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Streaming Site ‘Admin’ Freed, But Agrees 1 Year Hiatus With HBO

Following a complaint made by HBO, an administrator of a popular streaming TV show and movie portal was arrested by authorities in Chile during March this year. The 26-year-old student was subsequently charged with breaches of copyright law and forbidden from leaving the country. Now he’s been set free due to lack of evidence but is banned from accessing his former site and has to give copyright lectures in schools.

alvarezIn South America, Cuevana.tv is a very popular TV show and movie streaming portal. The site carries an index of popular mainstream content which can be accessed via a smaller browser addon which pulls TV shows and movies from cyberlockers around the world.

The site has its base in Argentina, where it is the country’s 65th most-popular site. However, it is in Chile, where it is the 135th most popular site, that it generated big headlines recently.

In March, an alleged operator of Cuevana.tv was arrested by Chilean police, the culmination of a two month investigation prompted by TV show giant HBO.

Christian Alvarez, a 26-year-old student, was claimed to be one of nine alleged administrators of Cuevana.tv. The other eight, authorities claim, are stationed in Argentina.

Alvarez, a student at the University of Chile currently pursuing a Master’s degree, denied being a site admin, instead describing himself as just a user with some extra privileges. He also insists that he made no money from his activities at Cuevana.tv.

Despite his protestations Alvarez was subsequently charged with breaches of copyright law and forbidden from leaving the country while the investigation against him continued.

For their part, HBO said they were very happy with the arrest of Alvarez and congratulated the police on their action to protect intellectual property rights. But things quickly went downhill. Following his arrest, nothing could be found to link Alvarez to infringement of HBO’s copyrights. Perhaps worst still, Cuevana.tv continued to operate uninterrupted. Yesterday there was more bad news.

“Luckily everything went well for me,” said Alvarez in a statement. “A decision was made to suspend the case, because there was no evidence to support the accusations.”

While the 26-year-old will now go free, it seems that HBO didn’t leave completely empty-handed. They only agreed to dismiss their action against Alvarez after he agreed to abide by a set of fairly unusual conditions.

Firstly, Alvarez had to agree not to visit Cuevana.tv at all for the next 12 months, nor get involved in any other similar sites. Secondly and perhaps most controversially, Alvarez will have to give lectures on copyright issues to children in schools.

Commenting on the case, a spokesperson for the Argentinian Pirate Party told TorrentFreak that Cuevana.tv provides an important alternative distribution platform for local independents competing against Hollywood domination.

“Hollywood’s movies occupy all the space in theaters leaving little opportunity or decent running lengths for local films,” he told us.

To this end, Tomas Escobar, the alleged owner of Cuevana.tv, tried to reach agreements with local producers and called out to them to distribute their films through his platform. During December 2011, Cuevana.tv hosted the exclusive official release of the local movie ‘Stephanie’ directed by Maximilian Gerscovich.

Following recent events it’s unclear whether Cuevana will be able to continue this initiative. Authorities in Chile say evidence gathered in the recent case will now be sent to Argentinian authorities for their investigation.

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  • Anon

    Did you have to pay to use the services of this site?

    • Keeling

      What does that have to do with it?  They found no evidence of “wrongdoing”.

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    • d-_-b

       no.

    • Abe Lincoln: Dick Slinger

       No evidence, no trial = guilty

  • Bukwf

    Lecture time! Comon guys sleep

    • Guest

      Maybe he can get TPB to write his lectures for him.

    • Uncle Sam(arionette)

       Lecture kids about how copyright is all a bunch of horse shit and tell them that sharing is one of the most natural human acts and all the motherfuckers against it are just in for getting money.

      • asdf

         oh, let me stop posting as Uncle Sam now

  • Anonymous

    What miserable human being would improve his life by agreeing to inflict the Gospel According to Chris Dodd on School Children? 

    More importantly, how socio-pathic must HBO be to extract such a concession?

  • http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell

    What? If he was not convicted of any crime, why should he kowtow to these guys?

    I would tell them where to stick it and refuse their terms, telling them to sue me in a civil court if they wanted to.

    • Anonymous

      Don’t perhaps live in Chile or Argentina? 

      Understand that there’s been times in that history when the most damaging legal evidence was presented while the testicles of the accused were wrapped tightly around his ears. 

  • Gae

    Nice, lectures on how to buy the products of private companies.
     

  • Guest

    “Now he’s been set free due to lack of evidence”

    Then he shouldn’t have been arrested in the first place.

    • Corporate OverLord

      In airy fairy world maybe but…..

      IRL: Corporations control the law.
      They get the law to arrest people, then prison if the law can find proof.

    • http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell

      Agreed. If there wasn’t enough evidence for a conviction, the prosecutor should have said “WHOA! No charges until you have more!” like they told my police officer cousin numerous times down in Arizona.

  • djnforce9

    Kind of sucks that there is still some kind of punishment even though there was a lack of evidence to even convict him in the first place. Now he has to go around and spread MAFIAA propaganda to who knows how many schools. Given what he was just doing (i.e. advocating and contributing to the sharing of our culture). Talk about a severe conflict of interest. I wonder how many of the students there will actually try and challenge whatever he says.

  • derp

    Brainwashing kids

    Level HBO

  • h33t

    I am sure HBO is employing a NAZI tactic for education of the youth
     

  • https://twitter.com/#!/OffensivAtheist bismarket

    One of the worst stories i’ve read here. They’re making this guy lie to children to avoid jail, & they expect us NOT to see the big studios as evil. The same week that Avengers break all previous box-office records with $600Million, all the while claiming that Betamax/ SORRY bootleg DVD’s & downloading is killing the Movies. Do they expect nobody to notice?

  • Anonymous Monkey

    “lvarez will have to give lectures on copyright ‘issues’ to children in schools.”
    He could talk about the ‘issues’ of copyright abuse by the powers that be, teaching the kids that these issues are gonna affect their decisions in the future if copyright law continues the way it is going. The ‘issues’, and the points he brings out, may very well NOT be the HBO party-line on the subject.

    Step 1 of 2 completed:
    1) Open mouth
    Step 2 of 2 in progress:
    2) Insert foot

    • Anonymous Monkey

      ** forgot to mention: the 2 steps are for the MAFIAA and related groups…

  • ChiliPepper
  • Anonymous

    this is just to give HBO the impression that it has won a major ‘piracy’ victory. exactly what is he to include in his lectures? does he have to say what the law is, what he thinks it is, what he thinks of it, what he thinks it should be, to be careful not to be caught if file sharing, what?

  • Guest

    What did the plugin exactly do? Does it just unlock ‘hidden’ links to cyberlockers and it’s a plugin just for adware or does it have more purpose than that such as a way to make it seem ‘legal’ under the eyes of the USA/Chile etc?

  • Anonymous

    Well this case sure is a mess and I am only thankful it was not the Police or Courts who imposed these strange conditions. I mean how could they restrict the freedom of someone life with no evidence of wrongdoing?

    The biggest flaw in this whole case was his arrest without any evidence that he has broke the law. Police certainly have the right to investigate but an arrest only follows evidence of law breaking.

    So the case has now collapsed due to the not uncommon lack of evidence which results in a whole lot of wasted time, resources and tax funding. This only goes to show that you need good evidence from day one.

    Well these conditions are what the Copyright Cartels usually do in what I call their “we have totally failed and this is our last shot at success” plan. It is always best to reply “no way and I will now sue YOU in Court”. That is what I once said to them and with no surprise they soon hit total failure and gave up. At least his conditions could have been worse but I would recommend he reject their propaganda schooling, Or better yet teach kids that “Sharing is Caring”

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  • Guest

    One thing that got my attention is the way authorities are handling it.

    It almost seems like a copyright case being handled in a lawful, fair and clean fashion instead of the usual sneaky approach that works on the grey area of the law or even disregards the law and the sovereignity of nations.
    Unless there’s an unmentioned process violation, or privacy violation or some other country that has no business there conducting the accusations only to have the case dismissed later this is almost a nicely handled situation.
    I’d like to see more of this on the so called first world countries.

    And giving copyrighy lectures wouldn’t be so bad depending on how it is given, I imagine a torrentfreak copyrighty lecture would be very good for the kids.
    The new generations are bieng born to a world full of chaos generated by an incoherent copyrighyt regime and it’s our duty to prepare them for it.

    • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

       Given the US’s attitude towards south american countries’ loose copyright laws, I can’t help but think the authorities were just going through the motions. They seem to pay lip service to the *AAs, but since there’s no real alternative and official media is too expensive for most consumers, that’s about as far as it goes.

      Sort of the way China responds to copyright infringement complaints.

  • Guest

    Who is the VP of HBO operation in Chile?

    Let’s kill him.

  • Anonymous

     “Luckily everything went well for me,” said Alvarez in a statement. “A decision was made to suspend the case, because there was no evidence to support the accusations.”

    Just like when the cops pick up the wrong guy, and when they release him, tell him not to do it again.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QfdHPoU300
    listen in at 1:05  Or listen to the whole song. It’s about police corruption/brutality in 52 Division, Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada.   We’re just making sure you don’t do it again…  DO WHAT AGAIN?!

  • YARIGHT

    wait a minute released due to lack a evidence but has to do what?
    I hate to say it but if they got nothing on you tell them to fuck off
    no really
    OR YOUR GUILTY which is it?

  • Anonymous

    I hope his copyright lectures go like the religious education lectures in schools, where teachers choose to teach creationism for about 30 seconds then go on to teach evolution for the rest of the lesson!

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  • Jason

    This is Bull Shit. No evidence with sentence. Glad I dont live there. I just canceled my HBO. Really I did. Fuck them.

  • Anonymous

    Glad I do not have Cable TV.And from now on I will make double sure to see HBO does not get my money anyways.
    I do Boycottt the MAFIAA so I only buy a used physical product.
    This Story is disgusting and shows how evil the MAFIAA are.
    Post this story around good so others will know.

  • MadAsASnake

    Looks to me that HBO were desparate to get something to call a “win”. If there is no bar on what says in those weird lectures then HBO have scored an own goal. As for not going to a web site? How do they propose to police that?

    The time has long past when enforcement agencies should take any notice of these empty allegations. They have better things to do than this, given that they are paid from taxpayer money.

  • ANONYMOUS

    Now he can lecture people how to find sites just like his own… Is HBO going to supervise his lectures? No. Go man, go! 

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  • john doe

    “They only agreed to dismiss their action against Alvarez after he agreed to abide by a set of fairly unusual conditions.”

    So HBO has no proof of anything and yet gets to choose what kind of penalty the court will apply?

    Wow, this guy needs some serious need of a real lawyer.

    • THst

      He must have been pushed into signing that before the case was dismissed. I was reading the original article and it says HBO was expecting the authorities could shutdown the site but they didn’t, so the resources HBO used in this case were wasted and all this agreement they got it’s like “Now that I am here, I won’t move till I get something”.

  • Amused

    If there was “no evidence to support the case”, why on earth would he even agree to do these lectures. No crime, no punishment. He should have told them all to go shag sheep on the Scottish Highlands.
    Maybe he’ll spend his lecturing days teaching kids how to use uTorrent most efficiently.

    • http://otester.myopenid.com/ PiRat

      It’s cuz he’s a 3rd worlder.

      • THst

         And you must live in a 1st world country but you’re just a low-life.

    • http://danielj.se MaTachi

      I think we has just really happy that he didn’t have to pay a gazillion dollars. I would also teach children useless stuff if I had to choose between that and ruining the rest of my life.

  • harry krishna

    tanks for the link – some real old stuff here

  • http://www.facebook.com/chillinfart Arturo Julio Zevallos Córdova
    • Myemail

      Is there oil in chile that hbo wants to go after next?

      Americans need to stop playing world police.

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  • Ure

    The guy offered the lectures because he wanted to; they will be about copyright and independant movies

  • Ginger Montano

    the police on their action to protect intellectual property rights.

     http://www.quotescout.com

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  • http://twitter.com/huronio Christian Álvarez

    I’ve NEVER made any complaint with HBO, the suspension was an agreement proposed by the prosecutors. HBO was just an spectator of this agreement, and they HAD to accept it.

    If you want to inform, pleas check the direct quote sources.

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