Chicago Man Faces Jail TIme For Uploading Episodes of 24
Wow, this just goes to show you should be careful when posting TV shows on YouTube!
A 24-year-old Chicago man is facing up to three years in jail for uploading episodes of the Fox’s 24 TV show, starring Canadian actor Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer.
The FBI, long an unpaid copyright cop for the music and movie cartels, charged Jorge Romero with posting four 24 episodes, "he discovered in January at an unspecified location online and posting them on LiveDigital.com eight days before their primetime premiere," says a Reuters/Hollywood Reporter item.
"We are grateful to the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s offices in Los Angeles for aggressively pursuing this matter," it has Fox saying.
Fox should, of course, also be thanking US taxpayers who unwittingly and unknowingly funded the FBI/Fox corporate bust.
In January, "Fox served both LiveDigital and YouTube with a subpoena demanding they disclose the identity of the user who had uploaded episodes of ‘24′ and ‘The Simpsons’," says the story.
LiveDigital Comply, and so did YouTube although it wasn’t named in the FBI’s complaint.
"Romero is not accused of placing the episodes on the Internet, but facilitating their distribution once they were already put there by an unspecified party," say Reuters and the Hollywood Reporter .
"Romero admitted to the FBI in an April interview that he had found the episodes online."
Source Tags: 24, jail, copyright
So, this guy wasn’t even the one who uploaded them? He “facilitated” their distribution? So what, he linked to them or posted them on his blog or something? 3 years for linking to illegally uploaded content? And how was he to know they were illegally uploaded? If I see a video on youtube of a network show and it hasn’t been removed, I would assume the network had something to do with and shouldn’t be afraid to link to it.
All this is stupid anyway, since fox started posting episodes of 24 in high quality on myspace.
Way to go after the bad guys FBI. Jack Bauer would be proud.
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