A Hong Kong man has been jailed for three months for the unauthorised sharing of movie files using BitTorrent. Chan Nai-ming, 38, was sentenced on Monday after being found guilty of copyright infringement at an earlier hearing last month. He was found culpable for uploading three films - Daredevil, Red Planet and Miss Congeniality - onto the net using the popular file sharing program.

Hong Kong police claim Chan is the first person in the world prosecuted over copyright offences as a result of using BitTorrent. The program enables large files to be distributed more easily by breaking them up into smaller component files and using peer-to-peer delivery. It holds no central database of files. Local authorities and the movie industry hope Chan's imprisonment will act as a deterrent to others, the BBC reports. ®

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