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US Government's Pirate Movie Bootlegger Gets 24 Months Probation

Posted by Soulskill on from the right-hand-passing-the-left-hand-some-dvds dept.

Solandri writes: Ricardo Taylor, a former supervisor at the U.S. Department of Labor, ran a bootleg DVD operation for seven years, copying DVDs and selling them to other employees via the Department's internal email system. You know — exactly the sort of thing our draconian copyright fines were meant to prevent. He made more than $19,000 from these pirated movie sales in 2013 alone. His punishment? 24 months probation. Apparently, using the Internet to share Copyrighted materials at no personal profit is a more serious crime than selling copyrighted works for profit on physical media. More details on this local NBC site with auto-playing video.

3 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. *Holds up hand...* by magusxxx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So why, exactly, does the DoL have 5-tray DVD burners in the first place?

    --
    Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
  2. Re:It is not what you did .... by MrL0G1C · · Score: 3, Insightful

    " It was apparently his first offense"

    He must of committed the offence thousands of times, so clearly, not a '1st offense' but the first time he was caught for the thousands of offences.

    --
    Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
  3. Re:It is not what you did .... by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What accounts for the difference in punishments is that criminal procedure requires a much higher standard of evidence than the junky stuff allowed under civil procedure, and subject to an overall "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard, rather than "preponderance of evidence." Then to arrive at a judgment requires a unanimous jury, not just a majority.

    Civil procedure is specially designed to make lawyers rich and extort large amounts of money out of people by intimidation.