Man sentenced to eight months for karaoke piracy

[Len]

A man has been sentenced to an eight-month suspended sentence after pleading guilty to copyright offences at Manchester Crown Court.
Steve Mather of Rochdale, Lancashire, was accused of creating the two online accounts KaraokeRG and Karaokekid, which offered copies of karaoke tracks without permission from two rights holders, Sunfly Karaoke and Digitop.

Digitop estimated their losses to be around £485,000 based on 44,000 downloads over a period of three years, whilst Sunfly Karaoke projected a loss of almost £30,000.

The accounts were brought to the attention of the City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit in 2015 following a referral from the British Phonographic Industry. The BPI made a total of eight evidential downloads, four of which were licensed to Digitop’s trading name “Mr Entertainer”.

A search warrant conducted in February 2015 at Mather’s residency saw the seizure of several items, including electronic devices. Emails on Mather’s laptop directly linked him to the disputed websites, as well as records of PayPal transactions received from the ‘donation’ link on one of the websites.

Acting detective chief inspector of PIPCU, Nick Court, commented: “Mather has caused these companies to suffer significant financial losses.”

“By making these tracks available to the public, this not only impacts upon the businesses involved but also upon those who work for them by putting jobs at risk and negatively impacting upon the progress of the company.”

Deputy director of copyright and enforcement at the UK IP Office Matt Cope added: “Protecting our music industry is vital to help grow our economy.”

“The UK has one of the best IP enforcement regimes in the world and I hope this acts as a warning that action can and will be taken.”