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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.'
> 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
Damn, I didnt know bad taste was a jailable offence.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Please remind me again how this man is so dangerous to society he must be locked up in jail.
He would have gotten away with it due to the fact that they mention a chatroom, which more than likely means IRC, and nearly every single IRC channel related to piracy has the standard: If you are an agent of the government, you cannot enter here yadayada legalspeak yadayada.
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.
"I'm a Mac, and you're going to jail."
"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"
I imagine that the moviemakers actually did lose sales on these products, because most of the people that downloaded and watched these movies probably realized how bad they were and lost interest in purchasing them.
These companies want you to be blindfolded, and purchase based on 30 second blurbs with a catchy voice saying exciting things. When people see product they can make an actual informed purchase (or non-purchase).
Chan Nai-ming, a 38-year-old BitTorrent user known as 'Big Crook,'
In prison his user name will be "Ben Dover"
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Can you just imagine what it would be like to be in the big house on this charge?
Cellmate: "Whatcha in for man?"
Nai-ming: "Miss Congeniality and Daredevil, how about you?"
Cellmate: "Double-murder, you're a Daredevil huh? well you'll be Miss Congeniality tonight."
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Even though there exist heterosexual men and women in the world, they don't all want to fuck each other all the time
;)
We're on Slashdot. We're already fully aware of that.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
But bittorrent is if someone else gives them the sheet and you give them the letters to fill it in. I don't think anyone's going to find you guilty for selling alphabet soup in the knowledge that they might write something bad.