By Jon Newton - p2pnet.net

Kerry Gonzalez, who posted The Hulk online, has been nailed by the FBI, Vivendi's newest copyright enforcers.

Gonzalez now faces up to three years in a US federal prison after pleading guilty to felony copyright infringement, says Karen Randall, executive vp and general counsel to Vivendi Universal Entertainment

"We are deeply grateful to the FBI and the Department of Justice for their prompt action in finding and punishing the individual responsible for posting a version of 'The Hulk' on the Internet," she says, going on:

"Universal Studios will pursue aggressively and hold accountable to the fullest extent of the law those who steal or abuse its intellectual property by illegally uploading or downloading it on the Internet."

Not losing an opportunity to put The Hulk alongside Gone with the Wind, Rick Finkelstein, Universal's president and ceo, added, "Given the extraordinary level of talent, significant cost and tireless effort that went into creating this outstanding entertainment experience, we believe 'The Hulk' and all of our films deserve to be enjoyed in their optimal form and environment."

The real reason they are mad is because they know that if people could download it they'd see it wasn't worth $4 to see it in the theater.

Of course...and $4 is how much it costs to see it in a dollar cinema these days to boot!

When the RIAA first came out with Movie Link I tried the service. It basically sucked. The image was too small piss poor quality, and at 750 MB took nearly 2 1/2 hours to download. The audio was also poor. The fee was $1 more than I could have rented the DVD at blockbuster.

And I could have finished watching the movie in the time it took to download. The restrictions we annoying as well. You could keep it for 3 days before it would automatically delete, and you could only watch it once. Whereas a dvd from blockbuster was due back at the same time, but I could watch it on my tv, as well as computer, I would have kcick ass audio and not have MPAA controling anything on my computer.

Valenti (turning green and ripping out of shirt):

Rrrrrrrrrrrr! Jack smash puny pirate!

$4.00? What the hell? I'd be ecstatic if I could get into one of our local theatres for less than $7.50! Of course the thought of paying anything at all to see the hulk is a joke. Then again, why would I download anything so crappy? Then again, why the hell would anyone pirate anything so crappy? The thought of this garbage being labeled anything "intellectual", property or not, is almost as funny as getting caught pirating it. The only thing funnier is getting caught for downloading anything Buttfuckllicka has released in the last 10 years.

P.S. If Kerry Gonzales is smart he will reveal the fact he is completely broke, quit his job and file for bankruptcy immediately. Then I will laugh my bag off like every other decent person while Universal wastes even more of it's artists' money with this frivolous crap. The MPAA is always saying on its website how all these pirate copies have incredibly substandard sound & video, so I guess they don't have anything to worry about.

When will the MPAA realize that they could make a killing by releasing movies online, allowing people to view them in the comfort of their own home.

If ONLY these outfits would listen to my ideas. They'd have money out the yang if they would. Hell, we'd all have money out the yang.

What's a yang?

NiceGuy -- These guys don't have a half a brain between them. They don't listen to anyone -- they already know everything. Logic does not apply.

Striker -- A yang is Ying:the Sequel

Universal's Intellectual property, eh? I guess it was Universal who came up with the whole comic book thing and all that stuff... Wish they would at least try not to look like complete and utter idiots... Man. I hate it for the guy who got busted, but this time it looks like Marvel lost their propertry, to Universal, not Universal to some transcontinental conspirator who would wreak havoc and death and destruction from a posting of The Hulk... But, then again, that's the biz! What a pompous, self absorbed, narcisistic bunch of little cowards!

I don't think the punishment equates to the crime. It wasn't even a high quality rip. What happened to an "eye for an eye"?

You guys are missing a crucial fact here. The FBI caught this guy but the guy who mailed Anthrax is still out there. Where is their priority, no wonder the World Trade Center went down. These idiot's are suppose to be protecting the USA, not hurting it's citizen's.

Do not fear.

I have the solution.

The problem is thus: on one hand, its a freakin movie and should be availabe to everyone BUT we live in a capitlist society and the way that business works is by charging 7.50 to teenage mongrels.

Despite any argument, however, 3 years is a tad excessive

The solution, then, is simple.

They should cane him. No, not public caning. HBO caning. And charge for it. This way, they can make money off of that as well, and if someone rips off the HBO caning, they can CANE that fucker as well. And thus the universal balance will be maintained, and every little piggy gets as much money as they can stuff their faces with.

We are all going to burn in hell. You watch.

Good idea. I like it!

ya know, they are just mad, cuz they feel that they lost money, they look at pirate video's and cd's as a form of theft, when really it is just expanding your fanbase, when after time will add more and more money to the project.

ya know, they are just mad, cuz they feel that they lost money, they look at pirate video's and cd's as a form of theft, when really it is just expanding your fanbase, when after time will add more and more money to the project.

like for example, with napster and related sites, people like myself have downloaded free music, which in turn other people heard, discovered the music for themselves and spend money on the cd's

The only people to blame for all this madness is ourselves. As everyone knows business is all about a supply vs. demand issue. Once the public gets smart and STOPS buying music the bar is now reset. Music companies will eventually comply and have to lower prices in order to retain an income. If the public goes and starts buying CD's at the given rates then we only have each other to blame. STOP BUYING UNTIL THE PRICES ON AVERAGE CD's FALL TO $6.00! This is still music people, not life saving medicine, it is not worth $13+ on any given day!

thats gotta be the only time the phrase 'The Hulk' and the word 'Intillectual' will ever be in the same idea.

This sparks a lot of thoughts in my head. Someone is gonna get locked up for posting a crappy version of a movie, that can be div-x to a file thats smaller of excellent quality.
This is beyond a joke. Like buttercup said... people are flying into buildings, and this is what you waste your money one... shame on you, industry.

Wow feel bad for that hulk fan..Keep the americans scared and make more money!! I'm sick of all these corporations and billionaires telling us we should be scared of losing our lives if we don't play by their rules..There are more of us than them...Hack the planet... lol sorry saw that hackers movie this weekend...Maybe what they should do is subject him to gamma radiation as a punishment...or a real punishment would be to make him watch every ang lee movie...Wait I know make him have lunch with the head of the riaa and mpaa and gauranteed he won't ever make or recieve unauthorized copies again... Oh yeah what happen'd to those kids who downloaded like 10000 songs at the grammy's a couple of years ago?? did the fbi get them?? the riaa knows who they are..come on they broke the law like 10000 times right each ? I wanna see a list of those songs...one of em might be mine and I want the money they owe me for it!!!

argh now i certaintly wont pay 8$ to see a pisspoot remake of a comic icon

Hey, the MPAA and Vivendi (the most evil brand, which now buys out everything: computer game producers (as Blizzard), movie labels, music labels, etc etc) is even more evil than RIAA. In our appeal to boycott, we should not forget about those bastards, who should be even more eagerly boycotted. Down with MPAA, down with Jack Valenti, down with Vivendi/Universal !!!

I tried to find a boycott-MPAA site, it appears none exists.

Its unusual to see anyone actually catching the leak, usually the studios just recognise they dont stand a chance and only make a token attempt.

Online legal movies face enormas technical problems which arn't a problem for legal music. For a start there is size. The typical DVD rip on a p2p network is 700M, and is of slightly less than DVD quality. A legal movie site could hire professional encoders to go through the movie, optimise settings, even tweak it for every scene. But it would still need 700M to achieve commercial quality. Anyway, the sites and studios would like to make the films slightly larger (750M) to stop people writeing a CD if they do manage to break the DRM. At this size the download times will also be a problem, by the time a customer has downloaded an impulse rent they probably arn't intrested any more

Theres the DRM problem obviously. There are only two DRMed video formats, realmedia and WMV. Realmedia is just not suitable because its high bitrate performance is awful, its a streaming format. That only leaves WMV. Now, WMDRMv1 has not been cracked, so the DRM is secure(-ish). But its still DRM, and the temptation to set over strict usage rules is still there. It also means the encode is limited to windows media codecs, and there are licenseing fees to pay. Illegal online movies are difficult enough, legal ones are impossible.

The FBI probably things stoping piracy is helping the country and its citizens, because stoping piracy means more profits for the media industry which means more taxes. There is a big logical flaw there.



We are already in a big "hack the planet" situation. Look at whats going on. The entire geek community hates the media industry (through this doesn't stop us watching a lot of TV . We constantly devlope new media technology to do more and do it better, while they struggle to keep things exactly as they are. As fast as they produce new DRM schemes we find ways to remove them, and they set their lawyers on anyone who looks suspicious. The RIAA website is being targeted by every script kiddie on the net. While the media companies get well as truely pounded on the technology front, they continue to win on the legal front. Laws they like seem to get passed no matter what everyone else thinks. Random p2p users get kicked from their ISPs. Its war. Im not sure whos winning.