NinjaVideo.net Founder Gets 14 Months

angry tapir writes "A Virginia judge has sentenced Matthew David Howard Smith, a founder of the NinjaVideo.net website, to 14 months in prison, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday. Smith was indicted along with four others late last year. The DOJ charged that they illegally provided copyright-protected movies and TV programs for download from the NinjaVideo.net website. The site operated from February 2008 until authorities shut it down in June 2010."

Comments

meanwhile:

[Anonymous Coward]

The TSA's jack-booted goons can steal $40,000 (real money, not imaginary money) from your luggage and only get 6 months for it.

Re:meanwhile:

[reboot246]

The real thieves are elected. Congress makes the TSA look like pikers.

Throw them all out this November. If you recognize the name on the ballot, vote for the other guy.

Re:meanwhile:

[TheGratefulNet]

$100 says that even if 100% of who is in office, flipped, it would not make a damned bit of diff.

people are people. the system allows people to join politics and get rich.

THAT is the problem.

nothing can be fixed until you fix that.

Re:meanwhile:

[schnell]

Karma suicide in 3, 2, 1...

We've had a coup and the corporations have taken over.

I know it's super cool on Slashdot to talk about how the US is the worst country in the world, it's a fascist dictatorship, all elections are run by corporations, Soylent Green is made by the Federal Reserve, etc. But honestly that is a very simplistic view of things that fails to account for the complex interlocking of interests that makes up US public policy.

If corporations really did "own" the US government...

• Why did the government deny AT&T's merger request with T-Mobile, even with the $millions AT&T spends on lobbying?
• Why do Federal and state governments keep laying taxes on tobacco, even with the $millions the tobacco companies spend on lobbying?
• Why did the Sarbanes-Oxley act pass when all big corporations absolutely hate it and lobbied against it?
• Why did the government reject the Keystone Pipeline from Canada to the US when the oil industry spent $millions lobbying for it?

The truth is that corporations or other interest groups that spend a lot on lobbying often get their way. But they don't always get their way or "own" the government - when enough people speak out against it, it does actually make a difference. We do have a democracy in the United States ... even if you don't like the outcomes sometimes. That means you should convince your fellow Americans to make smarter voting choices, not blithely dismiss the system as corrupt.

Re:More Forced Labor

[bky1701]

The first three seem to have gotten nowhere so far, with corruption at every level and candidates literally corrupted as part of assuming office.

you realize one CDO could be a billion dollars

[decora]

the fraud perpetrated by Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, BNP Paribas, etc, in one single day dwarfed by a dozen fold the fraud this mortgage guy perpetrated in his whole career.

where do you think they sold all those fraudulent mortgages?