AfterDawn: News

Australian man fined for uploading Simpsons

We reported back in August that a Sydney man had been arrested for uploading the first known pirated copy of The Simpsons Movie which he had recorded using a mobile phone. Jose Duarte, 21, was fined $888 on Tuesday by a magistrate for breaching copyright. News Corp.'s Fox movie studios has tracked the pirate copy back to Duarts's home. Prosecutor Chuan Ng said the movie was downloaded 3,213 times in the few hours.

Duarte's lawyer said that he had attempted to upload the movie twice on its release date, July 26th, but that he was sure he failed. He tried to spread the copy of the movie many chorus before it was available in theaters across the world. "It would appear that this young man had the sophistication of a dead fish," the lawyer, Ken Stewart, said.



Steward added: "I have sat and spent time with this young man, ... and I am quite satisfied that he had no idea what he was doing." Duarte received a fine of 1,000 Australian dollars after pleading guilty to a charge of distributing copyright material in a Sydney Magistrates Court on Tuesday.

Source:
Yahoo (AP)

Written by: James Delahunty @ 13 Nov 2007 20:13

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• 18 comments

• Pop_Smith

  Thats not a bad fine, $888 isn't much and he didn't even have to go to prison. Maybe this guy was fined a proper amount, without prison time, due to the fact that he wasn't located in America.

  13.11.2007 20:17 #1

• jetyi83

  pretty fair.

  13.11.2007 22:17 #2

• sk8flawzz

  how much do australians make in a year? either thats not that bad or its allooot

  13.11.2007 22:26 #3

• varnull

  He thoroughly deserves that fine.. just shows how you can upload quality pirated material and get away with it.. but put rubbish quality stuff like that particular rip and get busted...
  
  I reckon the judge was as annoyed with his irritating laughing as everybody else was ;-)

  13.11.2007 22:26 #4

• pryme_H

  What was his motive? To record an entire film using your cell phone must have been tedious. To me, this is nothing more than a petty experiment that unknowingly costed $888!

  13.11.2007 23:15 #5

• ZippyDSM

  IMO you never should get fined more than 10X the worth of what you are trading so DVD and ticket cost = 15ish 10X 15 is 150
  
  this is almost 100X......

  13.11.2007 23:36 #6

• discboy

  I disagree. I believe everyone has the right to share what ever they want to

  14.11.2007 01:03 #7

• EricCarr

  That's getting off easy. I live in Australia and that is not a lot of money for a fine of this nature.
  
  Well he should of not of uploaded a shitty copy from a mobile phone anyways. The DVD Screener was out a week later. LOL

  14.11.2007 02:28 #8

• veyron

  Originally posted by varnull: He thoroughly deserves that fine.. just shows how you can upload quality pirated material and get away with it.. but put rubbish quality stuff like that particular rip and get busted...LOL!!

  14.11.2007 03:01 #9

• c1c

  What kind of cellphone does this guy have to record a whole movie? Poor Jammie got screwed hard and this guy get off easy. Just isn't right.

  14.11.2007 09:49 #10

• spydah

  Quote:Originally posted by varnull: He thoroughly deserves that fine.. just shows how you can upload quality pirated material and get away with it.. but put rubbish quality stuff like that particular rip and get busted...LOL!!To Funny lmao

  14.11.2007 10:14 #11

• wolf123

  Originally posted by c1c: What kind of cellphone does this guy have to record a whole movie? Poor Jammie got screwed hard and this guy get off easy. Just isn't right.Please tell me too because if I am right there is no phone that could do this unless its a iphone with a 30gig hhd.

  14.11.2007 10:40 #12

• spydah

  Quote:Originally posted by c1c: What kind of cellphone does this guy have to record a whole movie? Poor Jammie got screwed hard and this guy get off easy. Just isn't right.Please tell me too because if I am right there is no phone that could do this unless its a iphone with a 30gig hhd.
  That is a very good question. Even though there are some phones that can record up to as much memory is on board not extended memory. I had a Sony Ericsson w600i and it came with 256mbs internal memory. You could record up to the full amount but it would use that up in a matter of a few minutes and the quality was crappy as hell.

  14.11.2007 11:12 #13

• DVDdoug

  Quote:I disagree. I believe everyone has the right to share what ever they want to It doesn't matter what you "believe". If you live in Australia (or any other country that has copyright laws) and you get caught doing this, you can be fined... believe it or not!
  
  It's the artist/copyright holder (not "everyone") who has the legal rights to publish!

  14.11.2007 15:57 #14

• limelight

  $888 for uploading a movie, but that one girl who uploaded (or downloaded?) 24 songs has to pay a quarter million dollars...
  
  ...wheres the logic in that?

  14.11.2007 18:35 #15

• hikaricor

  Due to the quality of the recording and the dumb bitch laughing about 20 times before the movie even got past the credits I honestly think he deserves it. I mean I'm all for piracy, but that release was torture..

  15.11.2007 03:03 #16

• ali2007

  has somebody got calculater in the house, 880 $ ? , it looks like RIAA
  need to go in grade 1 math class and do some real math , this is ridic**lous.
  
  they come in just do what they want , where are rights ?
  
  you can't not stop pirates. reduce price ,or they will be new technique to download

  15.11.2007 08:42 #17

• borhan9

  this is soo funny that here in australia we have not go that kinda heavy fines yet. for a 1000 fine is worth the pirates time.

  2.12.2007 20:40 #18