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A Danish man has been convicted of uploading nude segments from copyrighted films and TV series on the social media platform Reddit.

According to a law enforcement report obtained by media outlets, the anonymous man posted 347 clips of explicit content in a Reddit group he moderated, which were then viewed 4.2 million times.

Danish police state he has been handed a 7-month deferred jail term for violating copyright laws.

Experts say the defendant was charged under a rarely-used clause in Denmark's intellectual property legislation, with the court ruling that by removing the scenes out of their original context, the accused had harmed the artists' "moral rights".

He has additionally been found guilty of sharing more than 25 TB of protected data.

From March 2022 to mid-2023, the man using the alias "the pseudonym KlammereFyr" on Reddit posted adult clips including over 100 actresses.

He distributed them in the forum he was a moderator of.

Per the Danish anti-piracy group The Rights Alliance (TRA), his subreddit had more than 6,000 subscribers and participants were prompted to request clips of particular performers.

In last year, advocates reported the case to the police on behalf of the impacted actors, filmmakers and production companies, which led to the subreddit being closed down.

Andrea Vagn Jensen, among the performers whose explicit scenes were shared in the community, told local broadcasters at the period she believed there was a difference between appearing unclothed in a film and appearing on Reddit.

The actress said the uploads amounted to "exploitation".

'A significant signal'

The man was detained in September 2024 and admitted guilty to the allegations last month.

In a comment after the verdict, TRA head the organization's leader remarked the outcome sent an "important" signal "indicating violations of artists' rights have consequences".

The ruling is considered unprecedented in the country for its application of the "moral rights" section of the national copyright law, which states an artist's creation cannot be used in a manner which violates their reputation.

Intellectual property expert Dr Alina Trapova told BBC News the legal matter was "unusual" for its focus on the damage to the dignity of an performer, rather than to them financially.

The extent to which the case could influence other countries is uncertain.

But she said there may be "an increasing number of these actions" in the coming years with the growth of AI, where "the integrity of an individual's creative output might be tempered with much more easily".