Sony Music Entertainment is now suing a man for nearly a quarter million dollars, after he was found to have leaked a Beyonce album onto file sharing website The Pirate Bay, before it was officially released. This occurred back in mid 2011, but it's all coming to a head now.

This is the first time an individual from Sweden has been targeted with such a lawsuit, but it's becoming more common for content owners to go after pre-release leak sharers, as they are far easier to convict in court, since judges view that sort of piracy as more damaging than the traditional post-release sharing.

Sony's prosecution claims that the leak of Beyonce's album “4,” affected the company's business in several ways: damages to marketing strategy, reduction in revenue from sales and the incursion of additional costs related to legal fees. It also argues that its relationship with the artist was damaged.

For these claims, Sony is seeking $233,000 (£153,000).

However TorrentFreak has a quote from a professor of civil law at Stockholm, who suggests that it's not that easy to put a monetary value on such damage. : “I think so far [the calculations on damages] have not been done in a satisfactory way in situations like this, and the question is whether it will ever be done,” says the professor.

“This is a nuisance from a copyright perspective. But it does not mean that you should have some kind of punitive damages to scare people.”

KitGuru Says: Surely the person who should be targeted for legal action here is the one that leaked it from the company itself, not the one that uploaded it?

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