BitTorrent Site Admin Sent to Prison
Written by Ernesto on October 26, 2006The 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 the work he put 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”.
Operation D-Elite (they love word tricks) was orchestrated by the FBI with a little help from the MPAA in May 2005, and resulted in the shutdown of one of the largest private BitTorrent trackers at that time.
FBI Take home Message that replaced the Homepage of Elitetorrents after the shutdown
Two months ago we reported that Scott McCausland pleaded guilty to committing the same crimes. Scott is to be sentenced on December 12, 2006, and invited everyone who sympathizes with him to write a letter to the judge on his behalf.
In a response to the present case US Attorney John Brownlee said:
“This is the first criminal enforcement action against copyright infringement on a P2P network using BitTorrent technology. We hope this case sends the message that cyberspace will not provide a shield of anonymity for those who choose to break our copyright laws.”
Stay tuned…
Previously: Underage Finnish BitTorrent admins fined $60,000 each
Next: Free full-length horror films on BitTorrent.com
154 Responses
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That sucks… If I knew how to hack i would FUBAR those assholes. Fuck, now I’m probably on the feds terror list.
That Sucks! Jail? WOW.
Scary… it feels good not to live in the US…
Dam that rele sucks….. if those bastards ever come after me ill make sure i dont give up without a fight even if it means destroying my hdd as they break in the door
You might get a bigger sentence for destroying evidence, interfering with a federal investigation and perverting the cause of justice than you would for copyright infringement…
This begs the question why isnt the FBI more focused on real crooks?
“This begs the question why isnt the FBI more focused on real crooks?”
Dude…if they put the REAL crooks in jail, there wouldn’t be anyone left to sign their paychecks.
Wow, it seems that I have a little idea of what to expect come December.
I hope he’s in touch with his feminine side and or his inner bitch..
All the more reason to support the pirate party.
I hope people outside America start Rampant Piracy drive to protest against these undemocratic acts and bring down the empires source of evil powers
[quote comment="17469"]Wow, it seems that I have a little idea of what to expect come December.[/quote]
hi skot,
thought i’d say wassup. i denied them 2 times here… holding out! good luck man
im glad he went down! may his thieving soul rot in hell!
most of us are smart enuff not to be caught….all n00bs must die!!!
man.. that’s harsh.. :(
dude he was anything but a noob.
i was a member on that site. god that shit scared the hell outta me
the reason they got fucked was they published on the front page fr everyone, not just members to see, was HEY WE GOT STAR WARS III
before it hit theaters. they were on of the first sites to obtain the movie also, before the scene…seeing how it was a p2p rls from the guy inside of lucas studios.
how is that mr steve?
does it feel good?
altho i had nothing to do with it.
The annoying thing is that George doesn’t mind one bit if it escapes to the fans a little early. More people get to see it and (probably) he makes a little more cash because of the word of mouth.
I think that it’s interesting to see that he’s been taken out of the picture, but I just want to point out that while he may have seemed like a big name in the Bit Torrent scene, I have to admit never having heard of Elitetorrents… Maybe I’m not “h4×0r”iffic enough for this kind of piracy, but it seems to me that there are just WAY too many admins like this guy for it to be worth the time, money, and resources required to take down at least a substantial number of these guys. I’m not trying to say “more power to the pirates,” but you can’t ignore the fact that this is all a pretty worthless endeavor.
And on that note…
http://img221.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hahahahapirateskq5.swf
so is my tom waits cd done yet?
Well this just makes the world unsafe from prosecution and persecution.
Recently the US introduced laws that allowed them to extradite and imprison anyone who they considered terrorist and hold them in prison for an indefinite amount of time.
This means that now that the US government is able to imprison people who use or support pear to peer applications, then that would mean theoretically the US can consider anyone who uses or supports P2P applications a terrorist since they can reason that these actions divert funds away from legitimate companies and supposedly into terrorist actions. And to make matters worse, since now they can extradite and imprison anyone, they can now imprison anyone in the world and effectively hold them in POW camps for as long as they like.
The world ain’t safer, not from terrorists or from certain governments.
From all, that looks very much the same thing they did in Europe: personal attack on hub operators. There are several people prosecuted over here for eMule servers and BitTorrent hubs - but only PirateBay story got the attention. Seems RIAA/MPAA/IPFI filter all traffic for what the people download themselves, then press local police to do searches in the people houses/servers and use the evidence against them. Since people run the servers their IPs I presume are pretty static. They have failed with PirateBay - but last I heard eMule guy got beaten pretty hard, regardless of procedural errors made by prosecutors and no evidence of infringement.
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