Pirating movies is wrong and illegal, nothing new in that. But it is quite rare that someone is caught and convicted considering the amount that gets pirated each day. The 25 year-old computer programmer Philip Danks has now learned the hard way that it can hit anyone and has just received 33 months jail time.
Philip had recorded Fast & Furious at the cinema in Walsall, near Birmingham with his camcorder and then uploaded it to a torrent site. It was then downloaded 779,000 times, a number Universal Pictures claims to have cost them almost £2.3 million.
He didn’t just have the movie uploaded to KickassTorrents and other torrent sites, he also sold physical copies of the film for £1.50 each, making him about £1000 in total. His sisters ex-boyfriend, that helped him upload the movie, was sentenced to 12 months community order with 120 hours of unpaid work while Philip himself got 33 month of jail time after pleading guilty to three charges of distributing pirate copies of films on Thursday under the Fraud Act 2006 and the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.
“Seven billion people and I was the first. F*** you.” was his message on Facebook two days after his arrest.
Sentencing, Recorder Keith Raynor said: “This was bold, arrogant and cocksure offending. Your approach to the film industry was made clear in the posting you made on Facebook two days after your arrest.”
Detective Sergeant Rod Rose, from West Midlands Police’s Economic Crime Unit, said: “We assisted the Federation Against Copyright Theft throughout this case with search warrants, forcing entry to addresses and making arrests. Fraud comes in many disguises and ultimately affects all of us.”
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Images courtesy of fast&furious.
Meanwhile rapists, child abusers, murderers and members of parliament who regularly defraud constituents out of hundreds of thousand of pounds are free to keep walking around.
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