Monday, August 16, 2010

Poor man sentenced for selling old CDs in Thailand

From today 's Thai news, a criminal court fined a poor Bangkok garbage collection worker, who scavenged from the garbage piles and sold recovered old CDs on a footpath, over 100,000 Bahts for violating the Movie and VDO Act of B.E. 2551. Since he does not have money he would be imprisoned to pay for fine. (Note: Perhaps at a rate of few hundred Baht daily credit of imprisonment he would be jailed for about a year.) The family of the guy would try to borrow money to bail him out and appeal the sentencing. His family member said he did not know that selling old CDs was against such a law.

Thai people around the web expressed their great sympathy for the unfortunate guy, mentioning any irony that rampant selling of illegal copies of software and multimedia exist in the country and real pirates of CDs & DVDs often don't get caught, but poor innocent ones got caught and punished instead.

I wish the appeal court would re-sentence the guy in a more lenient way.

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