Dancing Jesus founder, Kane Robinson, jailed for illegal music sharing online

INTERNET pirates beware. Two 20-somethings have been jailed for up to four years for sharing music illegally online.

Jailed for sharing music online

INTERNET pirates beware.

In a high profile case in the UK, two young men have been sentenced to jail for setting up the illegal music internet forum Dancing Jesus.

The forum allowed members to post tens of thousands of illegal links to songs, often before they had been released.

Site owner and administrator Kane Robinson, 26, was jailed for two years and eight months at Newcastle Crown Court after he admitted to illegally distributing music from the likes of Adele, Arctic Monkeys and Kanye West.

Richard Graham, 22, was jailed for 21 months. He illegally distributed thousands of files on Dancing Jesus, including about 8000 tracks, around two-thirds of which were prerelease.

Graham pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to illegally distributing music.

More than 22,500 links to 250,000 individual titles were made available on Dancing Jesus between 2006 and 2011.

The site had more than 70 million user visits during its life span and it is estimated they cost the music industry up to $382m by illegally sharing tracks.

Dancing Jesus had tracks from the likes of Adele, Arctic Monkeys, Jay-Z and Kanye West.

Judge Deborah Sherwin said it would be easy to consider such activities a victimless crime but added that piracy reduced the ability of the industry to promote and fund new artists.

The director of the BPI’s Copyright Protection Unit, David Wood, said: “(This) sentencing sends a clear message to the operators and users of illegal music sites that online piracy is a criminal activity that will not be tolerated by law enforcement in the UK or overseas.

“Piracy — particularly prerelease — can make or break an artist’s career, and can determine whether a record label is able to invest in that crucial second or third album. In this day and age with so many quality digital music services available offering access to millions of tracks through free and premium tiers, there is no good reason to use pirate sites that give nothing back to artists and offer a substandard experience for consumers. Speaking as a music fan, it just doesn’t make sense to help criminals when you can support artists.”

‘Listen up, piracy could land you in jail’.

The case echoes the famous Napster scandal from 2001 where an online peer-to-peer music site was sued by famous artists such as Dr Dre and Metallica over the early release of their music.

The site, in its original form, was eventually shut down.

Some will also remember the case of the Australian gamer James Burt, who was successfully sued by Nintendo in 2010 to the tune of $1.5m for illegally copying New Super Mario Bros. Wii and making it available for download on the web.

More Aussies than ever are illegally downloading content online and the government has repeatedly said it won’t tolerate the practise in Australia any longer.

Figures released in October this year revealed 29 per cent of Australians aged 18-64 are active pirates. The figure had risen 4 per cent in the past year.

Communication Minister Malcolm Turnbull told Sky News in August that copyright holders should take repeat piracy offenders to court.

“Rights owners have got to be prepared to actually roll their sleeves up and take on individuals. They’ve got to be prepared to sue people, sue mums and dads and students who are stealing their content,” he said.

“As people recognise that there is a risk they can be sued and have to pay for what they have stolen then the level of infringement and theft will decline.”

One of the biggest studies ever conducted on illegal music downloads (Musicmetric’s study in 2012) showed the United States topping the highest number of downloads by country, while Australia claimed the highest poll position when downloading figures were crunched on a per capita basis.

What do you think of the sentence? Harsh or just? Have your say in the comments below.

Bruno Mars has the dubious honour of being the most pirated musician in 2013, with nearly 5.8 million downloads.