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:"What are you in for"

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Rape

Murder

Theft

Or..

Drug posession

Helping people download music

Uh.. this raises a question: Would he go to a prison with rapists, murders, and other violent people or would he go somewhere where he'd sit and think about what he did instead of worrying for his life?

Re:"What are you in for"

[Propaganda13]

"And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand,
and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing,
father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the
bench.

Re:"What are you in for"

[Xzzy]

Uh.. this raises a question: Would he go to a prison with rapists, murders, and other violent people or would he go somewhere where he'd sit and think about what he did instead of worrying for his life?

Dude, your terminoligy is wrong. Let me rephrase in a way more people will understand:

Uh.. this raises a question: Would he go to federal pound me in the ass prison, or white-collar resort prison? (did you know they have conjugal visits there?!)

Re:"What are you in for"

[anagama]

think they had glossy 8x10s screen shots?

Re:"What are you in for"

[westlake]

Uh.. this raises a question: Would he go to federal pound me in the ass prison, or white-collar resort prison? (did you know they have conjugal visits there?!)

The federal prison system does not allow conjugal visits. Conjugal Visits

Re:"What are you in for"

[slim]

There really is no other type.

In the UK there are "Open Prisons": low security places for low-risk criminals. Armed robbers, gangsters, murderers, rapists etc. go in high security prisons, while perjurers, embezzlers, tax avoiders, shoplifters, manslaughterers by negligence and, er, copyright infringers are put in open prisons.

As I understand it, in an open prison, you're locked in a cell -- more like university accommodation than a barred cell like in Prison Break -- for stretches of time, but if you wanted to escape, you could just wander off during the time you're not locked up. Very few people do escape, because when you're re-apprehended, your original crime is trumped by the worse crime of escaping from prison, and this time you get put in a far more unpleasant high security jail.

Isn't there something similar in the US?

Re:"What are you in for"

[indifferent children]

money put into the pirate "industry" ... goes directly into organised crime and people trafficking

That's for the street vendors and back-alley shops selling physical media. How much money do you think the Mafia or Al Quaeda gets when someone downloads a thousand songs for free? If they want to cut-off the flow of money to the criminals, they should promote profitless online file sharing.

Silly Punishment

[9mm Censor]

1) I see no need to send someone to jail for copyright infringement. The punishment does not fit the crime, and its not helping society, by removing a danger, nor do I suspect it will be useful in rehabilitating.
2) I hope he stocked up on torrents of stuff to watch/listen/play during house arrest.

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.

Re:Silly Punishment

[jesdynf]

Sorry, hold up there. He mass-distributed /infringing intellectual property/. Labeling it as or drawing analogies comparing it to theft damages my language, and I don't intend to allow that.

Re:Silly Punishment

[grasshoppa]

Five months in jail is, to my mind, fitting to the crime.

Then you aren't thinking.

What is prison for? What's the purpose to putting someone in prison? To answer this, let's look at what prison does; It removes a person from the general population. Why would this make sense for a bt operator? Are they a threat to themselves or others? No, it's silly to imply otherwise.

A fitting punishment to this crime can and should be settled in civil court; They are forced to make restitutions.

So you tell me, which makes more sense; Taking someone off the streets and stop them from being a productive member of society. OR, let them continue working and paying off a fine. Which makes more sense given the crime involved? Which makes more sense for soceity ( remember, over crowded prisons )? Which makes more sense for those wronged ( what benefit does the RIAA get out of him being in prison aside from evil pleasure )? And finally, what makes more sense for the convicted?

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

[A beautiful mind]

Calling copyrighted information intellectual property isn't any better. It's still Orwellian doublespeak.

Re:Silly Punishment

[Darth]

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

that kinda of depends on what you think is recent.

The willful infringement clause that establishes criminal liability for willful copyright violation was added to section 506(a) of title 17 of the u.s. code on May 24, 1982. So you've been able to serve jail time for copyright infringement for over 24 years.

(This addition had nothing to do with the internet. Name servers and the use of TCP/IP as the standard protocol for the internet didnt happen until 1983. DNS was introduced in 1984.)

5 months in prison is a pretty light sentence compared to what he could have gotten. the maximum prison sentence for willful infringement is 5 years (depending on the type of infringement. that's the worst possible case).

That isn't to say that i agree with the charges against him.. The actual infringement of the copyright is done by the seeders. The tracker maintainer seems like he would be the person in the chain who is clearly not guilty of actual infringement since all he is doing is saying "hey, that guy is giving away free copies of Memento, Microsoft Word, and Half-Life 2".

However, he did plead guilty. I cannot fault the judge for finding him guilty when he pleads guilty...and in light of the possible sentence he could have received, he got off pretty light. Given what i know of the case, i think he could have fought it, but he (and his lawyer) might have been privy to more damning evidence against him.

Re:Silly Punishment

[sillybilly]

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

Re:Silly Punishment

[neoform]

illegal, maybe, criminal? no.

this is and should only be considered a civil case and jail time should NEVER have even been considered. this is beyond ridiculous.

Re:Silly Punishment

[mrchaotica]

I've recently started using the term "intellectual monopoly" for patents and copyrights, which is more accurate.

You're in good company -- Thomas Jefferson always referred to them as "monopolies" (albeit without the "intellectual" part) too.

Re:Silly Punishment

[drsmithy]

You want to see the Enron exec go to jail. Fine. But don't start whining when the smaller fry have to serve their time as well.

There is a vast, vast gulf of difference between premediated corporate fraud causing direct and demonstrable loss, and casual, non-profit copyright infringement. So vast a gulf, in fact, that it's difficult to see how the two can even be considered vaguely similar.

New technology for prisons?

[Jack Pallance]

What does BitchTorrent mean?

Captain Obvious breaks it down for 'yall

[jmorris42]

Pirate caught and hung, film at 11. Or as 'hung' as our justice system can manage; I mean hell, murder only rates a couple of years if it is your first offense and it wasn't a brutal gangland slaying or anything like that.

The Napster kerfluffle should have told anyone with three brain cells that building a site for the express purpose of putting people with a copy of a copyrighted file in contact with people who want a copy is infringement. The technology that implements it isn't all that important, it is the intent. And elitetorrents was ALL about warez. Just because the guy wasn't running an FTP site hosting the files wasn't going to save his butt and he should have known it wouldn't.

Don't like the laws? Either work to change em or violate them as an act of civil disobedience and accept the consequences in the hope of gaining sympathy for your cause and eventual change. But don't act shocked that the operator of what was a major warez site got busted and sent up the river.

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.

Thank god I feel so much safer now

[Anonymous Coward]

NOT.

My guess is that he nor any of his users ever got any chance to vote on any copyright law. Can't say I have. Have you? Have you ever gotten to vote on any copyright issue?

Hell, I never even agreed to be any citizen of any country. Show me a signature where I did. So therefore, how do any laws apply to him, or me? As far as I'm concerned, if you have no say so in the making of a law, then you have no obligation whatsoever to have to abide by it.

Kind of like your neighbors down the street getting together and making an assinine aggreement, that all windows in the neighborhood must be left open in the winter time. And then enforcing that law on you. Fining you and or imprisoning you when you don't abide by it. Assembling a police force of patrollers to enforce this rule and smashing down the door and taking prisoner those who are in violation of it. Conformity and enforcement at the end of a barrel of gun.

Only the neighbors aren't down the street, they are 100 miles, or 1000 miles away. Or worse, somewhere back in time, even before you were even born.

Tell me the US version of representational democracy / republic isn't a total crock of ****....

Further, if you're under 18, you have no say so whatsoever. If you're over 18, your say so is generally limited to the joke of a vote. Which is nothing but a weak concession to undermine your primary right, which is the right to riot.

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.

Re:Thank god I feel so much safer now

[linguae]

Being forced to "buy" a private island and then pay travel fees to go there emphasizes the OP's point: You've been forced into this situation, and if you don't like it, *you* have to change.

As somebody who loves innovation and change, and sometimes dream of the pie in the sky, I normally hate this saying with a passion, but I must say it. C'est la vie. There is nothing else I can say. You have to either live with the current system, work and change the current system from within, or relocate to a place where the laws and values matches yours. There are no alternatives. Although I have libertarian-leaning views and I remain a staunch individualist, I also recognize that we don't live in a vacuum; it is very inconvienent (and almost impossible these days) to live on an island or another secluded area by yourself, with no help from anybody. Nobody to grow your food, nobody to make your clothes, nobody to build your housing, nothing. Nobody to talk to, nobody to be with, just lonely. There is a cost to living in a society. We all have some implicit social contract to obey both the explicit rules of society (governmental laws) as well as the implicit rules (moral codes). Sometimes those rules are bad rules that are flawed, foolish, or downright stupid. But you must either live with them, change them, or leave.

Is a private island with your own rules, your own laws, and your own government (assuming that you have one) worth the seclusion, the loneliness, and lack of help and resources from the outside world? If living with my loved ones and friends meant not being able to legally download movies and music on BitTorrent, then I'll choose my loved ones and friends. My free movies and music can stay on Utopia Island.

Makes you wonder...

[bobdotorg]

... what his, umm, sharing ratio will be in prison.

Do you think he'll leave it open for peers after he's done?

Safe At Last

[Phantom100]

Well, I will sleep much better tonight knowing that this horrible criminal is finally behind bars.

Re:To you lawyers out there

[skelator2821]

When will we Get a LEGAL system that isnt Bought and Paid for by Greedy Corporations.. It took a NUMBER of Years for Enron Folks to be tried and imprisoned and they stole Billions and Destroyed peoples lives.. I guess the Law and rules only work in favor of the Rich and powerful :( What a Crock of Manure.

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.

The profit scheme with no question marks

[siddesu]

Trademarked by the "entertainment industry"

1. Make the (US) government happy by paying politicians for
legalizing monopoly over culture practically forever
2. Kill creativity and competition by killing the public domain
3. Nourish crap tastes, sell crap at monopoly prices
4. Profit

5. Goto 1

Martha Stewart | Grant Stanley

[pembo13]

...crimes that benifit herself and deal with actual money : 5 months

Grant Stanley, crime characterized as sharing : 5 years of butt sex.

Jail for adminning?

[Robber Baron]

Jail? For adminning an indexing site?

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

Re:Here we go again...

[oblivion95]

The music pirate steals from the rich and gives to the poor.

The GPL violator steals from the poor and sells to the rich.

Do you really see no difference?

Re:Oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

I pity you. Truly. To have so little regard for human rights and decency that you think putting this guy in a place where he will probably be raped reapeatedly, beaten and stand a greatly increased chance of developing a chemical dependency degrades us all, including you.

All for sharing a 1s and 0s.

Was he wrong? Undoubtedly. But until the law catches up with this class of crime, this is simply mob justice.

I wouldn't bet on it.

[rodgster]

I have filed the waiver (basically cannot afford it) of financial hardship several times. Basically I couldn't afford to take a potentially long time unpaid off work .

Now let me get out the soapbox yet again. I don't understand the injustice system. The judge gets paid well, the bailiffs & cops get paid well, the lawyers get paid very well, but the jurors get lunch money. What is wrong with this picture?

If you want to get a jury of your peers, the jury MUST be paid the same wage they would otherwise earn. Without this you'll get nothing but juries which are composed of retirees, stay @ home parents or the unemployed.

Good luck trying to justify your high tech crime to people who know nothing about computers or intellectual property.

I been working 20+ years and I've never had a job which would pay my regular wage for a potentially long time. No thanks.

BTW I have mod points, but once again this needs to be said.

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: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?

The account of a former prisoner

[BeeBeard]

This is according to a friend of mine who was sent to prison for 18 months for his actions during what was supposed to be a peaceful protest, and was also sent to county for a similar offense but the sentence was shorter:

Prisoners are not nearly as rape-happy as they're made out to be in popular culture. There are fights, drug deals, and a lot of angst and widespread hopelessness. But the few outright rapists in the general population are stigmatized and not well-respected. Keeping to yourself and minding your own business go a long way in lockup.

In comparing federal to county: You are better supervised in federal prison, which means there are actually far fewer assaults, sexual or otherwise. Federal prisons have more controls in place for dealing with problems.

And that's about all he was willing to share on the subject. Thankfully, I have managed to stay out of prison myself, so what I am imparting to you is second-hand information. :)

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.