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Man Who Uploaded Deadpool To Facebook May Get Six Months In Prison (gizmodo.com) 215

A California court may soon sentence a man who posted the entirety of Deadpool on his Facebook page to six months in prison. Gizmodo reports: A week after Deadpool was released in theaters, millions of people watched the film on a viral Facebook post by the account Tre-Von M. King. The FBI found that the account belonged to Trevon Franklin, a 22-year-old in Fresno, California. Franklin had downloaded the movie from file-sharing platform Putlocker.is, then uploaded the movie to his Facebook page, where it garnered 6,386,456 views, according to court documents. He was indicted and arrested in June 2017. In May, Franklin made a plea agreement with the government. Franklin pled guilty in exchange for authorities agreeing to recommend a reduced sentenced. Last week, the government filed its sentencing recommendation. As TorrentFreak originally reported, authorities suggested a prison sentence of six months. The government argues that the sentencing "is both necessary and sufficient to address the nature of circumstances of the offense and to reflect the seriousness of the offense, to promote respect for the law, and to provide just punishment for the offense."

This is because Franklin publicly disregarded the law in a number of posts. In one such post he wrote: "I got the ultimate way out of this, yall might be surprised on how I won't go to jail but just become more famous." In another he wrote, "I'm just sitting back smoking out my bong laughing at these mfs who think they know what they talking I haven't sold shit to anyone, or made copies."
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Man Who Uploaded Deadpool To Facebook May Get Six Months In Prison

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  • prison (Score:4, Interesting)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday September 17, 2018 @08:33PM (#57331570) Journal
    That's the first time I've heard of someone going to prison for a copyright violation.
    • Why didn't they ask for their usual 6,386,456 * $250,000 = $1,596,614,000,000, call it $1.5 trillion, in fines?

      • by Anonymous Coward

        he'll be dealing with that for the rest of his life.

        I wish the industry would just move back into the 21st century and publish movies online within a few weeks
        because people like me don't visit movie theaters anymore.
        Sitting in a cramped room with popcorn throwing noisy scum is not really something like a 'movie experience'.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Given that Europe just decreed that the 21st century must adapt to the 20th, I think asking for reasonability is too much.

        • Theaters:
          - You need to go see the movie while it's still in theatres.
          - You need time to go from your home to the theatre.
          - You need to arrive way before the movie start in order to get a good seat.
          - If you want snacks, you'll be forced to pay three to four times the normal price from an extremely limited selection compared to what you'd snack on if you were at home.
          - If you arrived too late, you may be forced to sit too far to the left or right, or too close to the screen.
          - You are forced to watch ads befor

      • Because he'd just declare bankruptcy and his assets won't even pay the lawyers fees.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Time served in prison instead won't pay the lawyers fees either. In fact, that'll actually cost more.

      • Why didn't they ask for their usual 6,386,456 * $250,000 = $1,596,614,000,000, call it $1.5 trillion, in fines?

        Because statutory damages are _per work_. How many works were copied? One. The number of copies doesn't matter. So statutory damages are up to $150,000.

    • The guy who ran Hanoverfist Enterprises did prison time as I recall. I had bunches of his releases on the C64 when I was a wee lad who didn't know what piracy was, just that I had a stack of disks full of games.
    • Re:prison (Score:5, Informative)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Monday September 17, 2018 @09:32PM (#57331802) Homepage Journal

      Just because you haven't heard of it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Copyright violations are a felony, and can carry fines of up to $250,000 or five years in prison for a first offense -- as you'd know if you've ever actually read the text that displays when you pop a DVD into a drive.

      Now it's actually rare to pursue criminal charges against copyright infringers. Usually it's a civil suit. Fewer than two hundred criminal prosecutions are undertaken against all kinds of IP violators in the entire US each year. Given the frequency at which copyright infringement occurs, your chances of facing criminal prosecution at all is close to zero.

      But it's not quite zero, and if you *do* end up facing prosecution, yes you can go to jail. In this case the reason is probably that the guy didn't make any money that could be recovered. He just did it to be a dick, and pretty much dared prosecutors to throw him in jail. That said, six months seems pretty excessive; that Stanford swim team rapist got six months in prison for three convictions on felony sexual assault.

      • But I thought the law stated that criminal copyright infringement requires distribution for financial gain, and I didn't see that mentioned here. There's also the exception that applies to distributing a work that hasn't yet been released yet, but since the movie had already been in theaters for a week, that wouldn't apply either.

        What other cases can criminal copyright infringement be applied to that is actually applicable here? My guess is none, but I suppose that doesn't really matter if they just scared

        • by hey! ( 33014 )

          Nope, it doesn't require financial gain on the part of the infringer. Felony copyright infringement requires distribution including by electronic means of works where the net retail value of all the copies distributed over a period of up to 180 days is at least $2500.

          That said, given that this particular act is so common and its prosecution as a crime is so rare, you have to assume there's something capricious in the application of the law. For practical economic purposes nothing would change if this cri

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward

            For practical economic purposes nothing would change if this crime were never prosecuted, so why have the law at all?

            That is definitely NOT true. If the crime were never prosecuted, every shady business operator would be selling pirated copies of everything he could just to make an easy buck.

            We know this because it's happened in the past with books. It's even easier to do now, so of course it would happen.

            Prosecutions have to happen just often enough to keep the commercial operators in line.

            This guy's mistake was being a defiant loud mouth. If he'd just shut up about it, the prosecutor's wouldn't have wanted to waste t

            • That is definitely NOT true. If the crime were never prosecuted, every shady business operator would be selling pirated copies of everything he could just to make an easy buck.

              We know this because it's happened in the past with books. It's even easier to do now, so of course it would happen.

              It *does* happen. In many countries, it's actually difficult to find an honest copy of a movie or software. They're massively outnumbered by the pirate sellers.

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Guy streams a movie not out to retale. 600,000 pepole see it. Of the 600,000 would any of them bought a legit copy when avaliable? Would they ha e gone to the thither? Impossible to tell. Did this guy knowly throw up a copy of this movie ? YUP was there a potential losse to revenue? YUP. should you feel sorry for some 2 bit ass clown that thought he was above the law? There is a huge problem, and this sets an example. *note i understand the ins and outs and have used torrents a ton but.. 8 dont go Ha
        • But I thought the law stated that criminal copyright infringement requires distribution for financial gain,

          Then your understanding if the opposite of what it is. Or at least what the warning states on any disks that I have. It specifically states that it's a violation even if not for financial gain.

        • But I thought the law stated that criminal copyright infringement requires distribution for financial gain

          No. Copyright infringement only requires distribution of a copyrighted work without permission. However, there is an escape hatch: "Fair Use". If you can show that your distribution fell into this category, then it's legal. The category is kind of fuzzy, though. The law specifies four factors to be considered when Fair Use determination is made:

          1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
          2. the nature of the cop

        • This used to be the case, before the DMCA was passed, attaching criminal sentencing to infringement, and more draconian measures (criminalizing education on the circumvention of copy protection). One could argue fair use as a defense, but I don't think that has been very successful in the last 18 years, on the rare occasion one can afford to plead innocent.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      If individuals can go to prison for copyright violations, then so can the people making, marketing, and distributing movies.

      Think about that next time you see a movie where the hacker's laptop screen quickly flashes with all sorts of Python code.

    • Re:prison (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2018 @12:14AM (#57332314)
      People go to prison for copyright violation all the time [google.com]. This case is just unusual because the guy didn't pirate the movie for personal financial gain. That's an important distinction which I feel needs to be retained in the law. If you violate copyright for personal gain, then I'm ok with the possibility of prison time. But if you violate it for no benefit to yourself, then I believe the penalty should be limited to fines. Maybe with a provision for prison time for repeat offenders.

      The issue isn't that people are all too willing to violate copyright. The issue is that technology has advanced to the point where copyright is all too easy to violate. This suggests that copyright is outgrowing its usefulness, and we need to sit down and consider replacing it with a different model. The reduction in cost of duplication and distribution to near zero means it's becoming more and more expensive to enforce copyright. Meanwhile, the benefit to the copyright holder has held steady, while the potential benefit to society from just giving everyone a free copy has grown. So as a whole, the cost of copyright is increasing while its benefit is holding steady. We may soon reach a point where the cost of copyright exceeds its benefit to society. So the role of copyright may be better served in the future by the way artistic works were created in the past.

      Centuries ago since it was nearly impossible to enforce copyright. So a rich patron would hire artists to create works. That's how artists got paid, and works got created. Once created, there was no copyright so anyone could copy the work. You'll notice that wedding photography has already reverted to this model. In the 20th century, the photographer shot your wedding for free or for a token fee. You then paid for copies of the photos. The increasing quality of scanners and color printers forced wedding photographers to abandon this model. Nowadays, you hire the wedding photographer for a large enough fee to cover all their costs (the "patron" model). The prints (or digital copies) are given to you for a token sum, or even for free.
      • Re:prison (Score:5, Informative)

        by Terry Carlino ( 2923311 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2018 @01:23AM (#57332506)

        All this ignores the basis of copyright law. That is, creators are given an exclusive right to profit off of their works in exchange for it's eventual inclusion in the public domain. Society only enforces an exclusive license to distribute because culture benefits over the long term.

        However the compact has been corrupted because creators have colluded with government to prevent any transfer of material to the public domain. Even now industry is attempting to extend the embargo on the transfer of material to the public domain yet again.

        People can see that not only is industry preventing materials from going into the public domain they are also making those materials unavailable at any price. Try to find a legal source for a great amount of content produced in the past. Classic and not so classic movies, out of print books and so forth. Illegal to distribute and unavailable at any price legally.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Yep, content creators reneged on their side of the bargain. Why should we still be expected to uphold ours?

          Copyright law is null and void until such time as public domain is reinstated.

          I feel no guilt at all about pirating.

      • by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
        The guy suddenly had millions of people seeing his facebook page... seems to me even if there wasn't a direct financial windfall from this act he could stand to benefit from the increased publicity in the future.

        He clearly knew what he was doing was wrong and it simply wasn't him downloading the movie to watch by himself at home.
      • You'll notice that wedding photography has already reverted to this model. In the 20th century, the photographer shot your wedding for free or for a token fee. You then paid for copies of the photos. The increasing quality of scanners and color printers forced wedding photographers to abandon this model. Nowadays, you hire the wedding photographer for a large enough fee to cover all their costs (the "patron" model). The prints (or digital copies) are given to you for a token sum, or even for free.

        Yes, but what professional wedding photographers don't do is spend several hours of their own time at the wedding using equipment that they've had to pay for, then give you a copy of all the photos on a memory stick and rely on your goodwill to pay them for copies of any you like.

        And in reality, there's no difference between paying (made up figures) five hundred quid for the photographer's time and getting 'free' prints, or paying him nothing and spending five hundred quid on a reasonable choice of photos

    • Indeed. God have mercy on his still tender rectum.

  • yes! (Score:5, Funny)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Monday September 17, 2018 @08:38PM (#57331592) Journal
    I can just feel the arts and sciences being encouraged right now!
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Not as much as you'll feel when people completely disregard every law they can get their hands on.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        You make a decent point here, just not the one you meant to make.

        When we make laws that are so hard to respect, and so blatantly against the spirit of what the original law was meant to "enshrine", it makes disrespecting the law a little more common-place. With enough silly not-respected laws on the books, people just stop respecting the law in general. This is bad for the overwhelming majority, but a non-issue for the very few.

        The simple half of the solution is just to make laws that actually make sense. L

    • Darn right. This is all about supporting the arts. That's why copyright laws cover works where the artist has been dead for half a century. You're not sarcastically suggesting that the laws are designed to line the coffers of the corporations who essentially wrote the laws, are you?
      • Darn right. This is all about supporting the arts. That's why copyright laws cover works where the artist has been dead for half a century. You're not sarcastically suggesting that the laws are designed to line the coffers of the corporations who essentially wrote the laws, are you?

        I might be ;)

  • hahahah (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Respect for law? We have sanctuary cities that hide criminals and politicians and corporate thugs get away with everything.

    There is no respect for law. The United States is corrupt from top to bottom.

  • I mean, if the goal is deterrent, then why not? After all, at 6 million views x $10 a ticket he'll never be able to pay back his 'debt'.
  • by CharlesAKAChuck ( 1157011 ) on Monday September 17, 2018 @08:52PM (#57331654)

    Normally I'd be totally dead set against prison time for copyright violations (I still am), but it seriously sounds like this guy is so dumb he deserves the jail time. Not for copyright violations, but for being an idiot in general, flagrantly disregarding the law, being stupid enough to upload the whole movie to Facebook, not knowing at all how technology works, and again just for being an idiot. From the full article:

    In one such post he wrote: "I got the ultimate way out of this, yall might be surprised on how I won't go to jail but just become more famous." In another he wrote, "I'm just sitting back smoking out my bong laughing at these mfs who think they know what they talking I haven't sold shit to anyone, or made copies." Franklin went on to create a Facebook group called “Bootleg Movies,” posted “EVERYBODY JOIN,” and told people he’d be posting more movies on the page.

    • ... to know that he's not going to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. I supposed we should be impressed he can actually operate a grown up computer, thats an einstein level ability down in da hood.

      • ... to know that he's not going to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. I supposed we should be impressed he can actually operate a grown up computer, thats an einstein level ability down in da hood.

        dude your racism isn't necessary.

        • by Viol8 ( 599362 )

          Racism? Just stating facts my friend. Not all of us live in a liberal fantasy world.

    • >"but it seriously sounds like this guy is so dumb he deserves the jail time."

      +1 Bingo.

      This is not a legal assessment but:

      1) We are not talking about an obscure movie, but something very popular.

      2) We are not talking about some old movie, or something that should have been public domain a decade ago, but something recent produced.

      3) We are not talking about some secret or obscure site, but Facebook, which doesn't get more mainstream and visible.

      4) We are not talking about damages that number in the hundr

      • 4) We are not talking about damages that number in the hundreds or thousands of views, but over 6 million potential viewings.

        I take issue with this. It's Deadpool one of the highest rated rated r movies or the recent era. There's no way the six million views on facebook seriously impacted this movie's ticket sales. There's no significant population who saw the movie and decided "ya know what I WAS going to see it in theatres, but now that I've seen it I'm not going."

        You're using Hollywood logic. The one that states dedicated people who pirate movies and never go anywhere would totally have gone out to see Deadpool but darn it the

        • I wouldn't be surprised if the six million views didn't act as advertisement and boosted ticket sales. If it is such a good movie, then people seeing in low framerate, low resolution, and audio channels limited to stereo (at best) would be more likely to want to go have the big screen experience. Or at least pay for a better quality stream.
  • by dohzer ( 867770 ) on Monday September 17, 2018 @08:59PM (#57331680)

    And how much jail time will the studio get for creating the content?
    Thank you, thank you. Wow, what a great audience!

  • by Layth ( 1090489 ) on Monday September 17, 2018 @09:23PM (#57331778)

    "What are you in jail for?" they ask. "I made a facebook post."

    • "What are you in jail for?" they ask. "I made a facebook post."

      Ask the guy in England about that ...

      • You don't have to go to anti-free speech state like the UK to get jailed for a Facebook post. Just ask this kid [cnn.com] about it. Everything you post is a written confession as far as prosecutors are concerned.
    • How about specific intent to distribute copyright law en mass.

      He will find friends in jail among others who have been prosecuted for criminal copyright infringement.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    just saying...

  • by Gabest ( 852807 ) on Monday September 17, 2018 @10:14PM (#57331932)
    You can go to prison for your facebook post for many reasons in shit hole countries.
  • Was never convicted (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Monday September 17, 2018 @10:44PM (#57332030)
    The police took away any means he had to defend himself, threatened him with a ridiculous punishment and he accepted a plea bargain. There is only one country in the world that regularly pretends such a thing is a conviction. Of course going to federal court is also a 99.8% chance of being convicted of something. Some federal districts in the USA actually go more than a year without an innocent verdict. http://justicedenied.org/wordp... [justicedenied.org]
    • The police took away any means he had to defend himself, threatened him with a ridiculous punishment and he accepted a plea bargain. There is only one country in the world that regularly pretends such a thing is a conviction. Of course going to federal court is also a 99.8% chance of being convicted of something. Some federal districts in the USA actually go more than a year without an innocent verdict. http://justicedenied.org/wordp... [justicedenied.org]

      Uh, how can it be justice denied if he's guilty as sin?

      I'm actually with you on procedural protections, but regarding justice, let's get real; the guy was literally bragging about his guilt.

      If he was punished, then justice was done, albeit perhaps not done correctly.

      • The police took away any means he had to defend himself, threatened him with a ridiculous punishment and he accepted a plea bargain. There is only one country in the world that regularly pretends such a thing is a conviction. Of course going to federal court is also a 99.8% chance of being convicted of something. Some federal districts in the USA actually go more than a year without an innocent verdict. http://justicedenied.org/wordp... [justicedenied.org]

        Uh, how can it be justice denied if he's guilty as sin?

        I'm actually with you on procedural protections, but regarding justice, let's get real; the guy was literally bragging about his guilt.

        If he was punished, then justice was done, albeit perhaps not done correctly.

        And just to be clear, I support going back to the Founder's version of copyright (7 years, extendable to 14 max).

      • Uh, how can it be justice denied if he's guilty as sin?

        It's justice denied because he self incriminated to remove himself from the process of justice. Plea bargains in the USA are horribly stacked in the favour of prosecutors. America has jails full of people who plead guilty for the sole purposes of not being dragged through the legal process all while being told when they do go through the process they will go away for life.

  • 14 days beats 6 months.

  • I am excited to see this continue, and the FBI start investigating freebooting (companies who cut/copy popular videos from youtube to facebook for ad revenue) and start sending their arses to jail too!

  • So he downloaded it (copy on his computer) and posted it on Facebook (copy on Facebook). Also he's a total idiot. But Facebook made millions of copies, and they aren't a common carrier.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Facebook also made some good money on ads for those 6,386,456 views.

    • So he downloaded it (copy on his computer) and posted it on Facebook (copy on Facebook). Also he's a total idiot. But Facebook made millions of copies, and they aren't a common carrier.

      Yeah, if the movie had proposed tax cuts or immigration restrictions, that would be different. Facebook woulda had that thing gone in nothing flat ...

    • So he downloaded it (copy on his computer) and posted it on Facebook (copy on Facebook). Also he's a total idiot. But Facebook made millions of copies, and they aren't a common carrier.

      The DMCA's Safe Harbor provision (one of the few parts of the DMCA that makes sense, IMO), protects site operators from prosecution for infringement for content posted on their sites by users, as long as they take it down promptly upon receipt of a takedown notice. If this didn't exist, basically no site could host user-provided content.

      However, it might be possible to argue that he only made two copies, and should only be prosecuted for those, not for the 6M. That doesn't help him much, though, since th

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