Andre Yoskowitz
24 Feb 2009 0:14
Three men from California have been arrested and charged with sharing or uploading unauthorized movies, notably the Oscar screeners for "Slumdog Millionaire," "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "Australia."
According to the FBI, Jack Yates of Porter Ranch, California, was an employee at Los Angeles Duplication & Broadcasting (LADB) where he was told to make a DVD copy of the "Love Guru" for Jay Leno to show clips of on his show.
Footage from the LADB shows Yates making two copies, then concealing the second one and taking it to his car. The then passed the copy on to someone who uploaded it on June 19th, one day before its theatrical release.
Yates is also accused of lying to the FBI which carries up to a five year jail sentence. The pirating of the movie can earn him up to one year in prison.
In the other cases, Derek Hawthorne is accused of uploading both "Benjamin Button" and "Australia" to the semi-private torrent tracker Demonoid and Owen Moody is accused of uploading "Slumdog" to the public tracker The Pirate Bay.