An auxiliary nurse from Ayr has become Scotland’s first criminally convicted file-sharer following investigations by the British Recorded Music Industry (BPI) and the International Federation for the Phonographics Industry (IFPI).

Anne Muir admitted to sharing £54,000 of copyrighted music files, in contravention of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

“Intelligence gathered by BPI and IFPI revealed that Anne Muir was a prolific user of a particular file sharing network based in the UK,” said Ayr’s district prosecutor, Mirian Watson, who claimed that Muir’s offence was “tantamount to theft”.

Yet Muir did not benefit financially from her file-sharing, says defence Lawyer Lorenzo Alonzi:

This offence was not committed for any desire to make money. Mrs Muir was not in any way trying to distribute on a large scale, she had a very big quantity of these files because she was hoarding – a symptom of a severe obsessive personality disorder that she suffers from. She has, for many years, suffered from bouts of depression, which causes her to have extremely low self-esteem.

It remains to be seen whether these factors will be taken into account when Muir is sentenced later this month.