BitTorrent Site Admin Sent To Prison

[Amailer]

Quote:

"The 23 year old Grant Stanley has been sentenced to five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention, and a $3000 fine for his role in the private BitTorrent tracker Elitetorrents. This ruling is the first BitTorrent related conviction in the US. Stanley pleaded guilty earlier this year to 'conspiracy to commit copyright infringement' and 'criminal copyright infringement.' He is one of the three defendants in the Elitetorrents operation better known as 'Operation D-Elite.'"

O.o wow, thats crazy, I visited Elite Torrents a couple of times. I think they should have just fined him a big sum of money- why jail?

[rdrake]

That's crazy. If they wanted to protect their copyrighted content they'd put some sort of digital rights management on it or something. Oh, wait...

[[Gandalf]]

Quote:

'conspiracy to commit copyright infringement'

Sounds like something anyone could be accused of...

Maybe we'll be hearing more about such cases now?

[md]

Unless Elitetorrents was actually storing a copy of the torrent's contents; or expressly advertising itself as having copyright infringing torrents, then this is not a god sign. Copyright is a civil matter, unless you are committing large acts of copyright infringment and making lots and lots of money off it then it's not criminal and you *cannot* be sent to jail.

I haven't read the articles about this one, but it sounds an awful lot like money buying things it shouldn't be able to (and not a lot either... the RIAA is actually rather small).