BitTorrent User Pleads Guilty
Here's a neat story I got off digg.com. It kind of made me nervous. I'm going to start using IP hiders when downloading.
Scott McCausland pleaded guilty today to “conspiracy to commit copyright infringement” and “criminal copyright infringement”. McCausland was a avid member of the “private” BitTorrent tracker Elitetorrents, that was taken down by the FBI, May 2005.
This case is the first BitTorrent related criminal enforcement in the US. 24 year old McCAusland could be sent to prison for a maximum of five years.
The plea was announced by Attorney General Fisher of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Buchanan of the Western District of Pennsylvania earlier today. In a response to this case U.S. Attorney Buchanan stated:
“This groundbreaking case demonstrates the commitment of the Department of Justice to prosecute individuals who use new technologies to undermine the copyright laws. It also serves as an example to those who believe that there is anonymity in cyberspace.”
When Elitetorrents was taken down May last year, the frontpage was replaced by this FBI takehome message.
FBI’s Operation D-Elite resulted in the permanent shutdown of the Elitetorrents community. The irony of this case is that it concerns a so called “private tracker” that is believed to be “more anonymous” than public trackers. Strange enough, there is no “we told you so” press release from the MPAA yet, but I bet it wont take long.
McCausland is scheduled to be sentenced on December 12, 2006.
You probably already know my opinion on this so I'm not going to express it but here are some responses from other people on this issue. I tried to post comments that represented both sides of the issue.
Sigh, this is my good friend Scott. He's my girlfriends cousin. Theres alot more to the story than just the fact he ran his private tracker but i'm not going to go into that since it might be gagged by the court and i don't want to see him face any more trouble than he already is. But regardless, he's facing 2 years in a medium security federal penitentiary for copyright infringement with out monetary gain.
Its utter junk. It makes me so sick that our country has been so bought off by corporations they can dictate laws that will sentence a brilliant young man to prison for years and destroy the life he has afterwards for imaginary profit loss of xxxx company.
I seriously hope the real people behind why he's going to jail suffer dearly for their actions.
So that person clearly supports illegal downloading, now for the next commenter. For those of you who don't know riaa stands for Recording Industry Association of America and mpaa stands for Motion Picture Association of America.
i know we all hate the riaa and mpaa, but at least have a little sense. when you download files over BT you know you're breaking the law, you're obtaining someone's work without paying for it, you're just not likely to get caught. when you are really involved in a torrent site you need to know the law and know that you are on the bad side of it.
say what you will about whether or not they actually lost money, "oh i wouldn't have seen the movie anyway". it doesn't matter.
So THAT person thinks all people who illegally download things should be thrown in jail.
I counted up all the comments and here are the statistics.
18 out of 28 people thought that the punishment was injust, ridculous, and that illegal downloading is perfectly fine.
5 out of 28 people think it's a terrible thing to illegally download
5 out of 28 people are unsure of what to think.
Very interesting huh? Keep in mind though that this is an internet geek site where 2/3 of the people who surf it probably are downloading movies right now.
I read in Wired Magazine that 67% percent of teens see nothing wrong with illegal downloading. Needless to say MPAA was not happy with America's teens.
-Moderngeek™
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