Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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. They are coming for the virtual priates now by pembo13 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Soon, they will come for you if you happen to do something that doens't make some big corp. money.

    --
    "Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
  2. "Total retail value" comes closer to $0.99/track by tepples · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And what is the RIAA claiming the value of a single track is these days? RIAA's claims are based on the statutory damages of section 504. But section 506 states that the criminal threshold is based specifically on "total retail value", which would come much closer to the $0.99 per track that iTunes Store charges.
  3. CC "nc" licenses; copyleft/$$$ dual licensing by tepples · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Also, I forgot to add, that the "value over $1000" has another insidious purpose: to exclude copyright infringement by corporations on Creative Commons or FOSS work. That's true of permissive licenses. But some Creative Commons licenses have a non-commercial use clause, which makes a work non-free so as to allow for a "retail value" that only the author can charge for the work. And some works, such as Qt and LZO libraries, are dual-licensed under copyleft and proprietary commercial licensing, where the right to restrict redistribution of derivative works requires payment. These have a "retail value": the price of a commercial license.