X-Men Origins Pirate Draws a 1-Year Sentence 341
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from geek.com: "In 2009, a copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine found its way on to Megaupload a month before it was due to appear in movie theaters. The so-called 'workprint' copy was unfinished — so unfinished in fact, anyone viewing this copy saw green screens and wires attached to actors used to help with the more acrobatic movements during action scenes. Hugh Jackman even commented on the leak, describing it as like getting a 'Ferrari without a paint job.' The person who decided to share the movie illegally was tracked down, however. He is a 49-year-old New Yorker by the name of Gilberto Sanchez, and he's just been prosecuted." The New York Times' 2010 interview with Sanchez is a good read, too.
Re:lesson learned, don't upload stolen movies (Score:5, Interesting)
So the question becomes... why does a guy that intentionally uploaded this for others, a month before the movie comes out (where I would expect the studio to make a huge chunk of its profit on the movie) only get a year in prison when someone who accidentally shares a few crappy songs gets a financial punishment that makes a year in prison look quite tame?
Re:Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison (Score:5, Interesting)
Jokes aside, it's interesting how among all the different types of intellectual property, only copyright is settled in criminal courts.
Re:how much will this cost US (Score:5, Interesting)
"Out in a couple of months"? Maybe not.
For Texas, at least, it would have to be a year and a day to be eligible for parole; a year bare is actually the harsher sentence.
Re:Problem with the analogy.. (Score:5, Interesting)
At least watching the workprint made it fun: "Claws Grow".
Hell yeah! I found the workprint to be far more entertaining than the finished film as well. I watched it at least 3 times and laughed my ass off every single time. Remember the plane crash? "EXPLOSION!!!" The part when Wolverine gets hit by the Big Rig was great, too.
I wish more studios would include workprints and stuff like that on their legitimate DVD/BD releases. The process of making a movie is often times far more fascinating to me than the movie itself.
doesn't fit the crime (Score:5, Interesting)
I know what the law says, and I know that he broke the law. But consider this: there was no provable financial harm to the producers of the film. No one was hurt. No one was deprived of anything. Yet, this guy is deprived of his freedom for one year and earns a permanent criminal record. This was a classic victimless crime and I would argue that that makes it no crime at all.
Re:Problem with the analogy.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:lesson learned, don't upload stolen movies (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, going after the Korean DVD vendor would be a better place to start. He's actually making a profit from criminal activity.
Going after the warehouse that's making the DVDs the Korean is selling is an even BETTER proposal. Hell, we have DVD Sniffing Dogs [ifc.com] to check cargo containers for undeclared shipments of bootleg DVDs that come from overseas (china, mostly).
Meanwhile, go to Hong Kong or most places in South America (Brazil's particularly bad for it) and you won't find a single legitimate console or game in stores. What you will find is a shop where they sell you a modchipped console, then you bring a box to the guy at the counter who nods, goes into the back, and comes back 5 minutes later with a burned copy of whatever disc you indicated; if it's a PC disc, there'll probably be a no-cd crack included on the disc. When the local government shuts these guys down, you can be sure that it's not because they broke the law, but because they didn't make their bribery payments to the right guy on time.
Re:Ferrari without a paint job (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think it matters. The movie butchered so many comic book back stories...
Ha! Good one!
that it was incredibly painful to watch even after "the paint was applied."
I wouldn't call it a Ferrari either. Maybe a Pinto without a paint job.
...wait, were you serious? It seems silly to pretend that the last 15 retcons or complete rewrites were okay, but this one is a step too far! I haven't seen the movie in question and have no reason to believe it's not horrible, but to borrow from James Nicoll, the problem with defending the purity of Marvel back stories is that Marvel back stories about as pure as a cribhouse whore.
Re:lesson learned, don't upload stolen movies (Score:2, Interesting)
A blockbuster film and a 747 cost about the same in dollar amounts to make; mass piracy of a film before it's released has a huge impact (in this case, 10% or more) on sales.