A Danish man has been found guilty of sharing sexually explicit scenes from protected movies and television shows on the social media platform Reddit.
According to a police document reviewed by media outlets, the anonymous man shared 347 video excerpts of nude content in a Reddit group he moderated, which were then watched 4.2 million times.
Danish police confirm he has been given a seven-month suspended jail term for copyright infringement.
Legal analysts say the defendant was prosecuted under a rarely-used provision in Denmark's intellectual property legislation, with the judge finding that by taking the scenes out of their original context, the accused had harmed the artists' "ethical entitlements".
He has also been found guilty of distributing more than 25 TB of copyrighted data.
From spring 2022 to mid-2023, the user known as "the pseudonym KlammereFyr" on Reddit uploaded sexually explicit scenes including over 100 actresses.
He shared them in the subreddit he was a moderator of.
Per the Danish anti-piracy organization The Rights Alliance (TRA), his subreddit had more than 6,000 subscribers and participants were prompted to request excerpts of particular performers.
In 2023, campaigners filed the incident to the police on behalf of the impacted actors, filmmakers and producers, which led to the forum being shut down.
Andrea Vagn Jensen, among the actresses whose nude scenes were circulated in the group, explained to local broadcasters at the period she believed there was a distinction between being seen unclothed in a movie and appearing on Reddit.
The actress stated the uploads constituted "abuse".
'An important message'
The defendant was arrested in September 2024 and pleaded guilty to the charges recently.
In a statement after the ruling, the head of the Rights Alliance the organization's leader remarked the decision sent an "important" signal "indicating violations of artists' rights has consequences".
The verdict is considered unprecedented in Denmark for its application of the "ethical protections" section of the national copyright law, which specifies an creator's creation cannot be utilized in a way which infringes upon their reputation.
Intellectual property expert Dr Alina Trapova told BBC News the case was "rare" for its focus on the damage to the dignity of an performer, rather than to them economically.
How the ruling could influence other countries is uncertain.
But she said there may be "more and more of such cases" in the coming years with the growth of artificial intelligence, where "the integrity of an individual's creative output might be compromised much more easily".
