Police Charge ‘maVen’, ‘World Leader’ in Internet Movie Piracy
Written by enigmax on December 05, 2007Anyone into downloading pirate movies from the internet over the last few years likely knows that the label ‘maVen’ on a video release was usually a mark of a high quality ‘cammed’ movie. After dozens of major releases and investigations by the FBI and Canadian police, ‘maVen’ now faces 6 months in jail.
Between 2004 and 2006, not many movie release groups could keep up with the mighty ‘maVen’ when it came to releasing quality ‘Telesync‘ versions of pirated movies onto the internet. From great versions of the ‘Bourne Supremacy’, ‘Collateral’ and ‘Spongebob Squarepants’ in 2004, through to their 2005 releases ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ and ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ to name just a few, maVen consistently delivered the goods. 2006 saw ‘maVen’ releases of serious heavyweight movies including ‘Underworld Evolution’, ‘Mission Impossible 3′, ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’, ‘Cars’ and ‘Superman Returns’. (full list available here).
Then, at the end of July 2006, ‘maVen’ releases mysteriously came to an abrupt halt.
According to reports, an FBI investigation into ‘maVen’ had been running for some time and was handed to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in April 2006.
“He was referred to us by the FBI,” said RCMP Staff Sgt. Noel St-Hilaire. “They had an investigation in the States.”
In September 2006, it all started coming together for the RCMP. Assisted by information from the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association, police arrested Geremi Adam (now 25) outside a Montreal theater after allegedly ‘camming’ the movies “How to Eat Fried Worms” and “Invincible.” They seized his laptop and other equipment and later released him, only for him to be arrested again at another theater just a month later.
According to the police, Geremi Adam had been selling copies of movies on the internet using the alias ‘maVen’ (asking between $300 and $1,000 each), which were then re-sold on the web and the streets. There had previously been rumors on the internet that ‘maVen’ had been dealing with commercial pirates but both sets of allegations are yet to be proven. Although ‘maVen’ releases ceased, another group called ‘maVenssupplieR‘ immediately took up the slack.
Following Adam’s arrest came a 14 month wait as the police combed computer systems and equipment looking for evidence to convict him. He now faces two counts of distributing copyright material on the internet.
However, luckily for Adam, he was arrested before tough new legislation was introduced to crack down on movie cammers in Canada, so he will escape the most severe punishments, unlike Louis-Rene Hache who was caught recently by the police and faces two years in jail.
RCMP Staff Sgt. Noel St-Hilaire explained: “Unfortunately at the time there was no legislation that forbid anyone from filming in a cinema. There’s not much we could do then other than issue a warning.”
Geremi Adam will appear in court on 30th January 2008 where he will face the possibility of a $25,000 fine and six months in jail
Previously: Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk48)
Next: US Anti-Piracy Bill Increases Penalties for Copyright Infringement
109 Responses
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If he was selling, he deserves it, if he wasn’t, then we all just suffered a massive loss…
I never liked cam-versions anyway.
Put him to jail!
Throw away the key!
I don’t care if he’s buttf***ed!
:)
Everyone knows that cam quality sucks donkeybutt.
They say he was all about quality… hah!
Cam is spam!
It’s only annyoing…
Do it or leave it, but keep your hands off the money. You are no Robin Hood when you steal from the rich and give to the poor but at the same time seek riches for yourself. It seems as if he never quite got the story.
He can be glad that it is only going to be 6 months. Could have been much worse elsewhere …
My point exactly #3
Commercial Piracy is WRONG.
Its that type of shit that makes us look bad, cammed versions suck anyway, so he is not a hero.
Personal use only, thats the rule of pirates now.
Agreed. If he was selling someone else’s content, then fuck the pirating mother effer. Otherwise, they need to back the hell off (it isn’t piracy).
Also, why do the feds have time to do shit like this when they don’t have the time to enforce immigration laws? I guess because spending their time on this benefits corporations, while NOT spending their time enforcing immigration laws . . uh . . well, also benefits corporations.
I believe it is NOT a criminal offence to simply film a movie in a theatre. MPAA be damned! Our police officers need to be focusing on real offenders like murders, rapists, drunk driving, theft ETC….who are they really serving?
( I am on my soap box as I write ! )
Not the general public, but Ccorporate america. I can’t imagine any justification for a two year sentence short of holding up a liquor store. Thats just insane to the max! They’re not really hurting the general public by filming a movie. This is clearly not criminal, but a civil offence. This should be handled with a simple fine or such. I guess the MPAA has payed off our politicians. Law is not bought and sold by corporate America. These cams are not really a threat to them anyway due to the poor quality. When I watch one if its good I will go and see it on the BIG screen. ZThis proves that the only thing that matters to these corporations is money, their most precious in all the world. Our Justice system is a sham.
Fuck POLICE! Pirates Rules!
We are with you maVen!
i love how this blog could be used as an exhibit in court.
If he was selling he deserves to go down, and he will go down lightly.
Making money from the scene and all it’s warez is the reason we are at the place we are now.
The nerve of these groups to tag their nfos “If you like it, buy it, we did, we do not condone selling warez or making a profit from piracy” to only be nailed for doing just that.
And 300 to 1,000$ for a cam or TS? Are you freaking serious? who on earth would pay that for a release, even a fantasic 6 month early dvd retail? He should burn for that, any credibility the scene has is being lost when they catch them making money.
I don’t think file sharing, camming, or any of that should be considered a crime, and alot of people agree ON THE BASIS THAT NO MONEY IS ACTUALLY BEING LOST. Well with this bullshit that goes out the window.
Thanks for proving that the scene is nothing but a bunch of computer savey thugs and crooks, that’s really gonna help us stop the anti-internet freedom movement.
Way to fucking go, and a fellow Canadian to boot, I am truely ashamed.
omfg 300-1000 bux eatch? what a scumbag i would have settled for 100 eatch..
[quote comment="231485"]Thanks for proving that the scene is nothing but a bunch of computer savey thugs and crooks, that’s really gonna help us stop the anti-internet freedom movement[/quote]
Of course, it’s just one person, he doesn’t represent everyone and besides, the police say a *lot* of things, it doesn’t make it so :)
$300 and $1,000 ‘each’ for these cheesy movies?!!! LOL
He does so much effort, risking what is happing now everytime he cammed a movie. I think it’s not more than reasonable that he made some money from it.
So you all are believing that he sold them?
It couldn’t be the fact that their saying this so they can hit him with a harder sentence?
Selling? I dunno it’s possible he did have a good following. I always found his movies to be a lil dark with 80’s style picture. Only thing that was really good with his releases was the sound.
All in all, cops can shit on cam people all day for all I care. They doing us a favor. We wont have to deal with shitty cam releases and the cops can think they are actually fighting piracy.
Everyone wins.
1 man, 2 man, 3 man……. piracy can never b stopped. bullshit……..get a life. enjoy with pirates.
Soo…
Selling movies earns you 6 months…
Yet torrent sharing earns you years?
Okay, wtf?
For all the fucking idiots who say maVen suck because they cammed etc.. take a look at the screenshots.
http://www.vcdquality.com/index.php?genre=5&grp=1193
LOL! If anyone can (allegedly)sell a CAM/TS for $300-$1000 they deserve to be knighted!
CAM’s / TS releases all been sh@t after maVen stopped :(
maVen had the best cammed movies on the net. The only cams that did not suck. I heard he went to see movies over 6 times, so he could get the best ones of each movie. Then he put em together…just what I heard.
And when are you guys gonna get that he did not really sell his rips. Just like OiNK did not charge users to use the site. Ever heard of police/lobbyists lying to get their case?
I hope he escapes the max penalty. Good thing is, that the Canadian legal system will pretty much give you a slap on the wrist and you can keep going.
(NOTE: I hate movies, and do not download them. So I in no way really care about this, but I don’t think it’s fair that they are lying about what he did.)
The kind of people I can imagine that would pay 300-1000 for a movie are the ones that will go on to churn out tons of VCDs/DVDs of these movies which they’ll then sell to the less computer savvy. Places like Thailand have loads of shops that sell pirated movies and tourists buy dozens at a time. Granted, cams don’t always sell that well, but they do sell.
Who watches cammed movies anyway? I don’t.
To the newbies that think maVen put out crappy cammed versions, get your facts straight. All is stuff was TeleSynced with a professional camera. Lots of his releases looked better than TeleCine versions that came later.
His stuff was pure quality. i NEVER download CAMS. Whenever a maVen release came out, it was an AUTOMATIC download. Go to vcdquality.com and search for maVen or mVs releases and look at the samples to see what i mean.
The price of $300 to $1000 wasn’t a price to the everyday Joe Bloe. He was selling it to bootleggers that would then make copies and sell on the streets or in barbershops. I think that he shouldn’t have done that but i guess since he was taking a risk, he wanted some sort of reward. Pitty.
Sorry i shouldn’t have said mVs releases… Just maVen :)
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