Of course, Warner worked hard to hinder piracy, even handing out night-vision goggles in Australia to thwart cammers. Over in the United States, however, much lower-tech means were used to identify an individual attempting to record the movie.

The movie industry already had their eye on the East Glenn Movie Theater in Lee’s Summit since they believed an illicit copy of the Will Smith movie ‘Hancock’ had previously been recorded there. After noticing a man wearing a long winter coat in the summer, on July 18 on-site MPAA investigators grew suspicious that he was up to no good.

They confronted 42 year-old Robert L. Henderson, seized his video camera and called the police who arrived shortly later and arrested him.

Henderson’s camera was found to contain footage of The Dark Knight, Hell Boy 2 and The Chronicles of Narnia – Prince Caspian. While conducting a search of his home, police found several computers and 1,240 counterfeit DVDs.

On October 7th 2009, Henderson pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Fernando J. Gaitan to criminal copyright infringement under the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act 2005 – the same legislation that sent the EliteTorrents admins and uploaders to prison.

Last week, Judge Gaitan ordered Henderson to serve 24 months in federal prison along with 3 years probation for recording the movie. In addition he must pay $24,738 in fines – $19.95 for each of the pirate movies seized from his home.

“The theft of films by camcording is a serious threat to the health of the motion picture industry and the 2.4 million Americans it employs,” said Mike Robinson, Sr. Vice President of Content Protection at the MPAA. “This is an appropriate sentence for a very serious crime, and we hope it will serve as a warning to would-be movie thieves that they will face severe consequences for engaging in these activities.”

Despite all the efforts, The Dark Knight still leaked online in cam and other formats and went on to become the most-pirated movie of 2008 with 7,030,000 downloads on BitTorrent alone.

The US is extremely tough on ‘cammers’ these days, an attitude which isn’t shared by the Australians. Recently an 88 year-old man who tried to record Avatar wasn’t arrested, but allowed to carry on watching the movie.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The Pirate Bay now joins the hype, as the renamed their site into “The Pirate Bat“, and put up a new logo that links to a search for “The Dark Knight”.

A week ago the police arrested a man who tried to record the movie with a camcorder. However, they couldn’t stop all cammers, and it didn’t take long before a leak got onto various BitTorrent sites. Rlslog reported last week that a copy of “The Dark Knight”, was published by a release group called “TradingStandards”. As usual, reports say that the quality of the leak is pretty poor. There has since been a Telesync of the movie released, which means if nothing else, the sound will be better.

This is not the first time that The Pirate Bay has rebranded its site to piss off content owners. When Apple’s OSX x86 leaked. in July 2005, they renamed the site to the Pear Bay, and linked to the leaked torrent. Back in July 2005 The Pirate Bay put up a logo inspired on Grand Theft Auto for the release of their new website, the Grand Theft Bay. Apart from being creative with their logo’s TPB is known for their hilarious responses to copyright owners who request takedowns.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Hindering piracy of the movie was always high on the list for Warner and it handed out night vision goggles in Australia in an attempt to thwart ‘cammers’ – people who record movies in theaters. In Australia ‘cammers’ are asked to leave if they are caught by theater staff, in the United States things are a little different.

According to reports, on Friday morning Eastglen 16 Theater employees grew suspicious that a man was recording, or ‘camming’ the “Dark Knight” movie. Following movie industry guidelines they called police at around 9:40pm, who arrived shortly after.

Lee’s Summit police confirmed that they found evidence that the 40-year-old man from Grandview, Mo. had recorded the movie so they arrested him. A few hours later the police went to the man’s house and conducted a search where they say they found pirate movies on DVD.

According to the MPAA, several other movies have been recorded at the Eastglen 16 theater, but at this stage it is not known if the man is affiliated with any particular group or was acting alone. Police have not released the name of the suspect.

Inevitably, and despite the best efforts of Warner, Rlslog reports that a copy of the movie has been leaked onto the Internet by a release group called “TradingStandards” who apparently ‘stole’ it from a P2P group called ‘DEViSE’ who actually ‘stole’ it from 2Bros – quite confusing. But anyway, by most accounts the quality is pretty poor and not worth bothering with at all, so Warner will be happy.

Considering the popularity of the movie, maybe this time it just has to be the big screen.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.