BitTorrent Site Admin Sent To Prison

Marc wrote in with a Torrentfreak story which opens: "The 23 year old Grant Stanley has been sentenced to five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention, and a $3000 fine for his role in the private BitTorrent tracker Elitetorrents. This ruling is the first BitTorrent related conviction in the US. Stanley pleaded guilty earlier this year to 'conspiracy to commit copyright infringement' and 'criminal copyright infringement.' He is one of the three defendants in the Elitetorrents operation better known as 'Operation D-Elite.'"

Comments

"What are you in for"

[Anonymous Coward]

Rape

Murder

Theft

Or..

Drug posession

Helping people download music

Re:Thank god I feel so much safer now

[yamamushi]

The problem is, most people are content to live like this. Without questioning their rights (hell most people I've come across don't even know what their rights are). We live in an apathetic society, where people are happy just waking up every morning being alive and going to work without being shot at. And it only gets worse every day.

This makes me very sad.

[oblivion95]

From the U.S. Constitution: http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constituti on.articlei.html#section8

• To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

In order to imprison someone for violating the temporarily granted monopoly, the government should have to prove that he discouraged "the progress of science and useful arts". For that, they would have to prove that the people who obtained his pirated material would otherwise have paid for it. That is the problem with the arguments of strict copyright proponents: They fail to recognize that the absence of piracy does not imply equivalently higher sales. Some of us are simply not willing to pay $20 for one decent song on a CD.

The fine might be appropriate, but prison time is completely unjustified.

Re:Silly Punishment

[aaronl]

For anyone that makes it this far, theft is legally defined as "the dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving that person of it." Until recently, copyright infringment was a civil matter. That means that you couldn't be brought to court by the state, and you couldn't serve jail time. You could be made to pay reparations to the party or parties whose copyrights you infringe, though.

So seriously, five months in prison is a gross miscarraige of justice. It's definitely five months, an arrest, and a criminal case too much.

Jail for adminning?

[Robber Baron]

Jail? For adminning an indexing site?

When are they going to lock up the Google admins?!?

Re:Silly Punishment

[Iron Condor]

It's not he didn't know what he were doing was determined to be unlawful and punishable as a federal crime.

It's not? It sure is the first time that I have heard someone being prosecuted for providing the technological means to somone else to violate copyright law. For that's all a Bittorrent-tracker is. It is NOT an act of copying or distributing anything, merely a way for clients to get in contact with each other in order to copy something.

As far as I can tell, this verdict means we will haul librarians to jail if they put a photocopier into the library: providing others with the means to violate copyright.

Where exactly is the line here? Which section of the USC was actually violated here?

Re:Silly Punishment

[sillybilly]

Messing wit da man's money is a bigger crime than killin each other.

Re:Oh no!

[werewolf1031]

Does everyone on Slashdot have zero respect for intellectual property or just a few moderators?

You seem to be missing the point. The problem is not "zero respect for intellectual property", it's zero respect for punishment that is wildly disproportionate to the crime in question. Yes, a crime in which no one was harmed nor ever intended to be harmed should carry a lesser penalty. (And yes, intent does matter in a courtroom.)

Suggesting this guy should get a lighter sentence because no one is hurt is like suggesting a car thief should get off easy because no one got hurt. [...] Frankly, this guy is getting off easy.

Yep, definitely missing the point. IIRC, jacking a car while the driver is inside (ie. forcing/demanding their exit from the vehicle so you can take it) constitutes a violent felony, and carries greater penalty than stealing a car while it's parked and unattended. It may not be a huge difference, but yes, violent crimes should carry greater penalties than non-violent crimes. Hell this doesn't even constitute "theft" (denial of use), it's merely "theoretical loss of possible future revenue that we think we might have made". Hardly grounds for five years in prison.

Re:Captain Obvious breaks it down for 'yall

[dircha]

Considering the amount of fines copyright infringement can garner, five months in jail is probably better than being saddled with a debt level so high it would take several lifetimes to pay itoff. If I was faced some multi-million dollar fine (it could easily add up to this sort of money) or 5 months in jail, I'd stock up on paperbacks and head for the slammer.

Or tell them to fuck themselves and flee the country. Neither outcome - a lifetime of debt in imaginary restitution, or hard time in prison - should be lent legitimacy by a just society as punishment for contributing to the casual infringement by a bunch of internet dwelling poor teenagers of some silly moves. Should we destroy a young person's life for contributing to the infringing distribution of copies of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy?

Isn't it enough that this guy is now a convicted felon? He is 23 years old. He was just a college student. But now for doing something stupid in school - something of which most college students know no shortage - he has lost his right to vote - his right to a voice in our democracy - for probably the rest of his life, he has lost the right to bear arms, and he will carry this mark on his record at every background check and job interview for years to come.

Is this the way to show the way for the next generation? Isn't this enough? But now we need to throw him in prison too?

We The People grant copyrights - temporary and limited monopolies on reproduction - to promote the Useful Arts and Sciences, not to promote the bottom line of large corporations. Somehow I find it hard to believe that the promotion of Useful Arts and Sciences afforded by some corporation making a few more bucks off of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy outweighs the destruction of a young man's life.

Re:Good question

[Zemran]

I swear to god I'm going to take a claw hammer to the next person who repeats that myth.

For the thousandth fucking time, that bill only applies to non-citizens!

We are all citizens...

When the constitution was written it did not at any point say that these rights should only apply to a subset of people. Americans have over the past 200 years changed into something else, a people that have no regards for the rights of the people that the constitution was supposed to protect, that is 'ALL' people. It is now simply, I'm OK so fuck the rest. Americans are losing those rights at such a fast rate that it will not be long before you will see the real stupidity of what you are saying. Yesterday you would have shouted about how the government can only spy on non Americans but today you see that they can spy on you too. Today you say but it is only non Americans that can be locked up without a reason, what will you say tomorrow?

Re:Good question

[dirk]

I swear to god I'm going to take a claw hammer to the next person who repeats that myth.

For the thousandth fucking time, that bill only applies to non-citizens!
Or anyone who is determined to be an enemy combatant. And the rules for being declared an enemy combatant is that the president says you are. So yes, it DOES apply to every single person, since anyone at any time can be declared an enemy combatant for any reason.