Illinois man gets 30 month sentence for piracy

wow um i dont know about you guys but i can now sleep safer at night knowing a big corporation isint loosing as much moneey anymore.
/sarcasm

Well, they are averaging just over one conviction a month... Corporate America must feel safe.

"a big corporation isint loosing as m"

It is written as "losing"..not "loosing".

Lose = "I am going to lose my baseball cards"

Loose = "My car has a loose spark plug"

You will sound a lot smarter if you use correct grammar.

/GrammarNazimode off

lol =]

YESSSS! Another major criminal off the street polluting our children.. I wonder will he get lethal injection???? LOL... Im being sarcastic too...

"What u in fo?"
Murder
"How bout u slim?"
Rape
"Eh you, the new guy, what u in here for?

I uploaded software through a file tranfer protocal which enabled users to take software without paying for it.

I am a taxpayer from Il and this really sucks big time. I hope this guy made some money from what he was doing.

I'd love to read some intelligent comments on this topic instead of nonsense fellas. This is a serious issue. I don't condone piracy, however the MPAA and friends are out of control. With a record breaking summer at the box office they should be taking the Rick Rubin approach and looking at ways to remake the business model of the motion picture industry. Fact is that DVR's are taking away their business too. Lower the prices and that would eliminate the pirates. People just don't want to pay 25 dollars and up for a new dvd. It's an outrage. Intellectual copyrights should be lowered in order to produce more quality rather than quantity. I'm so exhausted reading about the latest buzzword "Piracy" when I continue to read comments that really border on childish, not to flame , but I know my community is more intelligent than this. I don't want to see us reduced to imbeciles.

We as Americans/Corporate America has bigger problems to deal with then people selling bootleg. Anyone remember when prohibition was in effect? People "bootlegged" alcohol into the country and sold it for high profits. Same thing people are doing here was being done years ago and the economy didn't collapse.

make yourself sound as intelligent as you want, this topic is beat into the ground. Obviously the mpaa is ridiculous, and has every selfish, ridiculous, and misguided strategy that they could possibly come up with.

everyone knows there are better ways to improve industry revenue than going after pirates and trying to shut down the internet, but do you really think corporate america is going to just swallow their pride and design a new business plan? of course not... and to tell you the truth i think they realize how easily people get scared. The fear strategy really does have potential, look at how easily people follow religions, build everyday fears of kidnappers, murderers, all from what they see on tv. if grown adults who were not computer savvy saw a different person going to jail for computer piracy everyday on the news, then they would most likely not condone pirating for themselves or their families.

Originally posted by Tralblazr:

---

I'd love to read some intelligent comments on this topic instead of nonsense fellas. This is a serious issue. I don't condone piracy, however the MPAA and friends are out of control. With a record breaking summer at the box office they should be taking the Rick Rubin approach and looking at ways to remake the business model of the motion picture industry. Fact is that DVR's are taking away their business too. Lower the prices and that would eliminate the pirates. People just don't want to pay 25 dollars and up for a new dvd. It's an outrage. Intellectual copyrights should be lowered in order to produce more quality rather than quantity. I'm so exhausted reading about the latest buzzword "Piracy" when I continue to read comments that really border on childish, not to flame , but I know my community is more intelligent than this. I don't want to see us reduced to imbeciles.

---

I agree, personally sick of all the "f the mpaa statements."

The thing is, this guy is obviously in a warez ring and not a typical p2p'r.....that is a lot of distributing. Some of the less intelligent people will claim piracy doesnt hurt....but what about the tiny software companies?? Warez is killing them, literally.

Dont get me wrong I am not trying to preach, and am not in the least bothered by the dl habits some of you have, but the reality of it is large scale operations such as this does in fact hurt. Some of you only think in terms of his/her individual actions....yeah that one copy of photoshop or movie you grabbed isn't going to break the publisher, can the same be said about 1 million plus copies of photoshop that are downloaded through the vast amount of file sharing outlets? I too chuckle at the bloated figures companies claim to lose because of piracy, but you are going to tell me you wouldn't have bought that illegal copy of windows if you couldnt download it, so it doesn't count against posted losses for M$? If so, I call BS on you.

Bottom line, looking at all this as a whole, it does hurt. I dont give a flying sh!t what any of you do, but time to leave fantasy land and realize the truth. I 150% agree the media maffia does overstep what most think is right, restrictive drm blows and stuff costs too much....all this doesn't change the underlying fact that what this guy was doing was a big no no.

/end rant

I can only imagine the flaming I will now receive :/

thats crazy that much time just for uploading warez i mean the people who make these softwares are rich im sure they wont mis a few bucks but owell you do the crim you do the crim

A pirated copy of anything doesn't equal lost revenue. In fact most people who have a bootleg copy of windows, or a new dvd, or a music cd wouldn't have gone out and bought the original anyway. Some would have, this is true. I'd like to see some real numbers of a survey done about that. I also have in the majority of cases when it comes to software found freeware to better suit my needs, and be smaller in size. Bottom line is if the MPAA and the RIAA can't find a way to lower the prices or reinvent their business model than they will suffer the consequences. How much money will they be willing to spend on the anti-piracy campaign? How many of our children will go to jail and get criminal records before we will stand up to these corporate bullies? After all most bootleggers should get a medal in my opinion. A medal for helping the poor man save a buck while "the man" tries to rape his wallet again and again. The poor man has a wife and kids all crying to see the latest dvd release or the latest box office summer blockbuster. The poor man can't afford to pay his own bills how is charging him 25 dollars and up for a new dvd "right" ? Let's not forget about the corporate propaganda the bootlegger is helping corporate america spread. Many people would not have afforded to buy the original dvd, and in most cases would not have even rented the movie. Blockbuster wants more than 6 dollars in my area for a new release dvd rental. The prices are the real crime here. The companies should be the ones serving time for stealing from the common man. I feel very stong about this especially with all the buzz over piracy at the moment. If I see a cop and I see a bootlegger in the same area who do you think I'm going to tip off? A famous line from A Bronx Tale: "All I know is a rat was the lowest thing anyone could be in my neighborhood, and I didn't rat." I'm offering my helping hand to the man who is trying to help the common folk in our community, not the one out there breaking up homes and arresting children. The MPAA should do something positive with all that money they are dumping into their anti-piracy campaign, like put it into programs to help families and educating our kids, not to rat on each other but to read and write and learn something valuable for their future, and the future of this great planet. I believe in intellectual property rights, but there is an old saying "everything in moderation, nothing in excess".

Originally posted by Jlhfit:

---

YESSSS! Another major criminal off the street polluting our children.. I wonder will he get lethal injection???? LOL... Im being sarcastic too...

---

From the way these corporations paint the picture of these "hardened criminals," I would almost rather have the drug dealers on the street...

the problem with the media driven society is that we are told to consume and want things to make us happy and ppl will do anything to obtain "the american dream" of rags to riches.

he broke the law and should be punished as this was not just piracy he was distributing the goods but 30 months for this crime seems a little excessive when compared to other sentences handed out in the us.

it seems that the courts feel ip theft is a worse crime than rape, burglary or assault, what a sad world we live in when profit comes before ppl's happiness and lives!

Originally posted by Tralblazr:

---

I'd love to read some intelligent comments on this topic instead of nonsense fellas. This is a serious issue. I don't condone piracy, however the MPAA and friends are out of control. With a record breaking summer at the box office they should be taking the Rick Rubin approach and looking at ways to remake the business model of the motion picture industry. Fact is that DVR's are taking away their business too. Lower the prices and that would eliminate the pirates. People just don't want to pay 25 dollars and up for a new dvd. It's an outrage. Intellectual copyrights should be lowered in order to produce more quality rather than quantity. I'm so exhausted reading about the latest buzzword "Piracy" when I continue to read comments that really border on childish, not to flame , but I know my community is more intelligent than this. I don't want to see us reduced to imbeciles.

---

exactly they should give us better quality product so people will feel inspired to buy the products i mean i hear this all the time...

person 1: "hey did you buy the new videogame/movie/cd?"
person 2: "naw its too expensive so i just downloaded it. not worth the money"

I believe that there is a difference in the quantity that one does download. A family guy at home supporting a family of 5, barely scraping by, who cannot afford much entertainment (which is my case), living in a world that thrives and pushes Material items as a measure of being successful...and who downloads a few movies and songs once in a while to make his kids happy....IS NOT the same as the guy above.

I'm sure many of you would argue this....and could probably be right. If someone kills one man, and another person kills 100 people. Should they both be judged the same type of "murderer"

I think one must consider the motive of the downloader, and circumstances of life and pressure he is under.

I stole a pen from work. Am i a thief just like Conrad Black ?
No Way.

Sure, a new model will be welcome by many, but i think its unlikely. The Human species is a violent one. Just read, watch the news. Look at our past.

There will be a New World Order in due time. It will be in our lifetime. The fear will be installed and we will be programmed for it. This is what the big players want.

For the more intelligent who realize whats happening in the world today, and especially with the US Government, its not hard to see that the piracy issue, which truly has run out of control, is also a diversion for the people. There will be many diversions so people get caught up in "The Game", while our rights and freedom are taken away before our very eyes.

There are much bigger problems than this piracy issue, but "their" not going to admit that. THEY are going mislead you and redirect you from the real problems.

Originally posted by windsong:

---

"a big corporation isint loosing as m"

It is written as "losing"..not "loosing".

Lose = "I am going to lose my baseball cards"

Loose = "My car has a loose spark plug"

You will sound a lot smarter if you use correct grammar.

/GrammarNazimode off

---

sound like a school teacher.is it spelling or english lesson?

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Tralblazr:

---

I'd love to read some intelligent comments on this topic instead of nonsense fellas. This is a serious issue. I don't condone piracy, however the MPAA and friends are out of control. With a record breaking summer at the box office they should be taking the Rick Rubin approach and looking at ways to remake the business model of the motion picture industry. Fact is that DVR's are taking away their business too. Lower the prices and that would eliminate the pirates. People just don't want to pay 25 dollars and up for a new dvd. It's an outrage. Intellectual copyrights should be lowered in order to produce more quality rather than quantity. I'm so exhausted reading about the latest buzzword "Piracy" when I continue to read comments that really border on childish, not to flame , but I know my community is more intelligent than this. I don't want to see us reduced to imbeciles.

---

I agree, personally sick of all the "f the mpaa statements."

The thing is, this guy is obviously in a warez ring and not a typical p2p'r.....that is a lot of distributing. Some of the less intelligent people will claim piracy doesnt hurt....but what about the tiny software companies?? Warez is killing them, literally.

Dont get me wrong I am not trying to preach, and am not in the least bothered by the dl habits some of you have, but the reality of it is large scale operations such as this does in fact hurt. Some of you only think in terms of his/her individual actions....yeah that one copy of photoshop or movie you grabbed isn't going to break the publisher, can the same be said about 1 million plus copies of photoshop that are downloaded through the vast amount of file sharing outlets? I too chuckle at the bloated figures companies claim to lose because of piracy, but you are going to tell me you wouldn't have bought that illegal copy of windows if you couldnt download it, so it doesn't count against posted losses for M$? If so, I call BS on you.

Bottom line, looking at all this as a whole, it does hurt. I dont give a flying sh!t what any of you do, but time to leave fantasy land and realize the truth. I 150% agree the media maffia does overstep what most think is right, restrictive drm blows and stuff costs too much....all this doesn't change the underlying fact that what this guy was doing was a big no no.

/end rant

I can only imagine the flaming I will now receive :/

---

I have to partly disagree with you. As long as there are free alternatives, you really can't claim major loses. Open source privides so many free alternatives. Linux has come such a long way in being more user friendly. Just as an example, there is also a Linux alternative to Photoshop. There is so much software that is free now. How can a company selling the software at an exhorbitantly high price claim that you would have purchased their product if it wasn't available for downloading? As long as the free alternatives keep popping up, these claims can't be justified. With the mass quantities of entertainment available, and the limited imcome of many households, every company cannot possibly claim billions in losses, just because there aren't billions to go around. How can the software, music and movie industries all claim billions? What is the average salary of the people who download instead of purchase?

Rich people are less likely to download. Why would they need to be bothered? Just pull out a credit card and not even bat an eye. If I had an extra chunk of money every month, I would put some aside to buy the CD's, DVD's and games that I've been wanting for a while. But I have three mouths to feed, so they are on my wish list and hopefully my wife will surprise me a couple times a year ;-) But how the heck am I to afford that stuff when I need to spend so much money on the technology to utilize it? I want a new PC, an HDTV, a next gen console, a HD player.....I just can't buy everything I want. And that's probably the situation with most people too.

Rich people get rich off the poor and when they cant suck the last penny out of you they make a law that will. Rich, cooperations, and governments are all in it together. Manipulating the facts is how i see it, example.... Your paying $2.50 for gas, they raise the price in a couple of weeks to $3.00, Stiff you that price till their pockets are full, bring the price down to $2.75 a gallon then try to tell you, things are looking good know, you are(saving .25 cents) paying less for the gas know. what a joke. downloading, or uploading dont hurt no one.

this is what I'm talking about exactly, the average joe who has kids and lives off minimal wages, doing his best to support them all, and keep a positive attitude to boot. It brings a tear to my eye to think of all of that, and see the prices so high for what is merely propaganda anyway. Look at Delta Farce, I haven't seen it yet but the mere premise ticks me off to no end. Why should we laugh at these serious situations? Why should we be encouraged to rat out each other when we are being pillaged? Why are our children being encouraged to break up our homes by turning mommy and daddy in for things like downlowding. I'm not talking about our kids crying out for help about serious issues like being beaten at home. Why are we being turned against one another and buying into it? Let us all take a stand against this kind of tyranny. Don't turn in a pirate who brings you a movie to make your kids happy for a lot less, buy two. When the cops are in sight, don't rat out the pirate, inform him of his near danger. Keep those safe who are helping you. Most police officers don't want to bust pirates, they buy the movies themselves. However when it comes to a big bust, they want their credit and a raise. This is hypocritical to say the least. Help those who help you. Support one another, we only have one life to live.

well done.

Well, in the interest of interesting comments about piracy and the MPAA I offer up a slightly different look at things.

I think it's wrong to look at this whole issue as one of "a few downloads don't hurt", or even "those people wouldn't have purchased anyway."

This battle is much more epic than that.
The companies don't care that you have a free copy of something. They care that you CAN do it. If free stuff becomes the norm, if it is easy then they lose their choke hold on things. Their battle is against "the masses". They have to convince the general public that if they do that then they might get in a lot of trouble.

On the other side of the battle are the "open source" believers. The folks who believe that if it's public then it's free. The Great masses of people who paid their hourly AOL bill and then cheered when they went to unlimited, monthly pricing. I'm talking about you and I who believe that if it's on the net it should be FREE (or at least covered by your monthly fee) If you're willing to spend the time to learn how to do it then you should be ABLE to do it.
Hackers, Pirates, Open source folks believe that the data should be available to all, not controlled by the corporations like everything else in this god forsaken world.

When Cell Phones were 25 cents a minute and you had to watch the time for each and every call then Cell Phones were only for the privileged few. When Cell Phone companies added unlimited services for a flat rate Cell phones became available and desired by EVERYONE. Same thing with the net, cable, and everything else. The MPAA and the RIAA still want to charge piecemeal. That's their way. Pirates and hackers are trying to force them into a new, "all you can use" strategy.

Originally posted by Tralblazr:

---

A pirated copy of anything doesn't equal lost revenue. In fact most people who have a bootleg copy of windows, or a new dvd, or a music cd wouldn't have gone out and bought the original anyway. Some would have, this is true. I'd like to see some real numbers of a survey done about that. I also have in the majority of cases when it comes to software found freeware to better suit my needs, and be smaller in size. Bottom line is if the MPAA and the RIAA can't find a way to lower the prices or reinvent their business model than they will suffer the consequences. How much money will they be willing to spend on the anti-piracy campaign? How many of our children will go to jail and get criminal records before we will stand up to these corporate bullies? After all most bootleggers should get a medal in my opinion. A medal for helping the poor man save a buck while "the man" tries to rape his wallet again and again. The poor man has a wife and kids all crying to see the latest dvd release or the latest box office summer blockbuster. The poor man can't afford to pay his own bills how is charging him 25 dollars and up for a new dvd "right" ? Let's not forget about the corporate propaganda the bootlegger is helping corporate america spread. Many people would not have afforded to buy the original dvd, and in most cases would not have even rented the movie. Blockbuster wants more than 6 dollars in my area for a new release dvd rental. The prices are the real crime here. The companies should be the ones serving time for stealing from the common man. I feel very stong about this especially with all the buzz over piracy at the moment. If I see a cop and I see a bootlegger in the same area who do you think I'm going to tip off? A famous line from A Bronx Tale: "All I know is a rat was the lowest thing anyone could be in my neighborhood, and I didn't rat." I'm offering my helping hand to the man who is trying to help the common folk in our community, not the one out there breaking up homes and arresting children. The MPAA should do something positive with all that money they are dumping into their anti-piracy campaign, like put it into programs to help families and educating our kids, not to rat on each other but to read and write and learn something valuable for their future, and the future of this great planet. I believe in intellectual property rights, but there is an old saying "everything in moderation, nothing in excess".

---

You just took the words out of my mouth... I cannot claim of the understanding and dedication most of you dawners have of the situation as i live in a country that does not openly discourage filesharing and free downloads of movies and music etc...the most ive heard of the topic where i come from is a lawsuit of a music company against a site that just provides emule links to all kinds of content and amazingly the outcome was that the site will be allowed to keep almost 40% of its links... to you this may sound as unbelivable and remarkable achievement but here people are still enraged by it... and from experiece im a teenager... out of all the friends I have only one of them is against and does not download SONGS. meaning he downloads movies software and all the rest...this is the reality here...and as im sure 25$ is alot to a man that has to support a family here a dollar is worth 4 times the value of the used money meaning if a new video game for a DS or a new DVD will cost 25-40$ it will cost here about 280-350... which is outrageus because the seller adds the fee for importing the content into the country(and as the import fee is about 20% the seller still gains about 60% profit which is totally insane)for example a new PSP costs about 160$ now in the US,multiply that by 4 and thats 640 and yet-the price of a new psp here is 1200... so here just the people who are against file sharing and rich people actually buy original contents ..and there are authrosied labs that can hack your next gen system in the process makin the warranty void yet the common consumer see it worth the loss of warranty and in case of damage buy a new system rather then spend 350 cash everytime he wants to buy a new game which kills the parents....and the law system cannot really find the people who share software because everyome does it ...think of it like this... if 95% of people are rapists in the end the law intending to punish them will have no effect whatsoever...i think its horrible what the MPAA (hope i got tht right) is encouraging people to rat on others instead of havin tax money spent on catching drug dealers and pedofiles as I know that phenomenon exsists in the US as it is not widely spread here. My heart is with you and your fight is my fight and may you adults live to see the day the prices will be normalized and dropped as of the fall of the big cooperate companies...may for once the little man triumph over the "Big Boys"