Polish your IP

Thou shalt not be a hamster…(on the web)

What does a literature interested hamster have to do with illegal downloading of files protected by copyrights on the Internet?

Well, after the shutdown of the portal Odsiebie.com discussed on our blog, the hamster site chomikuj.pl has become the largest Polish Internet “warehouse” of copyright protected files. Hamsters are in Poland connected by people to excessive storage of food in their vast cheeks, thus the name of the site from the Polish word for hamster – chomik.

The general idea behind Chomikuj.pl at first sight seems rather innocent. Chomikuj.pl can be briefly described as a portal originally intended to serve as a sort of storeroom where one can place and exchange personal documents, files or photos, particularly literature, mainly if you do not have enough space on your home computer.  However, quite fast it has changed into a portal where people store pirated mp3s, computer games and copies of books. To its users, it makes available hundreds of thousands of pirated versions of books that Internet users share with one another. More 250 million files are stored there.  Thus, the latest Dan Brown novel ‘The lost Symbol’, long awaited by Polish readers and a bestseller worldwide, was made available on Chomikuj.pl for illegal downoadings soon after its Polish premiere.
The owners of Chomikuj.pl claim that they always react immediately after receiving information about illegal materials available on the portal by removing them and issuing a warning to dishonest users violating the law. This is however to no avail as the illegal files can soon be easily found on another user’s account. Are the portal owners really doing their utmost to control the situation? It is rather doubtful because, however unfair it may seem, this situation ensures Chomikuj.pl one of the highest positions among the most popular domain names on the Polish web with 4 million users relying on its illegal though indeed attractive resources.
The situation has recently generated a great deal of heated debate as according to Polish publishers, each book, soon after being published, is accessible there. “As our business has suffered a heavy loss because of it, we have obliged the Polish Chamber of Books to take responsibility for instituting an action against this portal’” – says Piotr Sagnowski from the electronic publishing section. We should soon have the first IP infringement class action in Poland against the portal Chomikuj.pl after the Civil Procedure Code was recently changed.
There is a great likelihood that Chomikuj.pl will share the fate of Odsiebie.com which is the precedent case in the Polish law as the portal was closed and its owners held responsible. We will be observing the developments in this case…

BTW, no hamsters were injured when writing this article.

Author: Magdalena Michalkiewicz
For any questions on this article, please contact Berenika Depo.

Author: admin