A Pirate Bay user who said he uploaded a comedy movie because he had nothing to do, must now pay a large sum of money to a rightsholder funded anti-piracy group. The man, who was raided back in 2010, admitted uploading a DVD screener of a comedy movie for fun, an act that has turned out rather less amusing than he had hoped.

In February 2010, armed with a warrant and a representative from the court, anti-piracy group Antipiratgruppen (APG) carried out a raid on a house in Herning, Denmark.

Their previous monitoring of The Pirate Bay had revealed that a user with a Danish IP-address had uploaded a DVD screener copy of the Anders Matthesen movie ‘Black Balloon’. Through the courts APG forced ISP TDC to hand over the personal details connected to the IP address. This led them directly to the individual’s door.

Maria Fredenslund, lawyer with Antipiratgruppen, played up the significance of the raid, claiming that they had uncovered “massive violations of copyright”, although the man – known on The Pirate Bay as Icenfire, appeared to have uploaded very few items.

After taking out an injunction to stop Icenfire making any more releases, APG said they would review their evidence with a view to seeking compensation for their losses. They were going after Icenfire because he was an initial uploader, they insisted, but didn’t intend “to sue him to hell” because they were “nice people”.

That case has now been heard by the District Court in Herning which has sentenced Icenfire, a man in his late 20’s, to pay 150,000 kroner ($28,200) in compensation and 40,000 kroner ($7,500) in legal costs.

“It is a very important decision because it establishes that it is a serious violation of the law to be the first to make illegal material freely available to other users,” said Maria Fredenslund, lawyer with RetttighedsAlliancens (previously known as Antipiratgruppen).

Fredenslund admitted, however, that Icenfire had no financial motives to his file-sharing and only uploaded the movie “for fun” to The Pirate Bay because “he had nothing to do”.

The recent name change to RetttighedsAlliancens (Rightsholders Alliance) for APG is supposed to portray a new image for the group, and a shift in focus.

“Our focus is to create space for new opportunities and new services, and therefore we think that the name Rightsholders Alliance reflects the work better,” Fredenslund recently told Comon.dk. “Furthermore, we have got some more members, and then there is no doubt that the future will about a great educational work, for example around the letter model.”

The “letter model” is the act of sending letters to Internet subscribers after their account has been linked to copyright infringements on file-sharing networks in the hope they will change their ways.