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

My mind is blown!

[Anonymous Coward]

The ninjas were actually.... pirates?!

Re:My mind is blown!

[Cryacin]

No, they weren't actually ninjas, they were pirates DISGUISED as ninjas. I mean, who would expect a ninja to be a pirate? Fooled you now, didn't it?

Re:My mind is blown!

[lostthoughts54]

had they been real ninjas, they would have never been found.

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:

[bky1701]

Of course, they irradiate you and violate your civil rights as part of their job. Theft is rather inconsequential.

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:

[hey!]

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.

Oh buh-ruther. The TSA doesn't have that much style. They probably wear cheap Chinese made oxfords with laces that break. But they work for *us* at a pay rate set by *us* under laws passed by legislators *we* elected. We're too chicken to accept that flying has *some* risk; too cheap to do anything about it; and so mentally indolent we let government vendors set security priorities.

There's nothing outstandingly evil about a man who can't resist the temptation of pocketing a huge wad of unguarded cash that passes through his hands. The wickedness in our character is too petty for us to be served by genuine, glamorous evil (the SS in their jackboots and Hugo Boss designed uniforms). No, we get a mirror of our national character. We get *venality*.

Re:meanwhile:

[stephanruby]

To be fair, in this case their prison sentences seem to be somewhat proportional to the money they made from the site.

The site made a total of $505,000 in ads and donations in the approximate 2+ years that it ran.
Smith received 14 months and made $172,387 (I assume this is the amount he made, because in the case of Dedemko, the amount Dedemko was ordered to pay was the same as the amount he was supposed to have made)
Hana received 22 months and I believe made $210,000
Dedemko made $58,004 (and won't get sentenced until Feb)
And as to the two or three other ninja-pirates, the articles don't really say.

In the case of the TSA agents, the take was $40,000, but we should assume that they probably split the money between themselves so it's probably more like each got $20,000 and then each was sentenced 6 months of prison (along with 5 years of probation). Now this is not to say that the TSA agents didn't steal a lot more on other days (they probably did). And this is not to say that those TSA agents didn't abuse the special privileges they were given (which in my mind makes it a lot worse). Also, the original $505,000 figure I quoted for the ninja video site is probably misleading as well, since a video site like that will have significant expenses for the hardware they're using and the bandwidth they were consuming each month.

So I still agree that the TSA agents got off easy compared to the ninja-pirates, but at least in this case, it doesn't seem like the judge just pulled imaginary numbers completely out of thin air. The ninja-pirates did make some real money from their venture (at least two of them did). And unlike a site like Megaupload, they copied and uploaded 100% of the infringing videos themselves.

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:

[PopeRatzo]

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

Won't make a bit of difference as long as corporate money pays for our elections.

Who would ever say no to a corporation if they know that corporation can turn around and spend $100million on an ad campaign to destroy them, and do it anonymously?

We've had a coup and the corporations have taken over. Elections, congress, president...they're all just a reality TV show to keep the public occupied while the economy is looted.

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:meanwhile:

[GPLHost-Thomas]

You want to go on that ground? Yeah, let's do that... Let's talk about Goldman Sachs, our 100 cents on the dollar friend Timmy, and all these crooks, who have stolen not thousands, not millions, not even billions, but TRILLIONS from the economy, have put workers out of their house AND jobs AND on food stamps, sometimes with lethal consequences. Let's talk about them, who aren't worried that an investigation would even start, and lets compare to the file sharer sites.

USA, everyone knows it, is the land of freedom, right? At this point, it's going to be very difficult for the president to have human rights talks with countries like China. USA is not a good example any more, it's one of the worst.

Re:meanwhile:

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a graph that explains it for you.

At left, we see that as people at the bottom of the income spectrum care more about an issue, the probability of action on that issue scarcely budges. At right we see that policy responds a little more to median preferences. But what's clear in both is that the rich are much more successful at getting their issues on the docket.

So no, money alone does buy you your interests. There will obviously be counter-examples. But the policy decisions will largely prevail in your favour unless there is a large countervailing public opinion (as there was with all the examples you've provided). Basically, unless a large portion of the public decides it's an issue, the decision will go in favour of the wealthy.

Money in politics is the single biggest corrupting factor in politics. Remove direct money & indirect money & benefits will be the next biggest factor. & it'll keep going that way, but each time the totals will (in theory) keep decreasing so you're making a net positive change.

Re:meanwhile:

[celle]

"giant friggin pipe cutting across the country"

    Right across a primary groundwater source that runs from North Dakota to Texas. And much of the ground water source in Nebraska is near the surface. Care to guess how much of our food and agri-resources, for ourselves and sold to other countries, is produced by irrigation? Do you want the odds of all those fields across 9 states being sprayed with oil and made unproductive before the oil company admits there was a leak (or rupture) in a buried pipeline that no one will know about until it's to late?
    Let us just place this pipeline there maintained by an industry that's got a history ignoring maintenance for profits. The very reason they want it there in the first place, profits from exporting the nastiest, most expensive crude made to international markets instead of local ones. Is it worth risking starvation? Oil is transitory and not necessary to survive, food is necessary to survive. How many disasters does it take before big oil, hell any business, is deemed untrustworthy in their decision making when it comes to the public vs profit?
    So let them just transport the nastiest, dirtiest, crude oil en mass across much of our most productive agricultural land and over our largest underground aquifer that also services many central US cities. The whole thing managed by irresponsible oil conglomerates and local politicians who just see the tax dollars for the first decade until the pipeline depreciates out(no more taxes) and physically fails due to lack of oil company maintenance(plenty of citations). Guess those temporary jobs and few years of taxes will be worth the cleanup, starvation, and other hell, right?

Citation: I live here and am responsible for some of the very food and resources you consume.

This is not a worse case scenario just one based on previous and current behavior of the various participants.

This also assumes the pipeline will be built properly and not cost cut in the first place or specs ignored, see gulf disaster.

PS I'm actually surprised other countries aren't screaming bloody murder as many of them get food from the US as well.

most disappointing site ever

[noh8rz2]

I have to say, when I visit a site entitled "ninjavideo.net" I have certain expectations... and those expectations were not met by what I received!

Meanwhile...

[guspasho]

In other news, no one involved in the massive fraud and graft that trashed the world economy has seen the inside of a jail cell.

Justice is served only to those who can afford it.

Re:Meanwhile...

[the eric conspiracy]

Incorrect.

From Politifact

"The highest-profile convictions we found were from Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, which was a mortgage lending firm based not on Wall Street, but in Ocala, Fla. Its former chairman, Lee B. Farkas, was convicted of directing nearly $3 billion in fraud that put thousands out of work and contributed to the collapse of Colonial Bank. The collapse was the sixth-largest bank collapse in U.S. history. A judge sentenced Farkas to 30 years in prison on June 30, 2011. Several other executives associated with the firm pleaded guilty in related cases. "

Re:Meanwhile...

[AK Marc]

If every Fannie Mae loan ever given were to default, the effect would have been negligible on the market. The defaults didn't cause the problem. The cause was that you could only make 6% on a 6% loan. So the banks decided to multiply the risk of that 6% loan a hundredfold and then could make 600% on that 6%. And they lied about the risk of that 6% loan when multiplying the risk. When the crisis first started, the default rate was well below historical norms. The problem was that the lies used to sell the derivatives were exposed. If there were no derivatives, the defaults wouldn't have been felt at all on Wall Street. If every piece of land under a loan were to default, there wouldn't be as big of a blip as the default rate ramping back up towards historic norms with these fraudulent derivatives. It wasn't the defaults that caused this, but the invented derivatives.

Separate from this is the racism that comes out about it. I've seen it blamed on black people. Those people should never have been allowed to own land, let alone have a government agency encourage it. And those poor white bankers ("poor" meaning "some of the richest people in the country") were taken advantage of by those shifty no-good negroids. "Sub-Prime" was the name for a crisis caused by rich white male bankers committing fraud when creating derivatives, but they are also the ones who got to name it, and rather than the "1%ers say, Fuck You America" crisis, it's the "minority caused sub-prime lending" crisis. The poor people didn't cause it. They didn't lie. Who did lie are the mortgage brokers and the bankers. And the rich white bankers blamed the poor blacks. And sadly, that's what the conservatives wanted to hear, so there's so much out there on the blacks causing the crisis by defaulting less than norms that the truth will be buried by the real criminals, like always.

If you want to blame a politician, blame Bush for deregulation that let the banks invent the fraudulent derivatives.

Re:Good

[MightyMartian]

Does that include the Universal Musical Group who have broken contracts, put up hundreds of MP3s on download services without consent of the artists and then have gone out of their way to obfuscate the revenue collected?

More Forced Labor

[bky1701]

The United States is a police state. If you faciliate communication in ways not approved by the military-industrial complex (including the media), you will be sent to the gulag for hard labor. When are we going to be liberated?

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.

My tax money supporting the film industry

[BlueCoder]

I am upset that my taxes go to supporting the film industry's copyright policing like this.

Keeping a person in jail for a year costs between 25-50K not including court costs.

That's money that can be used for more worthwhile things. What it's being spent on will not result in any changed behavior or profits for the entertainment industry. It only drives things more underground and makes people become more sophisticated. The only people making money from this are the lawyers collecting paychecks and not producing anything of worth for society.

It's also exposes all the corrupt politicians and the justice system. While they have always been corrupt I would have been happier to live in ignorance than to have it exposed out in the open like this.

Copyright police? Censorship? The original politicians that started this country are turning over in their graves. This country was started as a backlash to self serving corruption like this.

Re:My tax money supporting the film industry

[bky1701]

The founders were not saints. Most were tax evaders or smugglers angry about the British crackdowns on their activities. Almost all owned slaves. Many were womanizers. Once in office, they pretty much all abused power; the Alien and Sedition Acts were possibly worse than their modern counterparts, especially compared to what was actually possible in the day. My point is, they might have been perfectly fine with a lot of what is going on today. Indeed, they'd likely be more concerned about the Federal Reserve than with the rampant corruption and rights violations.

Re:My tax money supporting the film industry

[nnet]

"...This country was started as a backlash to self serving corruption like this...."
heh no. They wanted to start their OWN self-serving corruption. They were tired of being at the bottom of someone elses totem pole :)

"Authorities"?

[jginspace]

The site operated from February 2008 until authorities shut it down in June 2010.

Ninjavideo.net was among the first group of sites seized by ICE and their "authority" is questionable.

Interestingly, ICE have not placed a redirect to their Youtube video yet on any of the Ninja* sites (see TVshack.cc for an example) so presumably the decision to steal/confiscate the site is still being contested by Matthew David Howard Smith or an associate.

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?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

So a thieve is someone who buy's a dvd and share's it with a friend? or someone who watches a tv series (free ota cbs grey's antomy for example), records it and share's it with a friend? or uses tivo to record 1000's of shows and share them with some one who responds in kind in life and shares them to another friend and on and on? Would you consider a close relative a thieve because they were on a party, popped their cell to record a baby laughing and there was some copyrigthed music on the background? Would you put in jail someone who recorded your bbq and posted it online? recorded a theater movie with a shitty quality cellphone and posted it online for people whom would'nt ever go to the movies to watch it? ('cause no one who actually goes to the movies would watch that kind of s#!t)? WTF is wrong with you? .. if you were an intelligent human beeing, you'd consider asking the copyright holders to make the actual movies,music,images,tv series, etc.. available online for the same fee they charge at a timely manner which would definitely avoid all these "pirate sites" who only exist because the "holders" wont release for whicherver stupid reason they think is right what people want to see. Remember the prohibition? the only reason ppl kept "pirating" alcohol is because it was nowehere to be found.. once the prohibition stopped .. only very few kept "pirating" alcohol, the rest of the people went back to paying/buying their alcohol ... yeah.. i'm sure your (great)grandpa should ROT IN JAIL for drinking during the prohibition .. 'cause let me tell you..he did! .. so yes.. ever borrowed a book? watched a DVD on a friend's house? listened to someone elses ipod? ROOOOT IN JAAAAILLL TOO!!!!

Re:Proper response to piracy

[Shikaku]

Many game developers are fed up with PC piracy and feel they are in a lose-lose situation and they don't want to choose between DRM-laden software or Internet activation... these companies (maker of Crysis comes to mind) vow to develop more heavily for the "console" platforms (XBox, etc.) because piracy is less common there. Of course, if Crysis 3 is console-only, people will probably go the extra mile and modify their boxes and pirate it anyways, but that's beside the point. The point is, game devs (along with authors and other artists) have manned up for ages and when piracy becomes an issue for them, they find a solution that doesn't involve hundreds of frivolous lawsuits that is harming everybody with its costs in tying up our legal system.

I wonder how Steam is... It should be tanking and going out of business with all this piracy...

Re:"What are you in for?"

[amiga3D]

Fucking lucky not to be sent to Gitmo. They're starting to refer to copyright infringers as terrorists.

Re:"What are you in for?"

[gmhowell]

"Copyright infringement."

...and they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench.

proper response: make good games

[Lazy Jones]

I don't see Notch (=> Minecraft) having these issues with so-called piracy. I perfectly understand people who feel ripped off by titles that raise expectations and then disappoint all honest customers.