18 ms·

IPTV Pirate Must Pay £963K or 88 Month Prison Sentence Becomes 168 Months

60 points by ddtaylor 4y ago

Batman8675309 4y ago
168 months? That's more than some rapists and murderers get, holy cow!
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
  My surface level understanding from the article is that this was a little bit more for-profit organized-crime kind of thing than your average person ripping movies and making them available to others for free. Like, it sounds like this guy might actually have all that money from the activity.
  - ASalazarMX 4y ago
    He should have founded a company that illegally sells user private data. A slap on the wrist and everything would be forgotten.
- thebigjewbowski 4y ago
  Taking the sentence at face value, even the initial 7 year sentence seems really extreme given the actual damages but from the article: > Over a period of more than 10 years > Precisely when King began serving his initial prison sentence of seven years and four months is unclear but given the June 2022 instruction that he cannot travel abroad, assuming that he served substantially less than the 88-month sentence imposed in 2019 seems reasonable. They made £5M over 10 years and the main guy actually spent 3 or fewer years in prison. Ultimately this seems exceedingly reasonable to me. Granted I’m from the US and I’m not familiar at all with the justice system in the UK.
  - Namari 4y ago
    The thing is 10 years in Jail is not going to teach them anything or protect society. The only victims are the broadcast companies, not like it ruined anyone's life. I think 1 year in Jail would have been more than enough, those people are not going to start again anytime soon anyways.
    - thebigjewbowski 4y ago
      I completely agree with you and that’s the thing; he was sentenced to 7 years in 2019 but he’s already out of prison and has a passport. He was free in less than 3. He is presumably out on some kind of supervised release which is probably good. He had the motivation and ability to execute on an admittedly illegal business — he can now put those same skills to work doing something productive and the supervision will presumably make sure he isn’t committing fraud or anything.
      - ddtaylor 4y ago
        It's worth mentioning here in the US this would not be possible. Federal sentencing guidelines require 85% of time served. Someone with a 7 year sentence would have to serve at least 6 years of it under normal circumstances. If they qualified for a drug rehabilitation program (RDAP) they could get that down to 5 years assuming they documented their addiction and how it influenced their crimes early in their legal case. With some of the new First Step Act and similar changes it's theoretically possible to reduce the sentence by more if they participated in qualifying rehabilitative programs, but many of the federal prisons don't actually offer the programs yet despite lying and saying they do to meet legislative due dates.
        Namari 4y ago
        I think the 85% is a good idea when it comes to crime/rape, things that make sure he pays as the victim has paid the price.
  - pmyteh 4y ago
    There is (for most crimes) an entitlement to release on licence after 1/2 or 2/3 of the sentence, with the rest being served in the community but subject to recall to prison. So the most important takeaway is that the 'headline' numbers are higher than those actually served. Given the crime and the date of sentence it's very likely that he served three years and eight months inside. Some of that might have happened before his trial if he was remanded in custody: time spent in prison pre-trial is counted towards the sentence. The 'additional' time for not paying £963k is designed to be coercive. The court has, in theory, decided that not only does he owe the money but he can be expected to find it. And the prison in default is supposed to encourage him to do so. Importantly, it's not an either/or: he still owes the money even if he serves the default sentence.
- ddtaylor 4y ago
  It's actually quite common in the US to have drug offenders serve significantly longer sentences than many violent crimes and even sexual abuse of children. It also depends heavily on if the state or federal government prosecutes them. As an example a child abuser prosecuted at the state level might receive an 8 year sentence with a larger portion of it suspended or served as parole, whereas a drug case prosecuted by the federal government might get a sentence of 10 years of which they are required by law to serve 8.5 (85%) in addition to their 5 years of supervised release.
  - User23 4y ago
    Many people have some kind of mistaken belief that all drug offenders are just friendly dopes like their neighborhood pot dealer. However, illegal drugs are not only directly the leading cause of death among Americans age 18-45, the trafficking business also adds considerable marginal violence. Two famous examples are the 90s crack wars and the Miami cocaine wars. While drug related murders today get little press outside of local if-it-bleeds-it-leads coverage, a considerable number of persons are still getting murdered every year in drug related violence. Contrariwise illegal streaming has never directly killed anyone and illegal streamer gangs aren’t doing drivebys or otherwise murdering people.
    - ddtaylor 4y ago
      There are _much_ fewer people incarcerated right now for fentanyl than cocaine. > the trafficking business also adds considerable marginal violence Because of it's black market situation and the war that the DEA wages. Other countries have shown pathways to regulation where the dust settles.
- tzs 4y ago
  It seems intuitive that the jail time for rape or murder should always be more than the jail time for crimes that just involve illegally obtaining money or goods, and that within a given type of crime the more severe a particular case is the longer the sentence should be. The problem with that is (1) human lifespan places an upper limit on jail time, and (2) the possible severity of money crimes has a very very very large range. Even if we made murder and rape always result in life sentences, and put the most severe money crimes at just under that, because of the range of severity possible with money crimes I think we'd end up with a fairly large value for money crimes required to get enough jail time to actually discourage doing that crime. Another way to look at it is from the bottom instead of the top. How big should a money crime be to earn you a year in jail? That threshold should be a small enough that people don't find it worthwhile to just alternate doing that crime and then spending a year in jail over and over. As the amount of money made in the crime goes up, so too does the necessary jail time to make alternating doing the crime and serving your jail time less lucrative than earning an honest living. Because of the large range of possible financial crimes you necessarily end up with it possible to get long sentences.
  - guitarbill 4y ago
    The whole thing would be more believable if e.g. bankers went to jail. When sentencing repeatedly seems to have no relation to societal harm, it's fine to ask if the judicial system isn't corrupted in some way (talking about the UK specifically here).
  - ntoskrnl 4y ago
    IMO sentences should scale with the harm done, not absolute dollar amounts. Violent crime with a real-life victim should always be treated more harshly than crime where the "victim" is a megacorporation's intellectual property. If white-collar crime is big enough to where thousands of people lose their jobs, that is real societal harm and should be sentenced accordingly. But if someone decreases the profits of a monopoly from $5 billion to $4.999 billion, I'm a little less sympathetic.
  - NeuNeurosis 4y ago
    Yeah, I'm going to have to disagree with you on the use of jail time as a deterrence to criminal action. While we like to believe that is the case "One problem with deterrence theory is that it assumes that human beings are rational actors who consider the consequences of their behavior before deciding to commit a crime; however, this is often not the case." https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Deterrence-in-Criminal-Justice.pdf https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01... There is a ton of research in this same vein.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Namari 4y ago
Meanwhile corupted politicians keep robbing us and are free...
gnrlst 4y ago
For those that "read" via HN comments, it's worth emphasizing that this particular group of (3) pirates operated for over a decade and made >$5M selling pirated football rights for profit. I don't think prosecution is uncalled for here, regardless of how the sentence compares to that of more socially damaging crimes.
- zerr 4y ago
  So 166k per annum per person. As for the retailation, a simple question: did they ruin anyone's life? If no, the system shouldn't ruin their lives either.
  - namdnay 4y ago
    > As for the retailation, a simple question: did they ruin anyone's life? If no, the system shouldn't ruin their lives either Following that logic, you shouldn't go to prison for tax dodging, it's not like one person not paying taxes is going to change anyone's life.
    - guitarbill 4y ago
      Well, depends on how much tax was dodged. But yeah? Having to pay back the tax plus a steep fine seems like a good solution for that one for less than some amount. Probably cheaper than sticking someone in prison, too. (Keeping in mind for the rich, a lot of tax dodging is legal, like non-dom status, so...)
      - vel0city 4y ago
        > Having to pay back the tax But, if you never really go to prison for not paying taxes because there isn't really a direct victim, why would you bother paying the back taxes or the fines levied? Like, if all that'll happen is they'll assess more fines, and the penalty for not paying the fines is they'll assess more fines, why bother paying any at all?
        4y ago
VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
> With assistance from anti-piracy company FACT, in 2019 a private prosecution brought by the Premier League resulted in a four-week trial at Warwick Crown Court that would end badly for the men. I don't know anything about UK law, but what on earth is a "private prosecution"? And it can result in prison time??? In USA you have a criminal prosecution brought by the state. Anything else would be a civil lawsuit and those don't result in jail time.
- tzs 4y ago
  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/private-prosecutions/private-prosecutions https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/private-prosecuti...
- solar-ice 4y ago
  In England specifically, a private person can bring a criminal case to court, subject to the court's and the crown prosecutor's approval. This mostly shows up in two cases - railway byelaw prosecutions (e.g. ticket-dodging), and TV license fee prosecutions.
  - waqf 4y ago
    Another is animal cruelty, pursued by animal charities. Basically it's when someone's committed a crime but the CPS (equivalent of the DA) is never going to bother to prosecute them so you volunteer to organise the prosecution yourself.
- unyttigfjelltol 4y ago
  Eh, my US state allows private people to obtain criminal complaints directly from the court clerk magistrate without the support of the police or district attorney.[1]. That said I think the DA would need to try the case.... [1] https://www.mass.gov/how-to/file-a-criminal-complaint https://www.mass.gov/how-to/file-a-criminal-complaint
- paxswill 4y ago
  Many states in the US allow private citizens to start prosecutions that then get passed to a public prosecutor; some also allow private citizens to attempt to convince a magistrate to issue arrest warrants. There are also a few that allow private citizens to try a complete case (ex: Virginia). It’s rare, and not allowed for federal cases, but is a thing in the US.
LatteLazy 4y ago
That's £144.45k a year for the extra time. After tax. I'd do the time and keep the cash. Plus you get released around half way through (or less) so that like ends up being almost £300k a year. Seems like an easy choice.
- ur-whale 4y ago
  > I'd do the time You've been for an extended period in the UK prison system before? If not, I don't think your comment carries much value.
potamic 4y ago
Why is it that when a company breaks copyright laws, the owner gets a severe sentence, but break environment laws or privacy laws and you usually only get a rap on the wrist?
- kazinator 4y ago
  Simple: The Environment and Privacy aren't very good at lodging complaints, and showing up in court with good lawyers.
- forinti 4y ago
  It seems to me these blokes got jail time because they are small fish. Nobody goes to jail when it's Apple v Microsoft.
  - tzs 4y ago
    The following is based on US law. Criminal law in a large fraction of other jurisdictions is broadly similar in this regard. When it is Apple v Microsoft or similar it is generally not willful infringement. Whichever side is being accused of infringement generally believes that either they did not copy from the other company, or that what they copied from the other company was not covered by copyright, or that their copying was covered by fair use, or their copying was covered by a license agreement they have with the copyright holder. Willfulness is an element of criminal copyright infringement.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ur-whale 4y ago
  Because no powerful lobby financed by media conglomerates exists to defend the environment or privacy, quite the contrary in fact.
  - ospzfmbbzr 4y ago
    > Because no powerful lobby financed by media conglomerates exists to defend the environment This is false. The climate 'change' movement is 100% financed by these sort of entities -- to what end is an open question but it's not to save the planet and definitely not to save you or me. > privacy You are correct in that nobody fights for YOUR privacy but you will find all sorts of companies and governments protecting THEIR privacy with your money. Privacy is essential for sanity like the saying goes but the current plan seems to be to deny people privacy and make them crazy, meaning led around by their emotions, and consequently more easily controllable.
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
When you hear numbers and sentences like this you just have to ask yourself, would they just have them in the electric chair if they could?
- ur-whale 4y ago
  When a strong lobby is pulling the strings of judicial decisions like in this case, there is no limit other than the fact that UK doesn't have the death penalty.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    And used to execute for almost everything, and would publicly execute dogs and pigs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Harding_(forger) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Harding_(forger) Hanged in 1805 for forging the tax stamp on the decks of cards he sold.
camoleon 4y ago
"educate fans on the dangers of watching Premier League matches via unauthorized streams" I'm not condoning piracy, but does that seem a bit farcical? I tend to read that as: we won't get as much money and will cry into armani suits as we drive our lamborghinis into the sunset.
- agilob 4y ago
  >we won't get as much money We didn't get as much money as we estimated to have. We blame that one person on losing £963k that we never had, but we imaged being entitled to having it and it felt nice to our shareholders. It's crazy that gang members who stab people by tesco for £20 will get less than 1 year in prison.
_fat_santa 4y ago
168 months is 14 years. 14 years for pirating a stream? I get putting away those guilty of violent crime, but for what amounts to a crime with no real victims (yes there are technically victims, but not victims like there are in a rape/murder case). I wonder if he will have the case heard by a higher court and have the sentence reduced, because 7-14 years is bananas.
- danw1979 4y ago
  It’s crazy. You can kill children using your car in this country and get out of prison in less time. Cry me a river, Sky Sports, but the harm caused by these men is barely a blip on your bottom line.
- JohnHaugeland 4y ago
  > 14 years for pirating a stream? Nope. But that is what you might believe if you try to turn to Kim Dot Com of a warezing empire to understand this. As if the thieves make reliable news, y'know?
- jorams 4y ago
  > 14 years for pirating a stream? I think the sentence is way too extreme, but we're talking about a bit more than "pirating a stream". They ran a for-profit piracy operation for over 10 years, selling subscriptions to "more than 1,000 pubs, clubs and homes throughout England and Wales".
- hennell 4y ago
  It's not 14 years for pirating a stream is it though. It's for pirating a stream, replicating it, selling access to it as a business for 10 years and making millions in the process. It's the difference between someone copying some photo you took and posting it on twitter as 'theirs' vs setting up a business selling t-shirts, notebooks and iPhone cases with your picture on. 14 years might still be bananas, but let's not imply he just pirated some steam for a little illegal personal watching.
aj7 4y ago
I think in the U.S., the constitution would preclude this type of sentence.
- basisword 4y ago
  In what way?
  - aj7 4y ago
    https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/mass-incarceration/criminalization-private-debt https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/mass-incarceration... I’m wrong. Debtor’s prisons were abolished in 1833. This way. The ACLU is worried about the effective debtor prison of arresting people for failure to show up at hearings about their debt is what the ACLU is worried about here.
- JohnHaugeland 4y ago
  obviously it would not
JohnHaugeland 4y ago
I love how this is someone spending almost two decades selling $800 a month subscriptions that he doesn't own, money that should have gone to a private individual, to 1400 pubs for 17 years - assuming a triangle distribution, a $19 million fraud And when told to pay 5% of it back, HN erupts into "the warezer told me this is the little guy being punished, let's try to whatabout this into other crimes, capitalism is evil" I can't believe HN is so blindly anti-capitalist these days. Really wish I could use some laughing emoji
night-rider 4y ago
There is a rule in piracy that you shouldn’t sell access to pirated content. It should be free as in freedom. Selling content is more damaging to the rights holders than mere torrents IMHO. I mean offering it for free is still damaging, but profiteering rackets are usually frowned upon in the piracy community
- jakear 4y ago
  I think you mean free as in beer.
  - night-rider 4y ago
    That would imply gratis works available not ‘free beer’
- crtasm 4y ago
  Many cyberlockers/filehosts exist specifically to profit from copyrighted content too. Making their download speed/limits extremely low, pushing a premium subscription, paying uploaders affiliate fees and/or adding content themselves + running a download links site on another domain.
  - night-rider 4y ago
    Yeah but it’s not as bad as saying ‘watch this match for $5.00’. In order for cyberlockers to make a profit they have to have a massive catalog of content and done at huge scale. Lockers are more ethical IMHO. (Still damaging to rights holders though)

60 points by ddtaylor 4y ago

Batman8675309 4y ago

168 months? That's more than some rapists and murderers get, holy cow!

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
My surface level understanding from the article is that this was a little bit more for-profit organized-crime kind of thing than your average person ripping movies and making them available to others for free. Like, it sounds like this guy might actually have all that money from the activity.
- ASalazarMX 4y ago
  He should have founded a company that illegally sells user private data. A slap on the wrist and everything would be forgotten.
thebigjewbowski 4y ago
Taking the sentence at face value, even the initial 7 year sentence seems really extreme given the actual damages but from the article: > Over a period of more than 10 years > Precisely when King began serving his initial prison sentence of seven years and four months is unclear but given the June 2022 instruction that he cannot travel abroad, assuming that he served substantially less than the 88-month sentence imposed in 2019 seems reasonable. They made £5M over 10 years and the main guy actually spent 3 or fewer years in prison. Ultimately this seems exceedingly reasonable to me. Granted I’m from the US and I’m not familiar at all with the justice system in the UK.
- Namari 4y ago
  The thing is 10 years in Jail is not going to teach them anything or protect society. The only victims are the broadcast companies, not like it ruined anyone's life. I think 1 year in Jail would have been more than enough, those people are not going to start again anytime soon anyways.
  - thebigjewbowski 4y ago
    I completely agree with you and that’s the thing; he was sentenced to 7 years in 2019 but he’s already out of prison and has a passport. He was free in less than 3. He is presumably out on some kind of supervised release which is probably good. He had the motivation and ability to execute on an admittedly illegal business — he can now put those same skills to work doing something productive and the supervision will presumably make sure he isn’t committing fraud or anything.
    - ddtaylor 4y ago
      It's worth mentioning here in the US this would not be possible. Federal sentencing guidelines require 85% of time served. Someone with a 7 year sentence would have to serve at least 6 years of it under normal circumstances. If they qualified for a drug rehabilitation program (RDAP) they could get that down to 5 years assuming they documented their addiction and how it influenced their crimes early in their legal case. With some of the new First Step Act and similar changes it's theoretically possible to reduce the sentence by more if they participated in qualifying rehabilitative programs, but many of the federal prisons don't actually offer the programs yet despite lying and saying they do to meet legislative due dates.
      - Namari 4y ago
        I think the 85% is a good idea when it comes to crime/rape, things that make sure he pays as the victim has paid the price.
- pmyteh 4y ago
  There is (for most crimes) an entitlement to release on licence after 1/2 or 2/3 of the sentence, with the rest being served in the community but subject to recall to prison. So the most important takeaway is that the 'headline' numbers are higher than those actually served. Given the crime and the date of sentence it's very likely that he served three years and eight months inside. Some of that might have happened before his trial if he was remanded in custody: time spent in prison pre-trial is counted towards the sentence. The 'additional' time for not paying £963k is designed to be coercive. The court has, in theory, decided that not only does he owe the money but he can be expected to find it. And the prison in default is supposed to encourage him to do so. Importantly, it's not an either/or: he still owes the money even if he serves the default sentence.
ddtaylor 4y ago
It's actually quite common in the US to have drug offenders serve significantly longer sentences than many violent crimes and even sexual abuse of children. It also depends heavily on if the state or federal government prosecutes them. As an example a child abuser prosecuted at the state level might receive an 8 year sentence with a larger portion of it suspended or served as parole, whereas a drug case prosecuted by the federal government might get a sentence of 10 years of which they are required by law to serve 8.5 (85%) in addition to their 5 years of supervised release.
- User23 4y ago
  Many people have some kind of mistaken belief that all drug offenders are just friendly dopes like their neighborhood pot dealer. However, illegal drugs are not only directly the leading cause of death among Americans age 18-45, the trafficking business also adds considerable marginal violence. Two famous examples are the 90s crack wars and the Miami cocaine wars. While drug related murders today get little press outside of local if-it-bleeds-it-leads coverage, a considerable number of persons are still getting murdered every year in drug related violence. Contrariwise illegal streaming has never directly killed anyone and illegal streamer gangs aren’t doing drivebys or otherwise murdering people.
  - ddtaylor 4y ago
    There are _much_ fewer people incarcerated right now for fentanyl than cocaine. > the trafficking business also adds considerable marginal violence Because of it's black market situation and the war that the DEA wages. Other countries have shown pathways to regulation where the dust settles.
tzs 4y ago
It seems intuitive that the jail time for rape or murder should always be more than the jail time for crimes that just involve illegally obtaining money or goods, and that within a given type of crime the more severe a particular case is the longer the sentence should be. The problem with that is (1) human lifespan places an upper limit on jail time, and (2) the possible severity of money crimes has a very very very large range. Even if we made murder and rape always result in life sentences, and put the most severe money crimes at just under that, because of the range of severity possible with money crimes I think we'd end up with a fairly large value for money crimes required to get enough jail time to actually discourage doing that crime. Another way to look at it is from the bottom instead of the top. How big should a money crime be to earn you a year in jail? That threshold should be a small enough that people don't find it worthwhile to just alternate doing that crime and then spending a year in jail over and over. As the amount of money made in the crime goes up, so too does the necessary jail time to make alternating doing the crime and serving your jail time less lucrative than earning an honest living. Because of the large range of possible financial crimes you necessarily end up with it possible to get long sentences.
- guitarbill 4y ago
  The whole thing would be more believable if e.g. bankers went to jail. When sentencing repeatedly seems to have no relation to societal harm, it's fine to ask if the judicial system isn't corrupted in some way (talking about the UK specifically here).
- ntoskrnl 4y ago
  IMO sentences should scale with the harm done, not absolute dollar amounts. Violent crime with a real-life victim should always be treated more harshly than crime where the "victim" is a megacorporation's intellectual property. If white-collar crime is big enough to where thousands of people lose their jobs, that is real societal harm and should be sentenced accordingly. But if someone decreases the profits of a monopoly from $5 billion to $4.999 billion, I'm a little less sympathetic.
- NeuNeurosis 4y ago
  Yeah, I'm going to have to disagree with you on the use of jail time as a deterrence to criminal action. While we like to believe that is the case "One problem with deterrence theory is that it assumes that human beings are rational actors who consider the consequences of their behavior before deciding to commit a crime; however, this is often not the case." https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Deterrence-in-Criminal-Justice.pdf https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01... There is a ton of research in this same vein.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Namari 4y ago

Meanwhile corupted politicians keep robbing us and are free...

gnrlst 4y ago

For those that "read" via HN comments, it's worth emphasizing that this particular group of (3) pirates operated for over a decade and made >$5M selling pirated football rights for profit. I don't think prosecution is uncalled for here, regardless of how the sentence compares to that of more socially damaging crimes.

zerr 4y ago
So 166k per annum per person. As for the retailation, a simple question: did they ruin anyone's life? If no, the system shouldn't ruin their lives either.
- namdnay 4y ago
  > As for the retailation, a simple question: did they ruin anyone's life? If no, the system shouldn't ruin their lives either Following that logic, you shouldn't go to prison for tax dodging, it's not like one person not paying taxes is going to change anyone's life.
  - guitarbill 4y ago
    Well, depends on how much tax was dodged. But yeah? Having to pay back the tax plus a steep fine seems like a good solution for that one for less than some amount. Probably cheaper than sticking someone in prison, too. (Keeping in mind for the rich, a lot of tax dodging is legal, like non-dom status, so...)
    - vel0city 4y ago
      > Having to pay back the tax But, if you never really go to prison for not paying taxes because there isn't really a direct victim, why would you bother paying the back taxes or the fines levied? Like, if all that'll happen is they'll assess more fines, and the penalty for not paying the fines is they'll assess more fines, why bother paying any at all?
      - 4y ago

VWWHFSfQ 4y ago

> With assistance from anti-piracy company FACT, in 2019 a private prosecution brought by the Premier League resulted in a four-week trial at Warwick Crown Court that would end badly for the men. I don't know anything about UK law, but what on earth is a "private prosecution"? And it can result in prison time??? In USA you have a criminal prosecution brought by the state. Anything else would be a civil lawsuit and those don't result in jail time.

tzs 4y ago
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/private-prosecutions/private-prosecutions https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/private-prosecuti...
solar-ice 4y ago
In England specifically, a private person can bring a criminal case to court, subject to the court's and the crown prosecutor's approval. This mostly shows up in two cases - railway byelaw prosecutions (e.g. ticket-dodging), and TV license fee prosecutions.
- waqf 4y ago
  Another is animal cruelty, pursued by animal charities. Basically it's when someone's committed a crime but the CPS (equivalent of the DA) is never going to bother to prosecute them so you volunteer to organise the prosecution yourself.
unyttigfjelltol 4y ago
Eh, my US state allows private people to obtain criminal complaints directly from the court clerk magistrate without the support of the police or district attorney.[1]. That said I think the DA would need to try the case.... [1] https://www.mass.gov/how-to/file-a-criminal-complaint https://www.mass.gov/how-to/file-a-criminal-complaint
paxswill 4y ago
Many states in the US allow private citizens to start prosecutions that then get passed to a public prosecutor; some also allow private citizens to attempt to convince a magistrate to issue arrest warrants. There are also a few that allow private citizens to try a complete case (ex: Virginia). It’s rare, and not allowed for federal cases, but is a thing in the US.

LatteLazy 4y ago

That's £144.45k a year for the extra time. After tax. I'd do the time and keep the cash. Plus you get released around half way through (or less) so that like ends up being almost £300k a year. Seems like an easy choice.

ur-whale 4y ago
> I'd do the time You've been for an extended period in the UK prison system before? If not, I don't think your comment carries much value.

potamic 4y ago

Why is it that when a company breaks copyright laws, the owner gets a severe sentence, but break environment laws or privacy laws and you usually only get a rap on the wrist?

kazinator 4y ago
Simple: The Environment and Privacy aren't very good at lodging complaints, and showing up in court with good lawyers.
forinti 4y ago
It seems to me these blokes got jail time because they are small fish. Nobody goes to jail when it's Apple v Microsoft.
- tzs 4y ago
  The following is based on US law. Criminal law in a large fraction of other jurisdictions is broadly similar in this regard. When it is Apple v Microsoft or similar it is generally not willful infringement. Whichever side is being accused of infringement generally believes that either they did not copy from the other company, or that what they copied from the other company was not covered by copyright, or that their copying was covered by fair use, or their copying was covered by a license agreement they have with the copyright holder. Willfulness is an element of criminal copyright infringement.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ur-whale 4y ago
Because no powerful lobby financed by media conglomerates exists to defend the environment or privacy, quite the contrary in fact.
- ospzfmbbzr 4y ago
  > Because no powerful lobby financed by media conglomerates exists to defend the environment This is false. The climate 'change' movement is 100% financed by these sort of entities -- to what end is an open question but it's not to save the planet and definitely not to save you or me. > privacy You are correct in that nobody fights for YOUR privacy but you will find all sorts of companies and governments protecting THEIR privacy with your money. Privacy is essential for sanity like the saying goes but the current plan seems to be to deny people privacy and make them crazy, meaning led around by their emotions, and consequently more easily controllable.

whywhywhywhy 4y ago

When you hear numbers and sentences like this you just have to ask yourself, would they just have them in the electric chair if they could?

ur-whale 4y ago
When a strong lobby is pulling the strings of judicial decisions like in this case, there is no limit other than the fact that UK doesn't have the death penalty.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  And used to execute for almost everything, and would publicly execute dogs and pigs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Harding_(forger) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Harding_(forger) Hanged in 1805 for forging the tax stamp on the decks of cards he sold.

camoleon 4y ago

"educate fans on the dangers of watching Premier League matches via unauthorized streams" I'm not condoning piracy, but does that seem a bit farcical? I tend to read that as: we won't get as much money and will cry into armani suits as we drive our lamborghinis into the sunset.

agilob 4y ago
>we won't get as much money We didn't get as much money as we estimated to have. We blame that one person on losing £963k that we never had, but we imaged being entitled to having it and it felt nice to our shareholders. It's crazy that gang members who stab people by tesco for £20 will get less than 1 year in prison.

_fat_santa 4y ago

168 months is 14 years. 14 years for pirating a stream? I get putting away those guilty of violent crime, but for what amounts to a crime with no real victims (yes there are technically victims, but not victims like there are in a rape/murder case). I wonder if he will have the case heard by a higher court and have the sentence reduced, because 7-14 years is bananas.

danw1979 4y ago
It’s crazy. You can kill children using your car in this country and get out of prison in less time. Cry me a river, Sky Sports, but the harm caused by these men is barely a blip on your bottom line.
JohnHaugeland 4y ago
> 14 years for pirating a stream? Nope. But that is what you might believe if you try to turn to Kim Dot Com of a warezing empire to understand this. As if the thieves make reliable news, y'know?
jorams 4y ago
> 14 years for pirating a stream? I think the sentence is way too extreme, but we're talking about a bit more than "pirating a stream". They ran a for-profit piracy operation for over 10 years, selling subscriptions to "more than 1,000 pubs, clubs and homes throughout England and Wales".
hennell 4y ago
It's not 14 years for pirating a stream is it though. It's for pirating a stream, replicating it, selling access to it as a business for 10 years and making millions in the process. It's the difference between someone copying some photo you took and posting it on twitter as 'theirs' vs setting up a business selling t-shirts, notebooks and iPhone cases with your picture on. 14 years might still be bananas, but let's not imply he just pirated some steam for a little illegal personal watching.

aj7 4y ago

I think in the U.S., the constitution would preclude this type of sentence.

basisword 4y ago
In what way?
- aj7 4y ago
  https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/mass-incarceration/criminalization-private-debt https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/mass-incarceration... I’m wrong. Debtor’s prisons were abolished in 1833. This way. The ACLU is worried about the effective debtor prison of arresting people for failure to show up at hearings about their debt is what the ACLU is worried about here.
JohnHaugeland 4y ago
obviously it would not

JohnHaugeland 4y ago

I love how this is someone spending almost two decades selling $800 a month subscriptions that he doesn't own, money that should have gone to a private individual, to 1400 pubs for 17 years - assuming a triangle distribution, a $19 million fraud And when told to pay 5% of it back, HN erupts into "the warezer told me this is the little guy being punished, let's try to whatabout this into other crimes, capitalism is evil" I can't believe HN is so blindly anti-capitalist these days. Really wish I could use some laughing emoji

night-rider 4y ago

There is a rule in piracy that you shouldn’t sell access to pirated content. It should be free as in freedom. Selling content is more damaging to the rights holders than mere torrents IMHO. I mean offering it for free is still damaging, but profiteering rackets are usually frowned upon in the piracy community

jakear 4y ago
I think you mean free as in beer.
- night-rider 4y ago
  That would imply gratis works available not ‘free beer’
crtasm 4y ago
Many cyberlockers/filehosts exist specifically to profit from copyrighted content too. Making their download speed/limits extremely low, pushing a premium subscription, paying uploaders affiliate fees and/or adding content themselves + running a download links site on another domain.
- night-rider 4y ago
  Yeah but it’s not as bad as saying ‘watch this match for $5.00’. In order for cyberlockers to make a profit they have to have a massive catalog of content and done at huge scale. Lockers are more ethical IMHO. (Still damaging to rights holders though)