'IMAGiNE' leader sentenced to five years in prison for sharing pirated films

This is so wrong jailing people for the likes of uploading a few bloody movies, if anything they should be fined ONLY and not imprisoned.

If the movie companies think they are losing money from this then if anything a reasonable amount of money from a fine should be replaced by the uploader instead of putting a non-violent person in prison with violent hardened criminals.

This practice of imprisoning persons like this has to stop.

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This practice of imprisoning persons like this has to stop.

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Hardly.
True, the bloated plutocrats who control the politicians have lost a teensy amount of public sympathy lately - and 'though impalement and stoning to death are not yet accepted by the majority of the sheeple, they still retain that touching faith in their betters which encourages the whores in judges robes to impose this travesty of justice with all the relish of a Stalin era Apparatchik.

I have to agree. Jailing people for civil offenses is submoronic.

Its only illegal if you get caught son!

Originally posted by ZippyDSM:

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Its only illegal if you get caught son!

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Hopefully you don't really believe that as it's just as adolescent and ridiculous as believing that a falling tree doesn't make a sound when no one is around............when indeed it does.

And uploading CAM and TS videos while slightly amusing.......is propagating massive loss and piracy, so this guy deserves his punishment.

Originally posted by hearme0:

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Originally posted by ZippyDSM:

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Its only illegal if you get caught son!

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Hopefully you don't really believe that as it's just as adolescent and ridiculous as believing that a falling tree doesn't make a sound when no one is around............when indeed it does.

And uploading CAM and TS videos while slightly amusing.......is propagating massive loss and piracy, so this guy deserves his punishment.

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Sadly I do as they will take you away for anything these days. 0_o

Also if a media is good or well advertised it will make money regardless of piracy, the media mafia has a hard time paying the artists more than well their CEOs.....

I was actually surprised the sentences were not higher or didn't include a fine. People in those piracy groups have made millions of dollars burning those cams to dvd and selling them, or selling them to other groups, before they drop them into torrents. If they charged with only the uploading portion then yea, wtf is with the jail time?

Man,5 years without the Internet - that's really harsh.

Originally posted by hearme0:

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Originally posted by ZippyDSM:

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Its only illegal if you get caught son!

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Hopefully you don't really believe that as it's just as adolescent and ridiculous as believing that a falling tree doesn't make a sound when no one is around............when indeed it does.

And uploading CAM and TS videos while slightly amusing.......is propagating massive loss and piracy, so this guy deserves his punishment.

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I think this way of thinking, looking for imprisonment of this kind of so-called crime is totally wrong, and it is...

Why would any intelligent thinking judge want to put a non-violent person of which only recorded and uploaded a data-stream to the internet in prison, it boggles the mind imo. Does the movie industry run law and order now in the U.S.A ?

Prisons are there for a reason and this is not one of them.

It is stealing. I guess the price of stealing is 3-5 years of prison time.

A fine would be better. Not those $250,000 fines either.

Originally posted by PraisesToAllah:

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It is stealing. I guess the price of stealing is 3-5 years of prison time.

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Absolutely false! It's copyright infringement, a civil offense; it is impossible to show making a duplicate that leaves the original unharmed in any way equates to any kind of "theft". Civil offenses are not supposed to be prosecuted in criminal court, for many good reasons. If there is a provable harm to the plaintiff, civil court will also take care of that; no insane $250,000-per-item fines are necessary.

Now, selling pirated content is definite fraud — a criminal offense — so criminal charges would makes sense, if that was how it went down. But merely distributing pirated content for free does NOT qualify, and I'm not aware of any scene groups that have ever made a profit (or even a skinny dime) from any of their releases.

This is a civil offense, and should be adjudicated in civil court; criminal penalties are asinine.

Originally posted by Bozobub:

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I'm not aware of any scene groups that have ever made a profit (or even a skinny dime) from any of their releases.

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Sorry man, but the whole reason these groups started is for money. I'm guessing you have never been close to any of these groups because there is so much more that goes on behind the scenes other than just uploading it to a torrent. Like I said before people have made millions through burning to DVD. Several people I knew back in college in these groups paid their whole way through college and then some.. and when I mean and then some and I mean AND THEN SOME.

That's not the scene - lol. You ought to google around a bit. And no, I don't mean uploading anything to torrent sites.

Originally posted by SmaryJerry:

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Originally posted by Bozobub:

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I'm not aware of any scene groups that have ever made a profit (or even a skinny dime) from any of their releases.

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Sorry man, but the whole reason these groups started is for money. I'm guessing you have never been close to any of these groups because there is so much more that goes on behind the scenes other than just uploading it to a torrent. Like I said before people have made millions through burning to DVD. Several people I knew back in college in these groups paid their whole way through college and then some.. and when I mean and then some and I mean AND THEN SOME.

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Sorry man, but you are wrong, The people who upload torrents do it to see who can get the best possible quality and they make a name for themselves, EG AxxO. a great uploader who delivered the best quality on such small files, its uploader V uploader and how many skulld, great comments they get. NOT about money, its taking time to deliver what the people want, and if the people love it it's a big fook you to the other uploaders

Originally posted by hearme0:

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Originally posted by ZippyDSM:

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Its only illegal if you get caught son!

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Hopefully you don't really believe that as it's just as adolescent and ridiculous as believing that a falling tree doesn't make a sound when no one is around............when indeed it does.

And uploading CAM and TS videos while slightly amusing.......is propagating massive loss and piracy, so this guy deserves his punishment.

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While I don't agree with the severe time IN JAIL (as I feel there should be no time), I agree that there should have been a massive fine for this. They uploaded hundreds of films, normally within a week of theatrical release. It's unfortunate but true.

Originally posted by Bozobub:

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Now, selling pirated content is definite fraud — a criminal offense — so criminal charges would makes sense, if that was how it went down. But merely distributing pirated content for free does NOT qualify, and I'm not aware of any scene groups that have ever made a profit (or even a skinny dime) from any of their releases.

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Please look into the story of MaVen. He made a LOT of money from his releases, which are the best TS of all-time.

Certainly. But MaVen is not the scene, and you know it.

Originally posted by SmaryJerry:

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Originally posted by Bozobub:

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I'm not aware of any scene groups that have ever made a profit (or even a skinny dime) from any of their releases.

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Sorry man, but the whole reason these groups started is for money. I'm guessing you have never been close to any of these groups because there is so much more that goes on behind the scenes other than just uploading it to a torrent. Like I said before people have made millions through burning to DVD. Several people I knew back in college in these groups paid their whole way through college and then some.. and when I mean and then some and I mean AND THEN SOME.

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Real scene groups don't like torrents, they go out of their way to stop things from being torrented some scene groups even put out fake stuff to weed out the torrenting people in the groups.

I've been with people in the scene group myself, well before torrents was even invented and even before the net was used by the scene groups, the scene groups aren't doing it for money they are doing for the competition side, the whole "scene" is about getting stuff others haven't gotten yet and then releasing it before anyone else.

Other groups grab the scene group stuff and claim they have done it.

but as they say while the scene groups aren't making money, the torrent groups/sites will be wanting to make money because you can't run sites for free as servers always cost money and the data they use cost money as well and the only way to make money is to rip off the scene stuff and claim it as your own then torrent it out.

Originally posted by Bozobub:

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Originally posted by PraisesToAllah:

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It is stealing. I guess the price of stealing is 3-5 years of prison time.

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Absolutely false! It's copyright infringement, a civil offense; it is impossible to show making a duplicate that leaves the original unharmed in any way equates to any kind of "theft". Civil offenses are not supposed to be prosecuted in criminal court, for many good reasons. If there is a provable harm to the plaintiff, civil court will also take care of that; no insane $250,000-per-item fines are necessary.

Now, selling pirated content is definite fraud — a criminal offense — so criminal charges would makes sense, if that was how it went down. But merely distributing pirated content for free does NOT qualify, and I'm not aware of any scene groups that have ever made a profit (or even a skinny dime) from any of their releases.

This is a civil offense, and should be adjudicated in civil court; criminal penalties are asinine.

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While I don't like the whole goto jail or pay fines.

The problem with what you have written is that a production company buys a script they think will make them some money, then work out the costs and then line up the actors etc and then make the movie then release and then expect to make some money back on the investment.

In the current market, the USA is tanking bad and it's the foreign markets that are propping up the USA market and companies, what you don't know is that if you release to the foreign market you also lose 40% of what ever is made due to the distro companies wanting their cut along the way.

So you take a movie the Judge Dread movie it's a great movie it cost around 50 million to make so it was real cheap.

in the US market it made $13,414,714
in Foreign market $17,517,232 - 40% = 10,510,339

worldwide: $23,925,053

So you paid the 50 million to make that movie you just lost 25 million dollars, meaning you just all these people's wages places etc to make no return what so ever on your investment.

It hasn't been released on DVD-bluray yet so it could make up some money cash along the way.

The end result as of right now judge dread movies are an utter waste of money and should never be made.

Now you have reboots of superman, batman, spiderman, probably action movies though hard to say after the shootings at the school in the US as that has canceled about 10 movies just about to go into production.


So the theft in terms of someone make art, music & movies etc, only to make nothing on it.

I know the studio companies do screw people over but for some it's how you pay the bills and if the investors ain't making any money then you'll have less movies made then less chance of people paying their bills via movies.

A lot of the big music stars actually don't have any money anyway as the studios pay for everything they do so the are forced to stay with the studio and can't leave yet own nothing and have no cash even though it looks like it.

Brilliant group of guys

Shame

5 years what a load of bollox
rapists and child molesters get a slap on the wrist and this guy goes to jail for what - uploading crap movies that we wouldnt go to see at the cinema if we knew how bad they were beforehand.

What an ill divided and sad world we live in.

Xtago, you're still missing the entire point.

Theft is a crime. Copyright/IP infringement is not. It's explicitly defined that way. Arguing otherwise is quite superfluous and moot, because the law is quite clear on the matter.

Yes, there are definite damages and harms that owners/creators of specific content suffer from infringement. Guess what? In a civil case, they're still known as damages, and there's already a set mechanism to redress those damages.

Furthermore, your own argument indicts the large content corporations far more than any "digital pirate":

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A lot of the big music stars actually don't have any money anyway as the studios pay for everything they do so the are forced to stay with the studio and can't leave yet own nothing and have no cash even though it looks like it.

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I'll give you 3 guesses why those artists, who create the content the big corporations depend on, have no money. If any guess isn't "Because the studios notoriously find myriad ways to rip off artists", or something similar, then you need to put down the pipe and sober up!

Furthermore, the "losses" attributed to "piracy" are vastly overstated. First off, several studies have shown that the average pirate buys (yes, I said BUYS) more content than the average consumer, and not just a little more, a LOT more. Second, the fact that Hollywood (just like the music and software industries) has blamed the failure of various crap productions on piracy as a convenient scapegoat, rather than simple low quality, has apparently escaped you. For example, NOT ONE of the movies you mention above is actually original, rather than a "reboot" or sequel!

But that's all rather beside the point that, by definition, copyright/IP violation is not a crime in the US, at least not yet, and yes, it matters what you call it! Arguing about the harm done is not only quite debatable, it completely misses the point. What it boils down to is that "big media" is trying to change the terms used to worse-sounding ones ("pirate" and "thief" sounds worse than "copyright infringer"), in order to MAKE IP infringement a crime, at least in the eyes of the public. But as long as you don't sell the final product, that's simply not so.

Edit--> And while I enjoyed the new Judge Dredd movie, it was not a "great" movie, by any means. It was merely a fun high-dollar B movie. If you spend too much on making a B movie, you're an idiot.

Judge Dredd was utter shecht even the old Sylvester Stallone movie was better.
I mean the chase scene - did you check the nick of the futuristic vehicles i am sure i spotted an old VW Campervan in there - so not futuristic.

The Lawmaster was about the only thing that looked like it came from Frank Esquerras drawings or the uniforms but thats about it. Tharg would be rolling in his gravity-seat!
>;o)

Was actually a clone of the Korean movie "THE RAID" which really was an awesome movie so much so I wish I had paid to see it at the cinema. One of the Best movies of the year.