Vietnam Jails Pirate Football Streamers For Up To a Year
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A Vietnamese court has sentenced 14 people who worked on the pirate football streaming site Bun Cha TV, handing out the first prison terms we've seen since the country's piracy crackdown began earlier this year. [...] Four defendants, including the heads of the content, programming and operations teams, were sentenced to 12 months in prison.…
The Vietnamese government has sentenced 14 individuals connected to the piracy of football streams via the website Bun Cha TV, marking the first such convictions since the nation began its crackdown on copyright infringement this year. The court handed down prison terms ranging from eight to twelve months for the 14 defendants, who were responsible for various aspects of the website, including content, programming, and operations.
Four of the defendants, who headed the content, programming, and operations teams, received the maximum 12-month sentence, while five others got ten months, and two had their sentences suspended. The website reportedly broadcasted over 150,000 sports matches and generated more than 20 billion dong, approximately $760,000, through illegal betting and gambling advertisements.
The prosecution did not specify the total illegal earnings, but rather provided the profit amount for each individual or team. The verdict was welcomed by the Motion Picture Association of Vietnam, which called it a major victory for the country's intellectual property (IP) landscape. The ruling is seen as part of a larger trend in Vietnam towards stricter enforcement, moving away from merely blocking domain names to actually prosecuting the operators of large-scale piracy networks.
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