Back in March 2009, a New York man by the name of Gilberto Sanchez bought a workprint copy of the X-Men: Wolvering movie at a street corner near his home.
Because he had the copy a month before the theatrical release of the film, he thought he’d put it online so that other people would enjoy it too. Unfortunately for him, though, Fox heard about it and tracked him down, dragging him to court.
Sanchez pleaded guilty in March to one count of uploading a copyrighted work being prepared for commercial distribution. He admitted he put the workprint of the film on Megaupload.com in March 2009 and publicized the posting on other websites.
“Although Fox was able to get defendant’s Wolverine workprint removed from his Megaupload account within approximately one day, by then, the damage was done and the film had proliferated like wildfire throughout the Internet, resulting in up to millions of infringements,” prosecutors said in court documents.
On Monday, US District Judge Margaret Morrow described Sanchez’s actions as ”extremely serious” and sentenced him to one year in federal prison, much to the disapproval of internet pirates.
Now, if you think about the sentence from a pirate’s perspective, it looks as if the justice system is broken and unjust. And it is, but not in this case. This time, I think the sentencing was spot on. I mean, it’s one thing when someone uploads a movie months after it had its theatrical release, and an entirely different thing when an unfinished workprint is shared before the movie had the chance to earn anything. I’m not saying either of these are justified, but the latter is major a dick move that can have significant financial consequences for the studio. Besides, one year isn’t that much time and I’m sure Sanchez couldn’t have afforded to pay damages to Fox even if he wanted to.
So yeah, pirates, I’m sorry but this guy deserved it. You could say that he was a moronic, unethical pirate.
