After years of adventures, Zone-Telechargement finally finds a conclusion to its story.
Last March, the Toulouse Criminal Court finally announced the sentence for the two founders of Zone-Telechargement.
Zone-Telechargement: love, glory and hit trial
In 2012, Thibault Ferreira and Wilfrid Duval, then aged 19 and 21, founded Zone-Telechargement together. A real upheaval in the sphere of illegal downloads, the site will very quickly experience a huge gain in popularity, to the point of becoming the eleventh most visited site in France. Building on its success, the platform created by the two friends from Toulouse will then arouse the interest of the authorities.
In 2014, Sacem and the association for the fight against audiovisual piracy both filed a complaint against Zone-Telechargement. At the same time, the gendarmerie and the center for the fight against digital crime will then conduct the investigation, until they can arrest Thibault Ferreira and Wilfrid Duval. In 2016, the latter are therefore charged with counterfeiting, money laundering, but also for having been part of an organized criminal gang.
What sentence for the founders of Zone-telechargement?
Between 2014 and 2016, Zone-Telechargement.com would have brought in no less than 600,000 euros to its two founders. The latter, after spending three months of their life in prison, will finally be released in March 2017, although placed under electronic surveillance. It was not until March 13, 2023 that Thibault Ferreira and Wilfrid Duval were tried. The sentence of the Toulouse Criminal Court is as follows: the two men are sentenced to 18 months in prison, 12 of which are suspended, and will have to pay a fine of 50,000 euros.
Due to their time in prison in 2017, neither of them will therefore be sent back to the cell. However, the two friends have every intention of appealing. Their lawyer has also indicated that his clients are strangers to the database and that the latter has not been condemned. In other words, he considers that Thibault and Wilfrid did not themselves create the illegal content, but that they “only” exploited it. He concludes by saying this:They are considered to be the inventors and initiators of a system of fraud. They have benefited from the flaws in the system: is this reprehensible? Penalizing intelligence is a mistake. »
After almost ten years, Zone-Telechargement should finally be a closed case. If the site has seen the birth of many clones, it is true that it will undoubtedly have represented a turning point in illegal downloading in the 2010s.
Source : Torrent Freak
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