Another EliteTorrents Uploader Facing 10 Years in Prison
Written by enigmax on November 17, 2007The fallout from the FBI raid on EliteTorrents in 2005 continues, with a seventh defendant associated with the uploading of Star Wars Episode III facing the prospect of 10 years in prison coupled with a $500,000 fine.
Every few months it seems the FBI manages to come up with yet more people to charge in connection with Operation D-Elite - the joint ICE and FBI raids against the US-based BitTorrent tracker, EliteTorrents, in 2005.
Everyone charged so far has been accused of being involved in the uploading of Star Wars Episode III which, at the time, was a pre-release movie, carrying criminal implications for the uploaders under the Family Entertainment Copyright Act.
According to an announcement by Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Patrick L. Meehan for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, a seventh defendant has pleaded guilty.
An Duc Do, aged 25, of Orlando, Florida, has pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Legrome D. Davis of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on a two-count felony. He’s charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and criminal copyright infringement.
Do is the latest in a line of people pleading guilty in this operation against EliteTorrents. Previous guilty pleas and convictions include those of Scott McCausland, Grant Stanley, Sam Kuonen and Scott D. Harvanek.
In this copyright case tried in the criminal (rather than civil) legal domain, potential punishments are harsh. Do is facing up to 10 years in prison coupled with a fine of $500,000.
He will be sentenced on February 27th, 2008.
Previously: The Pirate Bay Laser Graffiti Tribute
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256 Responses
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bittrucker how about i rape ur mom and get less jailtime u get me !?
@colossal
comparing piracy to stealing is VERY ignorant…they may be the same thing but they carry different sentences
Isn’t copyright infrigement is when you steal the movie and you sell it for your own greed? Just wondering.
10 years sounds harsh because if you look at the guys in the previous raids that got atleast a maximum of 5-6 years.
This just shows how dedicated America is to getting money… this is fucking SAD!
[quote comment="216012"]Hi,
One of you, bitTrucker at Post 24, said that the average jailtime for a convicted rapist is 11.8 years.
Another of you, Anonymous at Post 29, said that the average jailtime for a convicted rapist is “a little over 3 years”.
Care to cite your sources?[/quote]
I already did in post 33 - seems like someone here didn’t like what I had to say though, so they decided to moderate (CENSOR) my message.
Anyhow, my source is the US Department of Justice. All available from http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov
I don’t understand what ICE has to do with bit torrents. ICE deals with illegal immigrants.
Also, why bittorrent? In a world where we let child molesting priests play the shell-game in one parish after another, senators solicit prostitutes in bathrooms, Chinese manufacturers put lives at risk by cutting corners with lead and other materials, people cross the border every day illegally and consume resources and we’re supposedly trying to keep ter’ists from bombing everything in our country — and we’re focusing on a bunch of kids sharing a few movies? Seriously?!
Here’s my take. Corporate america enjoys fucking the citizens in the ass by taking away their rights to fair use, sucking up public domain and perverting it and shipping jobs off to cheap overseas professionals. So do I have a problem with filesharing? Fuck no. It’s one of the only small ways citizens and consumers can have even a tiny bit of muscle to say “fuck you” right back.
PS: Lindsey Lohan was charged with drunk driving twice. And a hit and run. And car jacking. And had possession of cocaine. She served just over one hour of jail time. I guess sharing (not stealing) a movie is far worse than all of the above crimes by a factor of about 87600 to 1.
[quote comment="215999"]
So you are the proud author of a piece of SPYWARE of which 80% of it’s users think is not even worth $9.99?
Congratulations on a job well done![/quote]
Perhaps you should re-read my last paragraph. It was stated in the EULA of the software that these sort of statistics were sent back to a central server.
Then perhaps re-read the rest of my post. The statistics I posted was based on users running the software a least once a week during the past three months. Now, if it’s a POS not worth $9.99, why the hell would they run it again and again.
10 years and only half an million fine… How is he supposed to pay off that ammount? When he gets off jail at the age of 35 there prolly isn’t too easy to find decent job.
Poor guy
[quote comment="216062"]10 years and only half an million fine… How is he supposed to pay off that ammount? When he gets off jail at the age of 35 there prolly isn’t too easy to find decent job.
Poor guy[/quote]
hahaha poor guy should have thought about what he was doing hahaha
[quote comment="216059"][quote comment="215999"]
So you are the proud author of a piece of SPYWARE of which 80% of it’s users think is not even worth $9.99?
Congratulations on a job well done![/quote]
Perhaps you should re-read my last paragraph. It was stated in the EULA of the software that these sort of statistics were sent back to a central server.
Then perhaps re-read the rest of my post. The statistics I posted was based on users running the software a least once a week during the past three months. Now, if it’s a POS not worth $9.99, why the hell would they run it again and again.[/quote]
Perhaps I read your post feel that spyware is spyware, whether it comes with an EULA stating so or not. And perhaps it could be because it’s barely worth using but certainly not worth paying $9.99 for?
Now isn’t it funny that there are loads of people (whole companies even) giving their software away for free and still make a pretty decent living off it? But perhaps that’s software people actually value, and not some POS spyware from a cry baby like you.
[quote comment="216092"]Perhaps I read your post feel that spyware is spyware, whether it comes with an EULA stating so or not. And perhaps it could be because it’s barely worth using but certainly not worth paying $9.99 for?
Now isn’t it funny that there are loads of people (whole companies even) giving their software away for free and still make a pretty decent living off it? But perhaps that’s software people actually value, and not some POS spyware from a cry baby like you.[/quote]
Ok, spyware or not - the fact is, it clearly states what it does, and why it does it.
As I said, the code was put in there only to get some sort of statistics on legal vs pirated usage of the software. The database does not store any personal information alongside these stats.
Anyway, please name one such company and I’ll bet you I can find at least one product they are NOT giving away for free. Which is the same with me, I have a range of applications out there. About half are commercial and the other half are free - some of them even open-source.
Cry baby? I was simply pointing out the saying “It hurts no-one” isn’t exactly true. Piracy is eating away at someones profits, no doubt about it.
Who cares? Have a single one of you done anything about this, besides writing about it on some blog? I for one will tell the truth!
None of us give a shit, if it ain’t happening to us, we don’t give a damn. Writing about it on some blog or website is pointless. Instead why don’t you! do something that has meaning such as protesting publicly and writing to your representatives in congress. I for one will do neither, as I really don’t give a damn!
That’s life!!
What I want to know is, how much time would Lindsay Lohan get if she uploaded a movie :)
America, there are a lot of people laughing at you at the moment. Why not try to do one thing to win back some respect?
This will end one day, when the young people of today will be sitting on the chairs of those politicians in Washington that are a farce to the society, creating arguments to make false wars and shutting up their mouths when Pakistani president shuts down democracy on their country because US needs their land in order to continue their agenda in the region.
Do you really think that we want to end the terrorism? No US don’t want any of that because if it ends what excuses are we going to use to invade someone else’s country, kill their people and still their oil?
Copyright was created so people would not claim that this or that piece of work were theirs when in fact were some else’s. It has nothing to do with share. And the lame excuse that it hurts the industry is nonsense, first because artist make little or nothing with CD’s or dvd’s, their money come from shows, tv appearances among other things, the only ones making money are the record industry and it seems that they have realized that their days of making huge money are gone and decided to counter attack with this ridiculous law suits.
I am not advocating piracy, even though I think that piracy contributes to educate a countless number of people around the world that can’t afford to pay the ridiculous amount of money some companies charge for their piece of intellectual work.
We have now a days so many more problems to worry about than this ridiculous law suits.
To those who certainly will reply with many arguments and flames, please before you do try to read the news and see what is going on around the globe and then think if your comment will be worth it the time or if you can spend it trying to make something positive for the generations to come.
Fucking America and it’s bullshit. Sick of them.
Talk about crimes against humanity, this is way out of line.
Destroying some guys life to try to set an example is totally unacceptable.
U.S.A is the axis if evil now days
So stupid, people shouldn’t be imprisoned with rapists and murderers for simply uploading a movie.
[quote comment="216114"]This will end one day, when the young people of today will be sitting on the chairs of those politicians in Washington that are a farce to the society, creating arguments to make false wars and shutting up their mouths when Pakistani president shuts down democracy on their country because US needs their land in order to continue their agenda in the region.
Do you really think that we want to end the terrorism? No US don’t want any of that because if it ends what excuses are we going to use to invade someone else’s country, kill their people and still their oil?
Copyright was created so people would not claim that this or that piece of work were theirs when in fact were some else’s. It has nothing to do with share. And the lame excuse that it hurts the industry is nonsense, first because artist make little or nothing with CD’s or dvd’s, their money come from shows, tv appearances among other things, the only ones making money are the record industry and it seems that they have realized that their days of making huge money are gone and decided to counter attack with this ridiculous law suits.
I am not advocating piracy, even though I think that piracy contributes to educate a countless number of people around the world that can’t afford to pay the ridiculous amount of money some companies charge for their piece of intellectual work.
We have now a days so many more problems to worry about than this ridiculous law suits.
To those who certainly will reply with many arguments and flames, please before you do try to read the news and see what is going on around the globe and then think if your comment will be worth it the time or if you can spend it trying to make something positive for the generations to come.[/quote]
Finally, someone that knows what the hell they’re talking about. I fully agree with you.
[quote comment="215874"][quote comment="215825"]HE FUCKING DIDN’T HURT ANYONE! All he did was share some data over the internet! This is plain insanity.
America, Inc; a fully owned subsidary of Corporate America, Inc.[/quote]
He didn’t hurt anyone?
As a software developer, I am personally “hurt” by people pirating my software. Point in fact; 3 months ago I released my last commercial project to the public - retailing at $9.99 per license.
Now, in this piece of software I had included computer-fingerprinting (basically it takes your CPU ID and a few other IDs, mangles them together and sends it back to a central database of mine) specifically for the purpose of seeing what the percentage of fully paid for, legal licenses were in relation to copies. I’ll tell you what it was - 20%. Twenty friggin percent are paid for copies, with the remaining 80% being ‘pirated’ copies. Now, I have a fairly small userbase (just over 700 registered users), but it has still cost me $28491.48 in lost business. Ok, so perhaps not everyone now running a pirated copy would have paid for it, so let’s say a third would have, that’s still a net loss of just below $10000 for me personally - or, spread out over the lifetime of the project, $3165 per month.
Just to be clear, those 80% of unlicensed copies only included people running the software regularly (which in this context means at least once a week since installation). Also, the fact I did collect this information was made perfectly clear in the legalese provided with the product.[/quote]
You need a new business model. Plenty of people develop open source software and don’t expect any money in return - unless they get paid as consultants. Music continues to decrease in price because of the fact that it is available, free. Should people go to jail for that? I think with millions of people downloading music via P2P, the music industry needs a new business model. That business model is one of innovation, licensing of goods associated with artists, live performance, etc. The software industry is not so stupid - software for consumers is moving towards the software as a service model. There are plenty of ways you can profit from software. You can’t tell people what they can do with their data once you sell it to them. Besides the fact that it is not feasible, prosecuting people for doing what they want with their data is ridiculous. Come back to planet freedom.
Good they should lock his ass up. He knew what he was doing was wrong. I take it by these responses that there
are not many business folks posting these comments. Let you spend millions
on a movie production and some idiot comes in and shares it with the world.
[quote comment="216029"]@colossal
comparing piracy to stealing is VERY ignorant…they may be the same thing but they carry different sentences[/quote]
His mother is cheaper than 500k so..
If anyone should go to jail for 10 years is George Lucas, for making that piece of shit movie.
I feel sorry for the kid. That is the price of American fascism.
How many of you people would go to work and not want to be paid for working? Not many at all I would think.
So why do you expect other people to go to work and make movies/music or software and not expect to be paid for there work? Fucking bunch of hypocrite’s
Because they’re overpaid, you moron.
[quote comment="216100"][quote comment="216092"]Perhaps I read your post feel that spyware is spyware, whether it comes with an EULA stating so or not. And perhaps it could be because it’s barely worth using but certainly not worth paying $9.99 for?
Now isn’t it funny that there are loads of people (whole companies even) giving their software away for free and still make a pretty decent living off it? But perhaps that’s software people actually value, and not some POS spyware from a cry baby like you.[/quote]
Ok, spyware or not - the fact is, it clearly states what it does, and why it does it.
As I said, the code was put in there only to get some sort of statistics on legal vs pirated usage of the software. The database does not store any personal information alongside these stats.
Anyway, please name one such company and I’ll bet you I can find at least one product they are NOT giving away for free. Which is the same with me, I have a range of applications out there. About half are commercial and the other half are free - some of them even open-source.
Cry baby? I was simply pointing out the saying “It hurts no-one” isn’t exactly true. Piracy is eating away at someones profits, no doubt about it.[/quote]
Spyware is spyware whether it states it does so and why or not. This is exactly the attitude that is wrong with closed software.
Perhaps you need to read my post again. What exactly has giving software away for free has to do with giving ALL your *products* away for free? That’s not what I claimed, go twist someone else’s words.
In most cases piracy isn’t eating away at anything, a downloaded copy does NOT equal a lost sale. You’re just being an ignorant cry baby.
Bunch of F****** morons! WTF are they thinking. sue him and that will make us all stop uploading? They are just turning him into a martyr! well F*CK the FBI, RIAA and all the rest!
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