Pirates suspected of continual copyright infringement will now have to pay £11.80 ($20) as fine to an independent company RightsCorp Digital, in order to stay connected to the web.
RightsCorp detects illegal sharing of copyrighted files using custom software and sends letters and emails demanding £11.80 fine. The notices about copyright infringement served cite the Digital Millenium Copyright Act 1988 and ask the pirates to pay and receive a settlement from the copyright owner.
On failure to pay the fine after receiving the email, the company will apparently take the pirate offline, after informing the ISP. The company is said to have a backing of around 140 ISPs in the US.
However, after paying the fine, the pirate is expected not to continue the illegal downloading of copyrighted files. The company has reportedly settled 75,000 cases in total in just the month of May, with a potential net total of fines accounting to £890,000 ($1.5 million).
RightsCorp Digital was founded in the year 2011 by Christopher Sabec. The firm is obviously trying to stop torrent users in their tracks, helping ISPs and the producers of copyrighted material.
Christopher Sabec said that when users torrent a file, they see it and for the lack of better description, the firm captures a red light photo of the particular transaction. He noted that not all the accounts are being targeted but the accounts which repeatedly violating copyright laws.
RightsCorp has also revealed plans to expand our of the US to Thailand, Russia, China, Canada and other countries around the world, while there is no word about UK expansion as of now.
