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First Guilty Verdict In Criminal Copyright Case

Posted by kdawson on from the hard-time dept.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Brooklyn man has been found guilty of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement by a federal jury in Virginia. He now faces up to five years in prison, a quarter-million-dollar fine, and three years of parole, not to mention the 'full restitution' he has to make to the RIAA. The charges against him stem from his role as 'Dextro,' the administrator of one of the Apocalypse Production Crew's file servers — APC being one of the release groups that specialize in pre-release music. While he's the 15th member of APC to be charged under the US DOJ's Operation Fastlink, he's the first to be convicted. He will be sentenced on August 8th. For those wondering when infringement became a criminal matter, you can thank the NET Act, which was signed into law in 1997 by Bill Clinton."

3 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. Clinton? by TFer_Atvar · · Score: 1, Funny

    ...but, but, but I wanted to bash Bush!

    /sarcasm

  2. Re:Criminal downloading by _KiTA_ · · Score: 3, Funny

    25 years old is plenty old enough to realize that serving up unreleased music is a pretty stupid thing to do, no? Obviously so, because the average 25 year old college student would never, ever dream of doing it. Clearly, this mentally deficient young man is a statistical anomaly, perhaps a communist or even a -- dare I say it -- TERRORIST.

    Clearly, a more fitting crime for this liberal commie-terrorist (who kicks kittens) would be 5 years per kilobyte.
  3. Re:They are coming for the virtual priates now by __aaqvdr516 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Just wondering....could you break the law by stealing something that was yours? This could lead us down the path of larceny. I guess that's why Matt Parker and Trey Stone put up their episodes on www.southparkstudios.com? Just so they'd stop stealing from themselves?