An Illinois man pleaded guilty Monday to one count of copyright infringement for pirating Oscar screener copies of about 200 films including "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" and "Seabiscuit."

Russell W. Sprague, 51, entered his plea in federal court. He faces up to three years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced July 28.

Sprague's arrest marked the first for pirating of special videotapes and DVDs that are supplied in advance to Academy Awards (news - web sites) voters, federal agents said. Many of the screener copies are of films that are in movie theaters or are still unreleased.

Complete Story

Score so far:
MPAA - 1
RIAA - 0

While I don't agree that people should be out there in the theaters filming movies, or taking them from the studios, etc, and pawning them off for cheap, I still don't think this kind of thing warrants jail time. How about time served performing some kind of community service? ~pepe~

Oh, he'll be fine. The MPAA will pay him a fortune for the movie rights for his story.

Gothic-Angel Good one! ~pepe~

Taking a camera into a movie theater should not be illegal, so long as you are not selling copies of what you tape. But what this guy admitted to IS illegal. It is copyright infringement. But it is NOT piracy.

I am tired of having the MPAA and the RIAA lump criminals in with those who are exercising fair use. (p2p file-sharers are NOT the same thing as what this guy admited to being.)

Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Johnson said he will ask to postpone the sentencing hearing, saying he needs more time to calculate how much money movie studios may lose from Sprague's copying. --Jack offs

Probably nothing unless he was out selling them and they can actually prove the actual damage. Prob gets some probation time, I doubt any self respecting judge would give this shmoe 3 years in the slammer.

"Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Johnson said he will ask to postpone the sentencing hearing, saying he needs more time to calculate how much money movie studios may lose from Sprague's copying."

LOL...that means it will take time for him to contact Hack Valenti in Transylvania, and get Hack using his abacus to figure up the biggest number he can think of...

lol... what is the price of copyright infringement of one movie? also upto $150,000 each?

gdz: IFPI may also have 1, (didnt the 60yr man plead guilty for sharing 130,000 songs in belgium?)

Damn, 130,000 songs. That is a dude with waaaaaaay too much time on his hands.

How would he even have time to download all of them. First of all, you have to take the time to search for them, then time to download them (and it never fails, Kazaa will always go to the slowest source with the most uploads at one time) then you have to take the time to listen to them you figure approx. 10 songs per hour... ah screw it, too early for math.

G-A--You don't need to download to have 130,000 mp3's. You can make mp3's of your own cd's, which the computer can do really fast.

That's still more music than any person could reasonably listen to. That's a conservative 6,500 albums but probably more around 10,000 or more. I highly doubt anyone bought even half that many albums to rip into mp3.

I mean 5000 albums is probably more than everyone on this site have ever bought put together.

Don't forget, Sprague had movies sent to him by a friend in Hollywood so he could copy them.

The point is, the MPAA's enemies aren't these evil pirates who skulk about on street corners with a trenchcoat laden with bootlegs, or even guys sneaking a camera in to bootleg the "Deathblow" movie. The MPAA biggest enemy is themselves - the insiders, who provide all the material for uploading.

You know the RIAA takes this sort of stuff out of context, he probably had like 13,000 songs which he shared ten times each

I do not have a problem with sending this guy to jail for copyright infringment.

I have always set the line for copyright piracy as:

"Making illegal copys for the sole purpose of making money"

This guy was doing exactly that and deserves to be get thrown in to jail.

"I mean 5000 albums is probably more than everyone on this site have ever bought put together."

I have over 1000 myself (most of which are Independents). I personally know people with collections over the 15,000 mark.

All I can say, Wish I had that kind of money to invest in my collection.

Most albums I buy are priced at around 10-12$. Plus I've been buying for years. I dont go out, i dont goi to the movies,I dont spend extra money on anything other than cds. So, it's a matter of how you choose to use your supplimental income.

My album collection reached just short of 9000 albums when it was melted down in a house fire, since then I have "restored" almost 3000 of them as mp3's

Oh yeah, this guy deserves jail time!

130,000 songs. Even at 128kbps at the average 4MB per song, that's around 500GB of harddrive space. But then again, like mentioned before, the RIAA can inflate numbers, just like the "burner" incident a year or so ago.

But back to the article, this is the type of stuff the MPAA/RIAA/etc. should go for. I didn't see anywhere if he sold them for profit, but I would assume so. Still, they need to go after the internal leaks. How else would the average Joe (or Jane) get their hands on an advanced copy?

/methinks where in the hell is that edit button? ugh, forgot to finish a sentence...

If he did sell them, then he does deserve punishment.

""I mean 5000 albums is probably more than everyone on this site have ever bought put together."

I have over 1000 myself (most of which are Independents). I personally know people with collections over the 15,000 mark."


yea i'm definitely sharing about 7,000 as we speak, about 4,000 of which i bought and about 6,900 independent

go local! especially if your city has a great scene!