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BitTorrent Site Admin Sent To Prison
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Oct 26, 2006 10:36 PM
from the hard-times dept.
from the hard-times dept.
Marc wrote in with a Torrentfreak story which opens: "The 23 year old Grant Stanley has been sentenced to five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention, and a $3000 fine for his role in the private BitTorrent tracker Elitetorrents.
This ruling is the first BitTorrent related conviction in the US. Stanley pleaded guilty earlier this year to 'conspiracy to commit copyright infringement' and 'criminal copyright infringement.' He is one of the three defendants in the Elitetorrents operation better known as 'Operation D-Elite.'"
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Entertainment: World's First Jail Sentence for BitTorrent Piracy 280 comments
Rob T Firefly writes "Hong Kong newspaper The Standard reports on what seems to be the world's first case of a BitTorrent movie pirate being sent to jail. (Others have been jailed for related crimes.) After losing his appeal against a November 2005 conviction, Chan Nai-ming, a 38-year-old BitTorrent user known as 'Big Crook,' has begun serving a prison sentence for making the films 'Daredevil,' 'Miss Congeniality,' and 'Red Planet' available for download via BitTorrent. His appeal was based on the fact that he did not profit from the piracy." From the article: "[Appeals Judge] Beeson noted [convicting magistrate] MacIntosh, in handing out the sentence, was fully aware of the noncommercial nature of the case, but measured the seriousness of the case by the harm done to the moviemakers — not by the gain made by the offender. Chan, and those in the chatroom, 'were aware of the possible criminal implications of uploading films to the system,' Beeson wrote. She also noted the sentence was already drastically reduced, from a maximum of four years, to three months, in order 'to reflect the novelty of the conviction.'
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"What are you in for" (Score:5, Insightful)
Murder
Theft
Or..
Drug posession
Helping people download music
Re:"What are you in for" (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh.. this raises a question: Would he go to a prison with rapists, murders, and other violent people or would he go somewhere where he'd sit and think about what he did instead of worrying for his life?
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Re:"What are you in for" (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, your terminoligy is wrong. Let me rephrase in a way more people will understand:
Uh.. this raises a question: Would he go to federal pound me in the ass prison, or white-collar resort prison? (did you know they have conjugal visits there?!)
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Re:"What are you in for" (Score:5, Informative)
The federal prison system does not allow conjugal visits. Conjugal Visits [bop.gov]
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Re:"What are you in for" (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Re:"What are you in for" (Score:5, Funny)
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Silly Punishment (Score:5, Interesting)
2) I hope he stocked up on torrents of stuff to watch/listen/play during house arrest.
Re:Silly Punishment (Score:5, Insightful)
So seriously, five months in prison is a gross miscarraige of justice. It's definitely five months, an arrest, and a criminal case too much.
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Re:Silly Punishment (Score:5, Informative)
that kinda of depends on what you think is recent.
The willful infringement clause that establishes criminal liability for willful copyright violation was added to section 506(a) of title 17 of the u.s. code on May 24, 1982. So you've been able to serve jail time for copyright infringement for over 24 years.
(This addition had nothing to do with the internet. Name servers and the use of TCP/IP as the standard protocol for the internet didnt happen until 1983. DNS was introduced in 1984.)
5 months in prison is a pretty light sentence compared to what he could have gotten. the maximum prison sentence for willful infringement is 5 years (depending on the type of infringement. that's the worst possible case).
That isn't to say that i agree with the charges against him.. The actual infringement of the copyright is done by the seeders. The tracker maintainer seems like he would be the person in the chain who is clearly not guilty of actual infringement since all he is doing is saying "hey, that guy is giving away free copies of Memento, Microsoft Word, and Half-Life 2".
However, he did plead guilty. I cannot fault the judge for finding him guilty when he pleads guilty...and in light of the possible sentence he could have received, he got off pretty light. Given what i know of the case, i think he could have fought it, but he (and his lawyer) might have been privy to more damning evidence against him.
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Re:Silly Punishment (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not he didn't know what he were doing was determined to be unlawful and punishable as a federal crime.
It's not? It sure is the first time that I have heard someone being prosecuted for providing the technological means to somone else to violate copyright law. For that's all a Bittorrent-tracker is. It is NOT an act of copying or distributing anything, merely a way for clients to get in contact with each other in order to copy something.
As far as I can tell, this verdict means we will haul librarians to jail if they put a photocopier into the library: providing others with the means to violate copyright.
Where exactly is the line here? Which section of the USC was actually violated here?
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Re:Silly Punishment (Score:5, Insightful)
this is and should only be considered a civil case and jail time should NEVER have even been considered. this is beyond ridiculous.
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Re:Silly Punishment (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Silly Punishment (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Silly Punishment (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Silly Punishment (Score:5, Interesting)
Then you aren't thinking.
What is prison for? What's the purpose to putting someone in prison? To answer this, let's look at what prison does; It removes a person from the general population. Why would this make sense for a bt operator? Are they a threat to themselves or others? No, it's silly to imply otherwise.
A fitting punishment to this crime can and should be settled in civil court; They are forced to make restitutions.
So you tell me, which makes more sense; Taking someone off the streets and stop them from being a productive member of society. OR, let them continue working and paying off a fine. Which makes more sense given the crime involved? Which makes more sense for soceity ( remember, over crowded prisons )? Which makes more sense for those wronged ( what benefit does the RIAA get out of him being in prison aside from evil pleasure )? And finally, what makes more sense for the convicted?
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New technology for prisons? (Score:5, Funny)
Captain Obvious breaks it down for 'yall (Score:5, Interesting)
The Napster kerfluffle should have told anyone with three brain cells that building a site for the express purpose of putting people with a copy of a copyrighted file in contact with people who want a copy is infringement. The technology that implements it isn't all that important, it is the intent. And elitetorrents was ALL about warez. Just because the guy wasn't running an FTP site hosting the files wasn't going to save his butt and he should have known it wouldn't.
Don't like the laws? Either work to change em or violate them as an act of civil disobedience and accept the consequences in the hope of gaining sympathy for your cause and eventual change. But don't act shocked that the operator of what was a major warez site got busted and sent up the river.
Thank god I feel so much safer now (Score:5, Interesting)
My guess is that he nor any of his users ever got any chance to vote on any copyright law. Can't say I have. Have you? Have you ever gotten to vote on any copyright issue?
Hell, I never even agreed to be any citizen of any country. Show me a signature where I did. So therefore, how do any laws apply to him, or me? As far as I'm concerned, if you have no say so in the making of a law, then you have no obligation whatsoever to have to abide by it.
Kind of like your neighbors down the street getting together and making an assinine aggreement, that all windows in the neighborhood must be left open in the winter time. And then enforcing that law on you. Fining you and or imprisoning you when you don't abide by it. Assembling a police force of patrollers to enforce this rule and smashing down the door and taking prisoner those who are in violation of it. Conformity and enforcement at the end of a barrel of gun.
Only the neighbors aren't down the street, they are 100 miles, or 1000 miles away. Or worse, somewhere back in time, even before you were even born.
Tell me the US version of representational democracy / republic isn't a total crock of ****....
Further, if you're under 18, you have no say so whatsoever. If you're over 18, your say so is generally limited to the joke of a vote. Which is nothing but a weak concession to undermine your primary right, which is the right to riot.
Re:Thank god I feel so much safer now (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Thank god I feel so much safer now (Score:5, Insightful)
As somebody who loves innovation and change, and sometimes dream of the pie in the sky, I normally hate this saying with a passion, but I must say it. C'est la vie. There is nothing else I can say. You have to either live with the current system, work and change the current system from within, or relocate to a place where the laws and values matches yours. There are no alternatives. Although I have libertarian-leaning views and I remain a staunch individualist, I also recognize that we don't live in a vacuum; it is very inconvienent (and almost impossible these days) to live on an island or another secluded area by yourself, with no help from anybody. Nobody to grow your food, nobody to make your clothes, nobody to build your housing, nothing. Nobody to talk to, nobody to be with, just lonely. There is a cost to living in a society. We all have some implicit social contract to obey both the explicit rules of society (governmental laws) as well as the implicit rules (moral codes). Sometimes those rules are bad rules that are flawed, foolish, or downright stupid. But you must either live with them, change them, or leave.
Is a private island with your own rules, your own laws, and your own government (assuming that you have one) worth the seclusion, the loneliness, and lack of help and resources from the outside world? If living with my loved ones and friends meant not being able to legally download movies and music on BitTorrent, then I'll choose my loved ones and friends. My free movies and music can stay on Utopia Island.
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Makes you wonder... (Score:5, Funny)
Do you think he'll leave it open for peers after he's done?
Safe At Last (Score:5, Funny)
This makes me very sad. (Score:5, Insightful)
In order to imprison someone for violating the temporarily granted monopoly, the government should have to prove that he discouraged "the progress of science and useful arts". For that, they would have to prove that the people who obtained his pirated material would otherwise have paid for it. That is the problem with the arguments of strict copyright proponents: They fail to recognize that the absence of piracy does not imply equivalently higher sales. Some of us are simply not willing to pay $20 for one decent song on a CD.
The fine might be appropriate, but prison time is completely unjustified.
Jail for adminning? (Score:5, Insightful)
When are they going to lock up the Google admins?!?
I wouldn't bet on it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now let me get out the soapbox yet again. I don't understand the injustice system. The judge gets paid well, the bailiffs & cops get paid well, the lawyers get paid very well, but the jurors get lunch money. What is wrong with this picture?
If you want to get a jury of your peers, the jury MUST be paid the same wage they would otherwise earn. Without this you'll get nothing but juries which are composed of retirees, stay @ home parents or the unemployed.
Good luck trying to justify your high tech crime to people who know nothing about computers or intellectual property.
I been working 20+ years and I've never had a job which would pay my regular wage for a potentially long time. No thanks.
BTW I have mod points, but once again this needs to be said.
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