Outraged at the decision to sue a Czech high school student for €5 million for running a site linking to pirated material, the Czech Pirate Party has launched Tipnafilm.cz, a linking site of its very own. With the new site, "we unequivocally declare open war on the Anti-Piracy Union," said Czech Pirate Party Vice President Mikuláš Ferjencik.
The new site links to, but does not host, pirated films, just as the student-operated site did. However, Ferjencik is claiming at least one difference: the new site has ten times more links. The site is operating under the slogan "linking is not a crime"; the Czech Pirate Party believes that mere linking to infringing content is not a crime under Czech law, though this claim is yet to be tested in the Czech courts.
The Czech Anti-Piracy Union sued the 16-year-old student from Liberec claiming his links to pirated films had caused economic harm worth millions of Euros. Ferjencik claims that the Union has called the student the "greatest pirate in the country," a description he calls "absurd." By creating a new linking site operated on a scale far grander than the student's site, he hopes that the Union will "stop bullying the under-aged," and instead "aim its preposterous claims at the Pirate Party."
Ferjencik also noted that the Anti-Piracy Union issued no official statement about the site, to "avoid revealing its strategy going forward."
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