The Thimphu District Court has ordered a woman to pay Nu 45,000 as compensation for infringing copyright laws. She had shared two movies which were downloaded illegally from the Samuh OTT platform. The verdict came out today. Samuh Media Tech has said it is not satisfied with the decision and intends to appeal to the high court.
As per court documents, the defendant confessed to sharing two movies owned by Samuh in a Telegram chat group that had about 3,000 members. One movie was shared in November of last year while the other movie, was shared in March this year.
Samuh had calculated the total worth of damages at more than Nu 2.8 M.
According to the Copyright Act, any infringement whether committed willfully, or by gross negligence, and for profit-making purposes, shall be punishable by imprisonment for a period of up to one year or by a fine of up to Nu 1 M or by both.
The act also states that the amount of the fine shall be fixed by the court, taking into account, the defendant’s profits attributable to the infringement.
Although Samuh had submitted its damage amount, the verdict stated that there was no accurate information on how many people from that telegram group watched and shared the movies. It further stated that Samuh could also not prove that the defendant had profited from sharing the videos.
However, since it was proved that the defendant violated the copyright act, the court ordered a compensation of Nu 45,000, calculated on the national minimum wage rate for 12 months.
Samuh had also charged another person for copyright infringement. As per court papers, the man shared the online link for one of their movies on telegram and Facebook.
Samuh had said that it incurred a loss of nearly Nu 500,000. But the court stated that the defendant had been told to apologise for his wrongdoing by Samuh which he had done so. Hence, the judgment stated that the defendant is not liable to pay compensation.
Samuh had initially charged twelve people for copyright infringement. But the court dropped the cases against ten of them after Samuh agreed to mediate with them.
However, the two cases that could not come to a consensus with Samuh were prosecuted in court.
Kinley Dem
Edited by Yeshi Gyaltshen
