Movie ‘cammer’ faces 5 years
p2pnet news | crime:- A Georgia man is facing the prospect of years in prison and fines of $750,000 after admitting he was involved in ‘camming’ movies and removing ‘copyright management information’ from DVDs.
The price for removing management information from a DVD in the US? Five years in prison, 2 more than for camming movies.
In the latest of 36 convictions coming out of the FBI’s Operation Copycat, 21-year-old Arshad Madhani of Duluth, Georgia, is the third person to be convicted for recording or ‘camming’ a movie in a theater.
During his plea hearing, he confessed to being involved in the sourcing and distribution of movies and software. He also admitted organizing and aiding others to ‘cam’ movies still in theaters.
The list of movies includes titles such as ‘Cars’, ‘Monster House’, ‘Firewall’, ‘Click’, ‘The BreakUp’ and sundry (forgettable) others. It’s claimed the movies were then uploaded to servers for other users to download, after they’d paid Madhani cash’.
For the camming, he’s looking at three years in prison, a $250,000 fine and two years of supervised release. Unfortunately, this offense doesn’t carry the longest sentence Madhani faces – we’ll come to that in moment.
From the plea agreement, Madhani appears to be something of a jack-of-all-trades. He admits to being a ‘cammer’ – that’s wilfully using or directing others in the use of an audio/visual recording device to ‘cam’ or record a movie, currently protected under copyright law.
The most interesting part of the plea is where Madhani further confesses to being a ‘ripper’ by admitting to the circumvention of DVD Digital Rights Management (DRM).
Before making a new ‘master’ from which to take further copies, or before uploading, Madhani removed information from the DVD such as the title, numbers and other markings which identified it as a copyright works – so-called copyright management information.
These actions put Madhani in breach of the DMCA but interestingly, he’s the very first person to be charged for simply removing so-called ‘copyright management information’ from a DVD. Previous cases were all brought for the bypassing of DVD copy-protection mechanisms.
Breaching the DMCA is a serious offense in the US. Just by changing the data held on a DVD, Madhani is facing five years in prison plus a $500,000 fine and three years of supervised release.
Madhani also admits to being a ‘racer’, ie, working hard to be the first group or individual to release new movies or software onto the internet for others to download.
There doesn’t appear to be any specific punishment for this offense although in the future, the Intellectual Property Enhanced Criminal Enforcement Act of 2007(.pdf) will surely have it covered.
Torrentfreak – The Netherlands
[NOTE: On his couchsurfing site, Madhani says his current mission is to,"To live life and enjoy every moment". His philosophy? "Live [sic] is lived only once and should be treasured at all times.” He says he’s a college junior studying marketing. The pic in the upper right shows him relaxing in the Grand Canyon ~ Ed]
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August 1st, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Wow. Just wow.
Really says something about America’s legal system and who’s really in control.
August 4th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
WELL… HE did do illegal things… and he DID help people STEAL FROM THE MPAA…
i dont think he deserves what hes getting… maybe half a year. a year would even be too much.
the point is to stop him from doing it, and 6 months would do it. – Right?
Of coarse… sometimes the government likes to get their attention to STOP people from doing it. How do they get attention? BOOM! You just read it. : /
Now are you gonna stop uploading torrents like they hope?? -No… prob not.
October 26th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
this guy is a fucking moron and he caused his family nothign but pain. he should have been locked up instead of just getting house arrested its people like these that should be taken care of.