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PARIS - A court in Nice on Wednesday convicted two men involved in livestreams that showed the death of a well-known French streamer, finding them guilty of grievous bodily harm, incitement to hatred, online violence and discrimination.
One of the men received a two-year suspended sentence and a fine of €10,000 (US$11,000), while the other was sentenced to an 18-month suspended sentence and a fine of €5,000 (US$5,500).
Both men were also banned from using social networks for six months and had all their IT equipment confiscated.
The streamer, who went by the stage name Jean Pormanove and had hundreds of thousands of followers, used various social media platforms for gaming broadcasts, and repeatedly subjected himself to extreme online challenges.
Pormanove was beaten during a live broadcast in August last year and died a few hours later after suffering a choking fit in his sleep while still being filmed.
A post-mortem examination found that the 46-year-old streamer had not died as a result of the abuse but from a medical condition.
The two convicted men, aged 24 and 27, had run the channel that broadcast Pormanove's beating.
They had already been questioned by prosecutors before the streamer's death due to earlier indications of abuse.
At the time, they claimed the footage was a staged performance designed to make money, echoing a statement made by Pormanove himself.
However, before his death, it appeared that the violence had gone too far for Pormanove. "I'm fed up, I want to leave,” the streamer wrote in a message to his mother, according to broadcaster BFMTV. - BERNAMA