X-Men Movie Pirate Gets One Year in Federal Prison

Mike Kayatta

Minister of Secrets
Aug 2, 2011
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X-Men Movie Pirate Gets One Year in Federal Prison



Be careful what you do with the bootleg DVDs you buy at Chinese restaurants.

It's easy to snicker at the FBI pirating warning before films. "Up to five years in a federal prison?" That never really happens, right? Right? Well, just ask 49-year-old New Yorker Gilberto Sanchez who uploaded an early copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine to Megaupload one month before its 2009 theatrical release. He's likely someone who just starting taking it much, much more seriously.

The file Sanchez uploaded wasn't your standard early screener or cam copy. His film was actually a "workprint," meaning much of the postproduction wasn't even finished yet. People who watched it were privy to all sorts of incomplete weirdness, including greenscreens, acrobatic wires/harnesses, and rubbery Wolverine claws (though, to be fair, I thought they looked a bit rubbery in the final copy as well). The release of this copy became so widespread that even Hugh Jackman commented on it, calling it a "Ferrari without a paint job."

According to Sanchez, he obtained the film from "a Korean man in a Chinese restaurant" for $5.00. After dinner, he watched it with his grandchild, then uploaded it to the internet under the handle "SkillyGilly." Eight months later, the FBI tracked him down and now, in 2011, he's been saddled with a nasty 365 day jail term in federal lockup, followed by an additional year of supervised released with "limited access to computers" (sort of a lamer version of what happens to Zero Cool in Hackers).

Whether you think X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a "Ferrari" or a 1993 Toyota Camry in only decent but sellable condition, pirating the product of thousands of people's work and millions of invested dollars isn't very nice, especially if you release it unfinished a month before it hits theaters. Whether or not a year in prison is a just punishment for the crime is for someone else to decide.

Source: Geek.com [http://www.geek.com/articles/news/one-year-in-federal-prison-for-x-men-origins-pirate-20111220/]

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GrimGrimoire

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Aug 11, 2011
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And this is why I only upload videos I by from Chinese people in Korean restaurants!
.....
What?
It was better than an arrow in the knee joke.

Besides, if his story is true, how did the Korean guy get the video?
 

unacomn

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Mar 3, 2008
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Serves him right. Inflicting that monstrosity of a movie on other people should be a crime. The production team is going to jail too, right?
 

Zefar

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May 11, 2009
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Finally someone gets that going after the guys that put up the stuff are the ones they should focus on. All though I wonder why none of them tries to target some of those well known uploaders?

Probably because they can sue each pirate site for the same thing over and over.

Don't really care that this guy gets jail but it took quite some time to find him.
 

Sixcess

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Feb 27, 2010
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Making a pointless vindictive example out of this poor bastard will do nothing to alleviate future piracy. Absolutely nothing. It's not even like he's the one who obtained it in the first place.

A quote from Wiki:

"The worldwide opening was over $158.1 million, but Fox stated that some markets underperformed, mostly due to the leaked workprint in countries with illegal downloading problems."

No, some markets underperformed because the movie sucked. Understandable though that they'd be upset about people seeing that it sucked before opening weekend.
 

ph0b0s123

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Jul 7, 2010
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If he was the guy who leaked the movie from the studio, then fine. This is just another case of the US showing they don;t have a justice system, just corporate justice system.
 

weirdee

Swamp Weather Balloon Gas
Apr 11, 2011
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All we've learned is that it's okay to sell unreleased copies because it's the chumps who buy them that get the shaft.
 

antipunt

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Jan 3, 2009
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unacomn said:
Serves him right. Inflicting that monstrosity of a movie on other people should be a crime. The production team is going to jail too, right?
Hilarious, lol

On topic, two things

1. Nuking the crud out of one guy (scapegoat) is akin to 'making an example' out of someone via draconian tactics. Regardless of legal law, that just seems like a dick move

2. A Chinese guy in a Korean restaurant? Why am I like NOT SURPRISED AT ALL (I'm chinese so i'm pc-free) >_>
 

samsonguy920

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Mar 24, 2009
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So how goes the investigation to find the one responsible for the leak in the first place? That had to come from the studio itself. You would think that would be easier to track down than this maroon.
This is one thing that pisses me off about studios to no end, they feel free to go crazy on people who download pirated content but they don't do shit to actually stop the content from getting out there. Hey, MPAA, until you get your shit together, SOPA isn't going to do shit to stop people from walking out of your studios with bootlegs. (Nor is it going to stop pirates from downloading it)
 

-Axle-

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Jun 30, 2011
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Sixcess said:
A quote from Wiki:

"The worldwide opening was over $158.1 million, but Fox stated that some markets underperformed, mostly due to the leaked workprint in countries with illegal downloading problems."

No, some markets underperformed because the movie sucked. Understandable though that they'd be upset about people seeing that it sucked before opening weekend.
This is what I don't understand. The movie was average at best, it was leaked early, and could be downloaded with relative ease. Yet it still made mountains of money, more so than better movies that were released within the same window.

What more proof do people need that piracy isn't as big of a threat as its made out to be?
 

Baresark

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Dec 19, 2010
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It's the same stupid tactic used on the drug war. Lock up the guy who is smoking weed because that fixes the problem, right?

I'm a bit flabbergasted by this. It's not going to prevent piracy. And it's an outright lie that it under performed in foreign audiences due to piracy. There is no way to know why it under performed, it's a drunkards walk and they simply want an excuse to lock someone up. You won't find a person who is gonna stick up for the movie based on quality. It was an OK movie, but after seeing it in theatres, I never felt the need to watch it ever again, so that spared Fox from a DVD sale.

As Axle pointed out, it did great for the quality of movie it was.
 

Kojiro ftt

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Apr 1, 2009
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Baresark said:
It's the same stupid tactic used on the drug war. Lock up the guy who is smoking weed because that fixes the problem, right?
This guy uploaded it. He was more like the dealer. Granted, he wasn't the grower, but he is still part of the problem.
 

Baresark

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Dec 19, 2010
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Kojiro ftt said:
Baresark said:
It's the same stupid tactic used on the drug war. Lock up the guy who is smoking weed because that fixes the problem, right?
This guy uploaded it. He was more like the dealer. Granted, he wasn't the grower, but he is still part of the problem.
Demand is the problem, and that is no problem anyone can fix with any laws regarding anything, anywhere. All things can have a black market counterpart, and as long as people want things like this, people will provide it.

This is one guy, he can't be the sole responsible party for a leak, what about the guy who sold it to him, or where that guy got his from? We can't just burn the poppy fields we find and hope no one makes any more drugs. Just like we can't jail a single guy and expect it to fix the problem. The problem seems to be the expectation. I don't think people pirate/bootleg because there are people out there that feel entitled to things (a position many anti-piracy advocates take on this very website, that people feel entitled to it). If they wanted to prevent a thing like that happening from again, they could not tell us years in advance that a project is happening, but that has it's own short comings as well.
 

Strazdas

Robots will replace your job
May 28, 2011
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well that teaches us two things:
1. dont bother with workprints.
2. dont upload it to sites like megaupload where everyone can track you with easy. seriously, does filehosting service piracy still exist to such extent? its one of the easiest ways to track pirates. only shows that noone ever bothers tracking them down to begin with. they only cry about it and want to make internet-ruling laws.