The owner of streaming link site Surfthechannel.com has been sentenced to four years in jail, after being found guilty of conspiracy to defraud and for facilitating copyright infringement.  However, despite this seemingly heavy sentence, it isn’t the maximum that 38 year old Anton Vickerman could have received. According to the BBC , the maximum sentence he could have been dealt, was as much as ten years behind bars. Surfthechannel was a streaming link site that operated up until earlier this year, when Mr Vickerman’s trial began. The prosecution along with lobbyist organisations FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft) and the(Motion Picture of Association of America) alleged that the website brought in over 400,000 visitors a day at its peak, allowing Mr Vickerman to generate over £35,000 a month, which he funnelled into a Latvian bank account.  However the claims of copyright infringement, Vickerman and Surfthechannel never hosted any files that broke copyright law; he and his staff simply linked to other sites that did.

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Surfthechannel Owner Gets Four Years in Jail