Net Pirate Hangs

For the first time, a person has been convicted for using torrents to pirate movies:

Chan Nai-ming, who used the alias ‘Big Crook’ on the peer-to-peer BitTorrent network, was found guilty in October 2005 of copyright infringement and attempting to distribute three Hollywood movies using the popular file-sharing software.

Well, you really shouldn’t use a name like ‘Big Crook’ – kinda hurts your possibility of defence by already labeling yourself as crook - and considering the movies you downloaded:

The three movies Chan was convicted of pirating were Dare-Devil, Miss Congeniality and Red Planet.

Yeah, you should be imprisoned in a federal ’pound you in the ass’ prison for distributing that shit to the rest of the world. Three months in jail isn’t enough.

MPAA Fights Piracy

Spiderman-3 Pirates Spanked by MPAA:

“33 people have been busted trying to tape Spider-Man 3. The MPAA sounded positively jubilant with its Gotcha! announcement detailing a crackdown in which theater employees helped nab camcorder-wielding audience members.”

33 people? And yet, they haven’t stopped the movie from getting onto the net and being downloaded. Yes, MPAA, give yourselves a nice pat on the back for your meaningless gesture:

Additional security and other preventive measures at worldwide premieres and screenings kept the film out of the hands of movie pirates prior to its release, which helped it shatter national and international box office records during its opening weekend.

Bullshit. Spiderman 3 would have broken box office records regardless of piracy, and regardless of what happened prior to opening weekend, the genie is out of the bottle and you can readily pirate it for viewing. Aaaarrrgh!

Besides, Spiderman 3 is not that great. It’s a poor sequel to the previous two. If you’re downloading, don’t waste your time.

Hard Out Here for Pirate

From Cnet’s News Blog, piracy is about to get a lot harder:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual-property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including “attempts” to commit piracy.

Our smuggling, pirating Founding Fathers would be proud that the government is expending all efforts to protect media conglomerates’ steady profits.