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World's First Jail Sentence for BitTorrent Piracy
Rob T Firefly writes "Hong Kong newspaper The Standard reports on what seems to be the world's first case of a BitTorrent movie pirate being sent to jail. (Others have been jailed for related crimes.) After losing his appeal against a November 2005 conviction, Chan Nai-ming, a 38-year-old BitTorrent user known as 'Big Crook,' has begun serving a prison sentence for making the films 'Daredevil,' 'Miss Congeniality,' and 'Red Planet' available for download via BitTorrent. His appeal was based on the fact that he did not profit from the piracy." From the article: "[Appeals Judge] Beeson noted [convicting magistrate] MacIntosh, in handing out the sentence, was fully aware of the noncommercial nature of the case, but measured the seriousness of the case by the harm done to the moviemakers — not by the gain made by the offender. Chan, and those in the chatroom, 'were aware of the possible criminal implications of uploading films to the system,' Beeson wrote. She also noted the sentence was already drastically reduced, from a maximum of four years, to three months, in order 'to reflect the novelty of the conviction.'
Here Hong kong announces their plan to find people violating copyright using BitTorrent.
Here is the report where they actualy find a guy.
The conviction.
Now he has been sentenced. Hooray, we were right there with you all the way dude, at least in a metaphorical sense.
As a contest, the prize for which is my unending admiration, lets all agree not to rehash the same tired arguments in the 3 links above.
The Tomato Meter ratings of these films are: 14, 37, 44 - which (as I understand it) is the percent of favorable reviews.
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
Chan also advertised the movies, and the procedure for downloading the files, on an online chatroom.
So basically he confessed and bragged about his l33titude, just like a little script kiddie bragging about defacing a website on an IIS 3.0 server. Had he not done this, perhaps it would have been more difficult to prove that he was sharing this movie and not just random blocks of binary code that happened to be very similar to those found in one rendition of the AVI files.
If you're going to share something iffy on BitTorrent use a public tracker that doesn't require logins, and maybe use an anonymous proxy like TOR. This isn't a 100% safe solution but it's likely better than what this chap did.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
While you may be referring to yourself, the situation described in the submission is happening in Honk Kong..
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
You may not realize this, but you're being modded funny because that statement is completely worthless. An IRC channel that says government agents aren't allowed to enter has no more meaning than an opium den with a sign above it that says police aren't welcome.
"Enron guys go to some country-club prison at taxpayer expense for a few months"
Well, CEO Jeffrey Skilling was sentenced to more than a few months, he got 24 years - or 288 months to be exact. And former CFO Andrew Fastow was given a 6 year term after cooperating with prosecutors and helping them secure Skilling's conviction - or 72 months. Ken Lay would have probably got at least 10+ years, but the bastard died before we could punish him. Skilling also faces a possible $18 million dollar fine - still less than he bilked investors and workers out of though...
"But this one goes to 11!"
For anyone that doesn't understand why it's funny instead of insightful or something: http://www.snopes.com/legal/privacy.htm
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."