Anton Vickerman, 38, who set up and ran one of the world?s most visited pirate websites, surfthechannel, attracting more than 400,000 visitors per day and generating advertising revenues of at least $50,000 per month, has been found guilty of Conspiracy to Defraud by "facilitating" the infringement of copyright at the UK's Newcastle Crown Court late last month.

His wife was found not guilty on the same charges. At its peak www.surfthechannel.com was the 500th most visited website globally and provided access to more than 5,000 pirated films and TV programmes.

Vickerman designed the "front end" of the website and via the internet recruited programmers who ran the "back end" functions of the site. These programmers were tasked to break the security on the third-party sites that hosted infringing copies of films. As a result surfthechannel developed a sophisticated and vast index of films and TV programmes with the majority obtained illegally by the third party sites.

Members of the surfthechannel community were encouraged to find, check and add links, ensuring that surfthechannel was always one of the most up to date databases of pirated material anywhere on the internet.

Vickerman created the surfthechannel, controlled it and run through a limited company, Scopelight Ltd, which funnelled profits to a bank account in Latvia.

"These are landmark criminal convictions proving that those operating pirate websites are not outside the law but can be tracked down and brought to justice," says Kieron Sharp, Director General of the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT). "Mr Vickerman set up surfthechannel with the aim of it being one of the world's top destinations for pirated films and TV programmes and was making at least £35,000 a month from the site alone. This was a criminal conspiracy for criminal profit to fund a criminal lifestyle and Vickerman is now paying the price."

Story filed 09.07.12