The case has dragged on to Czech courts for almost eight years Lukáš Kuzmiak, who was able to track down his stolen MacBook in 2011 and posted footage of people who bought it on his blog. However, he eventually found himself in court as a defendant, because the family in question had filed a lawsuit against him for the psychological damage she was supposed to suffer when the case went on the media.
One action the court ruled in September this year. “The result is that I have to pay compensation in the amount of CZK 86,400 plus interest and court fees, a total of about 135 thousand,” Kuzmiak told Lupa, adding that it was actually a success, because the plaintiff originally demanded compensation of CZK 448 thousand. However, in the end, the Court of Appeal took into account that the plaintiff family could – for example, due to a suspiciously low price – reasonably assume that the computer was stolen.
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Kuzmiak is now asking his supporters for a contribution to court costs in the collection on the HitHit server. He set the target amount at CZK 161,337 so that the amount also covered the server commission and the possible production of rewards. “The specific number 161337 is just hacker joke, as well as the amount of contributions in the values of HTTP codes and the like, I calculate that a large part of my ‘social bubble’ is just people from IT and security, “explains Kuzmiak, who makes a living as a network security expert and has lived in the US for several years.
Two days before the end of the collection, a total of 219 users have been promised over CZK 120,000. He plans to publish details about his case on the upcoming website ukradeny-notebook.cz, where he also wants to publish an anonymized version of the verdict.
“The main motivation is to stir up the discussion about stolen goods, that it is up to each of us to check the origin of the things we buy. And also about the conflict between the right to own property and the right to privacy (plaintiffs) and how the court (did not) deal with this, “adds Kuzmiak.
“For my part, I claimed that the attack on my property took place all the time because I had my intellectual property on my laptop. But the court did not address this much. Suše stated that the laptop had already been stolen and the attack on the property no longer took place. My purely subjective impression is that the whole issue of intellectual property has remained misunderstood, so no one has solved it, “he adds.
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