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A Danish man has been convicted of sharing nude segments from protected movies and television shows on the online site Reddit.

According to a police document obtained by BBC News, the anonymous man posted 347 video excerpts of explicit content in a subreddit he managed, which were then watched 4.2 million-plus times.

The country's authorities state he has been handed a 7-month suspended sentence for violating copyright laws.

Legal analysts say the man was charged under a seldom-invoked clause in Danish copyright law, with the judge finding that by taking the scenes out of their intended setting, the accused had harmed the artists' "moral rights".

He has also been convicted of sharing more than 25 TB of protected data.

From March 2022 to mid-2023, the user known as "the pseudonym KlammereFyr" on Reddit uploaded adult scenes featuring over 100 female performers.

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

According to the Danish anti-piracy group the Rights Alliance, his online community had more than 6,000 subscribers and users were prompted to ask for excerpts of specific performers.

In last year, advocates reported the incident to the authorities on behalf of the affected actors, directors and producers, which led to the forum being shut down.

Andrea Vagn Jensen, one of the actresses whose nude scenes were shared in the community, told local media at the time she felt there was a difference between appearing unclothed in a movie and appearing on Reddit.

The performer stated the uploads constituted "exploitation".

'A significant signal'

The defendant was detained in fall 2024 and pleaded culpable to the charges last month.

In a comment after the verdict, TRA head the organization's leader said the decision sent an "important" message "that violations of creators' rights has consequences".

The verdict is considered unprecedented in Denmark for its use of the "moral rights" clause of the Danish Copyright Act, which specifies an artist's creation cannot be utilized in a way which infringes upon their standing.

Intellectual property expert a legal scholar informed BBC News the case was "rare" for its focus on the damage to the dignity of an performer, rather than to them financially.

How the ruling could influence nations abroad is unclear.

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