BitTorrent Uploader Escapes Jail, Loses Job
Written by enigmax on September 17, 2008Another member of EliteTorrents has been sentenced. An Duc Do, an uploader on the site and former student of Drexel University, yesterday escaped jail but was sentenced to 3 years probation, a $15,000 fine and 400 hours of community service instead. As a result he loses his job at Lockheed Martin.
Back in November 2007 we reported on the plight of An Duc Do, an ex-uploader at the now-defunct EliteTorrents BitTorrent tracker.
Duc Do, was found guilty of uploading the movies Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, The Flight of the Phoenix and King Arthur to a seedbox, for the benefit of the site’s members
Unlike previous defendants Scott McCausland and Grant Stanley, Duc Do escapes a jail sentence. Instead, after pleading guilty to conspiracy and copyright infringement charges, the former Drexel University student was given 3 years probation, a $15,000 fine and 400 hours of community service.
According to prosecutor Floyd Miller, Duc Do wasn’t as dedicated as other uploaders on Elite: “They threatened to kick him out of the organization because he wasn’t uploading as much as some of the other pirates were doing,” he said.
However, despite escaping jail, the future doesn’t look immediately bright for Duc Do. After getting a degree in computer science from Drexel University, he later landed a job at the worlds largest defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, developing military war-games. This conviction means that Duc Do will have to resign from his job.
Other convictions in the case include those of Daniel Dove who was recently jailed for 18 months. Site admin Grant Stanley, then aged 23, pleaded guilty to the same offenses as Scott and received the same sentence and a $3,000 fine. Other admins and uploaders who also pleaded guilty include Sam Kuonen, then aged 24, and 22 year old Scott D. Harvanek.
Previously: 10 Most Pirated TV-Shows on BitTorrent
Next: Danish ISPs Reject Anti-Piracy Proposals
58 Responses
doesn’t it just sicken you that a corporation is acting like a police and ripping people of their lives over a cheap product?
I fail to see how making your customers bankrupt, lose their jobs, and lose their lives makes them want to be more loyal customers… If anything, this business module has been used before… I believe we called it the Mafia, and at one time people got sick of them and fought back…
Sucks to live in US :/
Move to Europe, its not better ;)
Floyd Miller usually deals with tax related cases. Interesting.
The punishment is way too harsh for the so called crime of sharing. Paid off corrupt puppet politicians creating laws for their corporate whores. File Sharing is a civil disobediance on a large scale. It is not & should not be treated as a criminal offence. Millions of people alone in the US file share. The coporations need a new distribution method. Their method is outdated from the 1950s. You can’t criminilize all your customers because of the technology of the PC enables people to share. Suing people, your best customers is not the answer. This makes people HATE them.
Sounds like a double win!
Fired from a horrible company, and escaped jail!
Dont get me wrong, the fine etc is totally uncalled for. Glad he lost his job though.
Years from now,- maybe a century or two (provided things work out), our time on earth now will be spoken of as the Dark Ages of Technology.
I was watching this 3 part doc on trans-humanism, which I loathe, and it struck me that you can copy ANYONE’S DNA, but damned if you copy their CDs.
Turmoil, maybe, but not the Dark Ages. Ant i have a feeling it’ll be more like a decade or 2. The situation is a bit too tense to allow for more.
Put on your tin foil hats people!
when will the people understand that all this corporate stuff is simply bad for your health. ask yourself – is it even good for anything, except making more money for the bosses?
move to a third world country..its safer…no one will catch u when u are living in zimbabwe or somalia..
#11 – Tard.
poorly written lede; makes it seem like he broke out of prison…
#13 – agreed
He’s a fugitive now?
Need more show of solidarity towards EliteTorrents people. Something that I feel is missing is solidarity – nobody stands up for anybody else in the P2P “community” (if you could call it one).
Roze
http://www.28chan.org/apstdt/
^ That’s what she said!
Admitted to “conspiracy”… yea, I bet that was not forced on him.
Wheres the 2nd gunman MAFIAA?
oh yea, probably aimed at your heads, keep pissing people off.
Heh, came here all ready to wish the guy luck in continuing to elude the authorities after he “escaped”, like the two before me I thought he was on the run :)
/CJ
http://www.eZee.se
stupid copyright crap. it just gets in the way of everything and hinders innovation. get a new business model or get out. you attack the guy for uploading 3 movies… and its not like he was actually making money off it.
Duc Do our sympaties are with you!
#15 – nah was poorly written, but would make for a cool tv show
“convicted of distributing torrents, escaped from jail Duc Do now leads a life of danger an excitement traveling the world and solving crimes”
F**K AMERICAN CORPORATIONS!
This shit sickens me. I love America but F**K the Government.
not mafia, feudalism
corporations aint government. yet.
Is that like having a wife and a mistress?
without a job i would just sit around all day thinking of ways to physicly hurt the people who did that to me.
a little pain goes a long way.
The only thing that does the copyright law is to protect the interest of the corporations (middlemen) and never to the artist or creator. This copyright law is a farse.
The only way is the civil disobedience, and as I already have said before… you take all of your RIAA albums and your MPAA movies, make torrents and share… while more and more people do this, better. The idea is to make all the RIAA and MPAA catalogs free and available on the internet as public domain… but don’t forget to hide your IP address and using encrypted connections (tunnels) for hiding your identity. Also, don’t buy any RIAA albums or MPAA movies… each time that you buy a RIAA album or MPAA movie you are supporting these criminals corporations… please, don’t support these companies, don’t buy or consume their products!!!
I don’t understand the difference between him and the thousands of ordinary torrent seeders. Why was he singled out for prosecution, even though he had a very minor role in EliteTorrents?
Was An Duc Do someone with Scene access who was seeding torrents of previously-unreleased 0-day material?
Was he a Scene member himself, in addition to his role in EliteTorrents?
#27
“The only thing that does the copyright law is to protect the interest of the corporations (middlemen) and never to the artist or creator.”
please explain how copyright doesn’t protect artists. i can’t wait to hear how it! i’m sure you’re going to wow us all with your knowledge on the subject. please, go ahead, the floor is yours…
WONDER WHO THE GUY RATTED ON FOR THEM TO GET LIGHT ON HIM
You guys are dumb, he continually broke the law. So he deserves everything he gets.
Dumb Americans.
If a law is unjust, the people have every right to rise against it. At least that’s what Ol’ Benjamin Franklin said, and what was done during the civil rights movment.
Copyright law has gone haywire, and needs to be reformed.
I thought it was a little more exciting, thought he actually BROKE OUT of jail. That would have been friggin sweet.
What you are doing is unjust, noob.
Stop downloading and uploading copyrighted material which you have not paid for. You are breaking the law.
B.Franklin was an imbecile. Along with all those other American retards.
At Policeman.
Those who believe in the government will be crushed by the government.
You are obviously a ’save you from yourself’ spineless idiot. You believe that you are too stupid to know whats good or bad for you, so let someone else decide. Then once decided, you label people as the ‘category’ they fall into.
You have a simple mind, with an outlook of a train tunnel filled with fog. You are not capable of thinking for yourself, you are a slave, robot drone, lackey, follower.
How does it feel to be completely controlled?
@34
Fuck you,retarded…
Sharing is not illegal, in any way, it’s a part of the human nature… or maybe, I assume that you are a communist, because your comments violate my universal right to do with my private property that I want, and one of these rights is to share with who I want.
@29 (post 29)
Anonymous 29 said:
“please explain how copyright doesn’t protect artists. i can’t wait to hear how it! i’m sure you’re going to wow us all with your knowledge on the subject. please, go ahead, the floor is yours…”
———————-
Well, one of two:
Or you are an imbecile uninformed, or you are an extraterrestrial…
This has been discussed MANY TIMES here on TorrentFreak about this issue… I ask me if you took the time to read those articles, obviously NOT.
This is not a secret for anyone that the record industry (for example) is the owner of the works from its artists, worse, when you sign a contract with any traditional disc label you transfer all the rights of your creation to them… but hey!!! it is not something that you might decide… it’s an imposition, and this unjust model has been imposed of this way for around the last 40 years (maybe more?).
Also, it’s not a secret that the traditional disc labels (who conform the RIAA, and who own the works from the artists) live of STEALING and EXPLOITING the hard work from the artists, paying to the artists only 7% to 14% from the sale of each album… and ALL WE know that these criminal corporations justify their continued theft with the obsolete copyright law… It’s a reality, and this is the way as all of these illegalities are supported.
That is because is a fact that in a lot of cases, the copyright law doesn’t protect to the artist or creator… instead protects to the middlemen who own the intellectual property.
Also, I have had the opportunity of interacting with musicians, for around the last 10 years, as consequence of my work… One of them, who was as a brother for me and great musician and artist, and who had a music band, his work was completely stolen by a spanish disc label… In one of the clauses of the contract (imposed by the disc label) was written that if the sales of the album don’t exceeded a certain number, the disc label will take ALL the profits (100%) as compensation by “supposed” losses.
Well, that number was not small, but the band (whose music was good) managed to sell around 97% of that amount. The disc label took all the sales and profits as compensation, and they did that BIG theft of “legal” way because that contract, based on copyright law, protect them.
I have another similar stories from musicians that I knew.
Also, I have another similar story from a well known colleague, who design electronic equipment… well, a “supposed honest” financier stole all of his creation, with a contract based on copyright law that even the same creator (my colleague) didn’t have any rights…
Particularly, since all this shit, I decided don’t support any traditional disc label, because I consider (based in my experiences) that they (the disc labels) are vulgar thieves, that don’t deserve any respect at all.
One day, the media corporations are going to pick on the wrong person. That person is going to snap and pay them a little visit with an Uzi. Look how often it happens in schools.
seed boxes operated by a torrent site are criminal piracy because the site owner is providing content for his own network
filesharing is about distributed peers sharing their data and not about the illegal supply of digital content by a central source
if you are providing copyright content for a site-owned seed box then you are breaking criminal law
we do not want software pirates in filesharing. the pirates are dragging the whole scene down and making it difficult for everyone to go about their legal filesharing
http://www.h33t.com where pirates are made to walk the plank
@Policeman
———————————
Policeman said: (post 34)
“B.Franklin was an imbecile.”
Here the only imbecile, dumb and especially ignorant is your person, Policeman.
The action of disobeying an unjust law (as in this case) is supported not only by Benjamin Franklin, also by the ideas of Gandhi and especially Henry David Thoreau, the author of the ‘civil disobedience’ concept.
The civil disobedience is a legitimate right, and in these circumstances, (where a extreme corrupt government and corporations believe that have the right to control the life of the persons) is something essential, and absolutely neccesary.
———————————
Policeman said: (post 34)
“Stop downloading and uploading copyrighted material which you have not paid for. You are breaking the law.”
Well, this contradicts all the BASIC CONCEPTS about private property.
If I have a good, I am in my legitimate right of sharing this, with who I want, and IN THE WAY as I want; so giving a physical copy of an album as a gift to a friend or sharing it with people on the internet.
Also, this have not nothing to do if my goods are bought by me or if some of them I have acquired free as gifts that friends or family have given to me… In either of two ways, it’s MY PRIVATE PROPERTY.
You sound as another stupid and ignorant moron that really believe in all that NONSENSE and LIE that sharing is stealing… Idiot!!!
———————————
Policeman said: (post 31)
“he continually broke the law. So he deserves everything he gets.”
No, you are very very wrong… that guy doesn’t break the law… or maybe, you are so fucking retarded that you REALLY believe that any person who shares any good with other persons deserves to go to jail?
———————————
Wow!!! my response is awaiting moderation (post 40) censorship of content on TF… that irony…
HA HA!!
piracy criminal think they are going to escape jail
now an overweight black man will make him his next wife!
#37
Sounds like your Spanish band friends got screwed. That’s their fault for (obviously) not hiring a lawyer and/or being desperate enough to take a shitty deal from some (more than likely) no-name, fly-by-night label. There is no more prevalence of shitty deals in the music or movie business than there is in any other business. You act like being taken advantage of is something the RIAA and the MPAA invented. Please.
Furthermore your assertion that these conglomerates are merely middle men who sit back and count their millions while doing nothing…is absurd. Surely in your heart of hearts you must realize you are talking out of your asshole? When a band signs to a label or a screenplay/project is sold into the studio system, those two entities, (among a litany of other things) invest THEIR OWN MONEY into the band/movie/project in the HOPES that they‘ll see a return on their investment. Do you really think that the people who risk the most shouldn’t get the most IF the project actually turns a profit? Are you really that much of an idiot?
Also, you never explained how getting rid of copyright and thus the 7%-14% that comprises the artist’s income take will…help them. But don’t worry, I wasn’t expecting you to. Thanks for proving me right.
By the title of this article, I thought someone actually ESCAPED jail. Hahah. Either I suck at reading or that’s a terribly worded title.
This country is totally going down the wrong track, as is the world is a whole.
The fact is that we are at the point in our development as a species and people where we do NOT need money or ‘corporations’ anymore.
too bad all three of those movies sucked miserably. Sucks he lost his job. It will probably be hard for him to obtain a job with a conviction on the books, which is the worst part.
no. that’s the best part.
have fun working at jiffy lube! oh the pirates like for ye!
@43
43 said:
“Also, you never explained how getting rid of copyright and thus the 7%-14% that comprises the artist’s income take will…help them. But don’t worry, I wasn’t expecting you to. Thanks for proving me right.”
“Getting rid of copyright” was not (and never was) the point of the discussion… but as you have very bad memory, I will remember to you which REALLY was the original and ONLY point that originated this discussion:
According to your words:
“please explain how copyright doesn’t protect artists”
I already explained IN DETAIL and accurately to you, (and even with examples of the real life) in my post 37 because copyright law doesn’t protect artists, nor their works; but you attempted to dissuade the attention to another topic that was not NEVER established, for trying to hide your lack of arguments for your defence in the discussion… shame on you, really…
Instead, you would have to respond to me why the actual record industry decided more than 40 years ago (and they have not changed this) to compensate to the artists with so few royalties. Definitively, I don’t understand as people who don’t create nothing (the disc labels) stolen on average 86% of the profits from the works of the artists… Could you explain me this BIZARRE and ILLEGAL situation?
With respect to the rest of all that nonsense that you said in your post 43, I simply don’t care… you simply try to justify and protecting a corrupt industry, which has lived (and lives) of speculating from the artists.
shame on me? what are you, sixteen?
my claim is that copyright, in the case of musicians PROTECTS them to their 7%-14%. you seem to be asserting that it doesn’t…which is retarded.
copyright is vital to an artist’s livelihood.
and yes I think musicians deserve a bigger cut. and yes i think, by and large, the producer conglomerates are greedy and abuses occur like in any other business…but none of that negates the need for copyright.
He was an “uploader” to a private tracker that was not secure, and was subsequently raided by the FBI. Now, when I use the term “uploader”, this does not mean he was simply downloading torrents and seeding them (uploading) as most members do. He, in fact, was an integral cog in the wheel on how EliteTorrents operated – he actually uploaded the “illegal” torrent files to the site, and thus was the original (initial) seeder. The FBI prioritized exactly who they were going to prosecute, and it was clear that ‘uploaders’ and staff members were on the top of the list.
Mr. An Duc Do could have easily avoided this entire fiasco if he simply used a paid VPN (anonymizing) service to connect to the tracker. He was careless, and when the FBI ran through the site’s log and admin files, they easily connected his username to his school (or home) IP address, which made him instantly traceable. And since he was considered as a “staff member” (with uploading privileges) he was immediately targeted.
The only thing ‘copyright’ is supposed to protect is from people SELLING other peoples hard work.
Other then that, everything is fair game. Fuck your restrictions, fuck your rules, and fuck your ideals.
If you dont want something to be shared, dont share it with the world.
Media can no longer be valued like diamonds, technology has changed it, whether you like it or not. So STFU about your big company bull shit, there time is over. For years they had the upper hand and there was nothing we could do about it whether we LIKED IT or NOT, the tides have turned and theres much payback to be done.
If they were no pirates, there would be no competition, no innovations, no creativity. There would only be THEM and there control.
There power is money and domination of the market, except when you render there power useless with millions of little people eating away at there power source. I am proud to be apart of the swarm that devours there corrupt industry.
I am proud to be a pirate.
Welcome to GovCorp! Before you can use this computer terminal, you must raise the appropriate arm containing your identification chip. Please hold still while we scan your implant. Thank you, you have succesfully been identified as John Smith. You have one hour of allotted time left for this week. We hope you enjoy the approved media that we have selected for you. Have a nice day!
I agree with zee,if he made no money from this,is it really that serious?I guess for some greedy fat fks it is.Because of a serious illness,I can’t work,funds are very short and I depend on the generosity of uploaders/filesharers without them I would go starck raving mad…Bless the sharers,fk the hoarders…..
@49
49 said:
“my claim is that copyright, in the case of musicians PROTECTS them to their 7%-14%. you seem to be asserting that it doesn’t…which is retarded.”
HA HA HA… That a ridiculous response…
The ONLY retarded thing is to think that the ‘copyright law’ is fair because this favors to the disc label instead the artist.
“If they were no pirates, there would be no competition, no innovations, no creativity.”
this is the single most idiotic statement i’ve seen on this website so far.
any chance that any scumbags in the recording and/or movie industries will lose their jobs, do community service, and be fined for taking my money for awful products that I couldn’t try before buying? didn’t think so.
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There are so many references how people were misstreated in USSR, however apparently in West is ok to ruin people’s lifes and drive them into poverty and suicide.
No worries, soon everything not owned by either large corporations or governments will be made illegal.
Pathetic.
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