In the US, the head of moviez release group "IMAGiNE Group" was sentenced to 5 years in prison for the distribution of films that he and his four mates recorded in cinemas.
Wired reports that the 40 year old man was sentenced by the United States District Court For The Eastern District Of Virginia to what is the longest sentence in a file sharing case for recording films in cinemas with camcorders and setting up email and Paypal accounts "to accept payments for the authorized distribution and sale of pirated copies of copyrighted works by the IMAGiNE Group".
According to the indictment, the main defendant rented servers in France, Canada and the US and set up domains like "unleashthe.net", "pure-imagination.us" and "pure-imagination.info". It also lists many films that were seeded by the group as well as tips on "camming" films that included covering the video camera with black tape and to put it inside a black sock with a hole at the end to let the lens out.
The group shared their work having one member record the film while a different member records the audio track. Later this was combined to one file made available for download. IMAGINATiON Group were superior to other groups due to the low latency of releasing their files after they were first shown in cinemas and their consistent high audio quality. Titles that were released by this group before the films were commercially available include "Avatar", "Clash of the Titans", "The Tourist", "Little Fockers", "The Green Hornet" and "Bad Teacher"
A 53 year old group member was already sentenced to 40 months, a 57 year old member to 30 and a 28 year old man to 23 months of prison. The fifth member is expecting to be sentenced in March. They have all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit copyright infringement.
