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Arrest in Caridi FBI Investigation
skillio writes "The FBI arrested one Russell Sprague in Illinois on Thursday in connection with the previously reported Carmine Caridi dvd screener leak investigation. Given the FBI's figure of up to 60 screeners a year provided by Caridi, and Sprague's clearly sophisticated setup, one can't help but wonder if this will prove to be the main, if not sole, source of these dvd screener leaks. Caridi has yet to be charged, but after he's admitted to supplying Sprague with screeners for the last 3-5 years, I highly doubt his innocence will remain unchallenged for very long."
I doubt that he would be the only person doing screeners. There's probably about 2-5 people per movie, as you'll get different weirdnesses (such as blured out text) in the same movie, depending on the release group.
If the guy committed a crime, what's wrong with putting him in prison?
download bittorrent then go to www.suprnova.com (yes its spelt like that) enjoy!
From the article: "The search of Sprague's residence Thursday turned up DVD copies of 11 films...
According to the FBI, Sprague admitted receiving screeners from Caridi and said that he used the software program Copy Guard Breaker to copy the VHS tapes to DVD and then returned the original VHS tapes and two VHS copies of each to Caridi.
Sprague said that he'd made as many as six duplicate copies of each DVD and distributed them to family and friends. He supplied copies to another friend in exchange for using a FedEx shipping account, the FBI said."
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
From the article:
An FBI search of Caridi's home resulted in the seizure of 36 original Academy VHS screener tapes and two DVD screeners. Caridi also told the FBI of eight other screeners he had received which were at another location, where agents subsequently picked them up.
The search of Sprague's residence Thursday turned up DVD copies of 11 films -- ranging from "Samurai," "Calendar" and "Mystic" to "X2: X-Men United" and "Cold Mountain"
emphasis mine.
Read the article. Caridi knew they were being copied -- indeed, he was having the guy mail back VHS copies.
The accused biog here
Let me rephrase: no mention of "DVD screeners," because they no longer exist -- the Academy sends out VHS tapes now to combat piracy, for all the good it did them.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
When I lived in Los Angeles, I was about as unconnected from the entertainment industry as you can get, being a molecular biologist for a living. (OK, I had an agent. And worked as an extra a couple of times. But everyone in LA has an agent from the mayor to the guy selling oranges on the freeway ramp.)
Anyway, even I routinely had access to Academy screening videos. Those things were everywhere. I can't imagine there's any shortage of sources for the pirates.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I'm guessing they didn't want to release the actual name of the program he used for fear that other people might start using it after they find it on Google.
from what my brother tells me (he is a cop), federal prison is fairly cushy (unless its a ultra max), where as state lockup can be hellish, espcially if your in one of the rather poor southern states like Louisana (sp?) or Texas.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
One of the definitions/uses of one is -- Denoting a person or thing conceived or spoken of indefinitely; a certain.
Plus it sounds good too.
That's because most people are sleeping most soundly causing the least impact on surrounding residents and reducing the likelihood of resistance.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
they might scapegoat him for all the huge losses of entertainment industry
At the very least, I expect they'll make an example of him which should have a very strong deterrent effect. Lend your screeners to the wrong person, and bam, you're out of the academy and on a lot of informal blacklists.
bance.net
it is moderately well known that data above and beyond SMTPE timecode is frequently embedded in lines 18 through, I think it is 27, in your average NTSC video frame. if you have an older TV with horizontal hold controls, roll the picture down a little and watch the black line dance above the picture.
this is, among other things, how Panasonic VCRs can automatically set their clocks when you switch them to the local PBS channel.
all you have to do is put a dupe serial number in that retrace bar's timespace, between the horizontal sync pulses, and you've tagged the tape with a unique number.
it's a little harder to blur these out, because you have to replace the information or you break picture sync, putting an ugly hook in the top of the picture.
ain't worth my time to chase it further, but bet on the serials being there... and if MPAA is truly paranoid and in league with the shadows, the name of the intended recipient of the screener. if they use some sort of argument like, "it takes a month to cut these tape copies," bet big on it.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Fuck CNN, they have no respectability anymore.
I lost all respect for CNN when they actually proposed it may be possible to clone Elvis from a lock of his hair. That would be impossible because there is nothing but mitochondrial DNA in hair. The slightest bit of fact checking would have told them this much. Yet they ran it as a story and in the text gutter along the bottom of their newscast as a genuine possibility.
In regard to the current topic, perhaps it was someone's personal pipe dream to clone him and reset the already illegitimately long copyright clock on his works. If copyright law had the same time limitations put in place by the 1790 Copyright Act, then a) all of Elvis' work would be public domain by now, and b) I would have some sympathy for the MPAA on this issue. As it stands though, neither of the above is true.