The Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday turned down an appeal filed by a man who had been found guilty of circulating pirated multimedia, and fined him an additional Lm100, because the appeal was “pointless”.

The Court of Magistrates had fined Richard Mercieca Lm1,500 after he was found guilty of selling pirated merchandise in breach of copyright laws on the content of the CDs and DVDs.

In his final judgement regarding the case, Chief Justice Vincent De Gaetano ruled that the appeal was “pointless” and that the Mercieca had four other cases related to circulation of pirated merchandise.

As for the justification given by the Court of Magistrates about what it referred to as an “early confession” by the appellant, the Court of Criminal Appeal could not understand how Mercieca’s confession could possibly be considered to be “early”, when the accused was first arraigned on 6 April 2005, but registered an admission on 20 October 2006.

The Court of Criminal Appeal ruled that it was not appropriate to allow the appellant to be given more time to pay the fine, as requested by his defence counsel.