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BBC reports that computer programmer Philip Danks for has been jailed for 33 months after recording Fast And Furious 6 from the back of a cinema after a judge in Wolverhampton ruled that the defendant uploaded the movie, which was downloaded 700,000 times. As well as putting the film on the internet, Danks offered to sell copies of the film using his Facebook profile.
The judge who sentenced Danks said his behavour was "bold, arrogant and cocksure". Police said that Danks had continued to illegally distribute movies after his arrest in May last year. Fraud investigators quickly traced him after they noticed his online ‘Thecod3r’ tag attached to the video was identical to his profile on dating site Plenty of Fish. Danks was arrested by police after a special ‘webwatch’ team was set up by LA-based Universal Pictures, who raided his home in Bloxwich, Walsall on May 23 – less than a week after the video surfaced online.
The court heard that despite making some money from sales of the film on Facebook and by personal delivery his real motive was ‘street cred’. "The first person with a pirated version attracts much kudos," said Ari Alibhai, prosecuting on behalf of the Federation Against Copyright Theft. "He wanted recognition from the community."
(Score: 1, Troll) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Sunday August 24 2014, @03:50PM
Until copyright hurts average, everyday people, no one will care about reform. I've always hoped that crackdowns would be brutal and have a real impact on the everyday lives of just average, ordinary people. I wanted to see the day when fathers are dragged out of their houses at dawn by the police and taken to jail, leaving their families and neighbors to wonder what happened. Until copyright enforcement hurts people, no one will care about the issue. They don't care about walled gardens and how the public domain largely ceased to exist after 1930. It just doesn't have an impact on anyone's daily life, so it's a non-issue. Some day it will be too late and a few copyright-industry companies will control all of culture and knowledge.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)