German administrator of illegal streaming service Kinox.to gets more than three years in prison

The German ex-administrator of the streaming service Kinox.to has been sentenced to three years and four months in prison. The Leipzig court found it proven that the man was guilty of the illegal exploitation of copyrighted works in 2,889 cases.

The indictment against the 29-year-old German concerned 767,000 cases of copyright infringement, but in the end the Leipzig court found the ‘illegal commercial exploitation of copyrighted works’ proven in 2,889 cases. The man was subsequently sentenced to three years and four months in prison, but part is conditional and since the German had already been in custody for fourteen months, he was able to leave the court.

According to the German piracy watchdog GVU, the former administrator would also have been involved in Kino.to, the predecessor of Kinox.to. In both cases, these are sites that offer links to movie streams and that, according to the copyright organization, convert millions of euros annually.

Kinox.to is still online. The site is said to be currently run by two brothers, writes the Augsburger-Allgemeine, who have been wanted for some time but still have not been arrested. It is unclear whether visitors who watch films via Kinox.to are also punishable in Germany: it is necessary for the criminalization to have a copy of films on viewers’ computers. Some legal experts believe that this is not the case when watching from streaming sites, others believe that there is a kind of ‘volatile copy’ in the working memory.