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P2P Operators Plead Guilty

Posted by samzenpus on from the be-more-careful dept.

Bootsy Collins writes "In the first such criminal convictions in the U.S., two peer-to-peer hub operators have pled guilty to conspiracy to commit felony copyright infringement. The two men were subjects of raids last August after Department of Justice investigators downloaded content valued at US$25,000 retail from their servers, the Movie Room and Acheron's Alley. They face sentences of up to five years in prison, and up to US$250,000 in fines, in addition to the possibility of being forced to pay restitution to copyright holders.

7 of 554 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Conspiracy? by It+doesn't+come+easy · · Score: 3, Informative

    It would have to be because of a plan for them to cooperate together, I would guess.

    --
    The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
  2. In the other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...new BitTorrent sites are appearing at the same time others are closing. One of these sites is mininova, which is the follow-up of the well-known SuprNova.
    A full list of torrent sites can be found here.

  3. Re:Conspiracy? by JohnnyKlunk · · Score: 4, Informative

    A conspiracy is a plot to carry out some harmful or illegal act or a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act . You don't have to actually perform the act to be convicted. In many cases just planning to do something is against the law. Especially these days where having a map of a government building and a few pounds of fertaliser in the shed means you're conspiring to commit acts of terrorism. For which you'll definately do some hard time.

  4. Re:P2P? by brainburger · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes, they were Direct Connect hubs. This means the accused may not have actually hosted the infringing material, similar to Napster.

  5. For those of you shocked about the plea... by njfuzzy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Presumably they pled guilty as part of a plea-bargain. There's very little reason to plead guilty to anything unless it gets you better treatment that you think you would get by fighting the charges.

    --
    My Photography - http://ian-x.com
    The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
  6. Re:Conspiracy? by the_mad_poster · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, the parent is either ignorant or a troll. Willfull copyright infringement is punishable with jail time, the length of which varies with the severity of the act.

    --
    Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
  7. Gallery of CSS Descramblers by Bj�rn+Stenberg · · Score: 3, Informative
    The wikipedia entry is correct. Just because you don't know about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

    One of the more famous examples is Dr. David S. Touretzky's "Gallery of CSS Descramblers", which contains more than 20 different examples of code that is (assumed to be) illegal under the DMCA.

    The page also prominently displays Dr. Touretzky's name, email address and a photograph of him. It was explicitly created to draw attention to the absurdity of the DMCA law, through civil disobedience:

    If code that can be directly compiled and executed may be suppressed under the DMCA, as Judge Kaplan asserts in his preliminary ruling, but a textual description of the same algorithm may not be suppressed, then where exactly should the line be drawn? This web site was created to explore this issue, and point out the absurdity of Judge Kaplan's position that source code can be legally differentiated from other forms of written expression.