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Wednesday, 29 October 2008 00:00 |
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Michael Logan, 31, of Maryland was sentenced today in federal court in the District of Columbia for filming with a camcorder in theatres, "28 Weeks Later", “Enchanted” and maybe up 100 more movies over the last few years according to the MPAA.
Prosecutors wrote that Logan's voice could be heard on a pirated version of the film "28 Weeks Later," which MPAA investigators purchased on the streets of New York on May 11 and May 15 of last year. Investigators believe that Logan recorded that film May 11 at the Regal Cinemas, prosecutors wrote. .
The complaint filed in U.S. District Court talks about A Covert Anti-Camcording System (CACS) that was placed in several movie theaters in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area as part of an ongoing investigation by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
\"This sentence should serve as a reminder to would-be camcorder thieves that they will in fact be prosecuted and can face serious consequences for engaging in this illegally activity," said John Malcolm, executive VP of the Hollywood studios' lobbying arm.
The MPAA said it did not know if Logan had a formal job as he appeared to making a good living from his camcording activities.
According to the court's PSA report, this is not his first time getting in trouble with the law for piracy. For example, according to reports, on September 13, 2002, Defendant Logan was arrested in Baltimore, Maryland, for selling pirated CDs and DVDs from his car. During his arrest, police officers recovered from his vehicle several pirated copies of the motion picture Barbershop.
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Monday, 20 October 2008 00:00 |
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Kevin Cogill, a man who admitted in writing two times to the fbi that he in fact pirated, and distributed the unreleased guns n roses album titled “'Chinese Democracy” has plead not guilty in court earlier today.
Cogill was arrested in August at his Los Angeles home and released on bail the same day. He faces three years in federal prison if convicted, and five years if the court finds he posted the songs for commercial gain.
Kevin, who has support from many online who are helping pay for his defense fund (ref link removed), is now able to fight in what most thought would be a quick ending to a ‘open and shut’ case. Originally Kevin was being represented by the federal public defender’s office but now has retained his own attorney, David Kaloyanides.
We reported earlier that Kevin not only admitted to the crime, but did it in writing, signed. According to the United States (on behalf of the AUSA and FBI), Cogill on June 24th, 2008 signed a confession in which he admitted to posting the unreleased songs, and removed them because of the attention it got, causing the server running his website to crash because of the amount of traffic it generated.
You can read the original complaint here:
Guns N' Roses said in a statement at the time of the arrest that while it did not condone Coghill's actions, "our interest is in the original source" of the material. Mrozek declined to comment on whether there would be any additional arrests.
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Friday, 26 September 2008 00:00 |
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Steven Fiatarone, 55, of Spring Hill, Florida was sentenced today for his role in a warez ftp site called “TBR” (The Boxer Rebellion).
The DOJ said (criminal complaint here) that Fiatarone, aka “Kidzap” uploaded about 6,269 Files, and download 8,901 on “TBR” (The Boxer Rebellion).
The indictment also lists Fiatarone as being a member of a another site, “NRH” (Night Ranger Hangout), where he also uploaded40,487 and downloaded 23,572 files.
Among the programs Fiatarone uploaded was Pro/Concept, a product design engineering program, and ColdFusion MX version 6.0.1, an Internet application development program from Adobe Systems.
Steven Fiatarone was sentenced to 3 years probation and was also fined US$2,000 in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Earlier we reported a co-defendant, Robert Hardick, aka “tcut” was also sentenced to three years probation for his role in the copyright infringement conspiracy.
Another user of the site Eli El, aka “conq” was not so lucky, he was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for criminal copyright infringement.,
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Sunday, 21 September 2008 00:00 |
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I have gotten many emails about people who have kind of been lost in the cracks of online media. Grant Stanley was one of them.
Grant Stanley, also known as “G” on elite torrents has been sentenced for willfully infringe the copyright of a copyrighted work for purposes of commercial advantage and private financial gain and copyright infringement and remedies.
Grant Stanley was a “moderator” on the popular site elitetorrents.org, where he would monitor and maintain messages from users. He was also an uploader who contributed to the files on the site by uploading such titles as Are We There Yet, Son Of The Mask, and Shark Tale.
On October 17th, 2006 Stanley was sentenced to 5 months federal prison, and 3 years probation.
After his prison term, in August 2008, the government later asked for Grant to be released from probation for his help in identifying co-conspirator Daniel Dove as “Duffman”, “Derkader”, and “McCalister” alias’s and for also testifying against him in court. |
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Friday, 19 September 2008 00:00 |
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Barry Gitarts sentenced for his role in music piracy warez group aPC. (Court documents below)
Barry Gitarts, also known on the internet as Dextro fought a long and hard battle for his freedom in the United States Federal Court System. Originally it started when Barry decided to upset FBI agents by lying about his involvement in the warez scene and aPC, and also by erasing his hard drive , just to later admit it.
After initially claiming to know nothing and to not being "Dextro", he later admitted that he was in fact the aPC member and was a scripter/siteop of one of aPC’s HQ ftp sites.
Barry’s problems didn’t stop there. His personal friend Robert Galapo further testified that the Defendant came to his house and enabled his computer to download movies, music, and software. If that wasn’t bad enough, fellow members of aPC testified against him in court.
Fellow aPC member Jacob Stahler was on the witness list, we are assuming that he did in fact testify against Dextro. Jacob Stahler aka Lunatik or Luna was charged with Conspiracy to Commit Copyright Infringement and later sentenced to 2 years probation, no fines, and no restitution.
According to an associated press article released earlier today, Barry Gitarts was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.
Court Documents: [complaint] [Sentencing memorandum] |
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