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SAG member pleads guilty to leaking DVD screeners

Wes DeSoto, a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) member, has pleaded guilty to leaking a handful of DVD Screeners such as "Black Swan."

The actor has pleaded guilty to one count of criminal copyright-infringement and could now face up to 16 months in prison. The government prosecutors however, are seeking three years of probation and monetary restitution. The judge has also ruled that DeSoto can appeal if given over 10 months.



DeSoto's house was raided earlier this year after a number of high-quality DVD screeners were leaked online following their limited release to SAG members via iTunes. Thanks to digital watermarks, DeSoto was identified pretty quickly, say authorities.

While the MPAA and authorities believe DeSoto was responsible for the leaks The Fighter, The King’s Speech, 127 Hours and Rabbit Hole, the guilty count is for his release of Black Swan only.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 13 Sep 2011 23:53

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• 8 comments

• tucker001

  Never heard of any of these movies. They must have sucked.
  

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  14.9.2011 02:16 #1

• jrp696

  Originally posted by tucker001: Never heard of any of these movies. They must have sucked. You must have been hiding under a rock this past year then...

  14.9.2011 02:41 #2

• emugamer

  The monetary restitution had better be higher than Jamie Thomas'

  14.9.2011 06:04 #3

• DVDBack23

  Originally posted by jrp696: Originally posted by tucker001: Never heard of any of these movies. They must have sucked. You must have been hiding under a rock this past year then... qft
  

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  14.9.2011 11:37 #4

• gDavid

  This dude needs to pay billions and billions of dollars for this, he was the PRIME PIRATE to get movies on the net.

  14.9.2011 16:06 #5

• ematrix

  "The actor has pleaded guilty to one count of criminal copyright-infringement and could now face up to 16 months in prison. The government prosecutors however, are seeking three years of probation and monetary restitution. The judge has also ruled that DeSoto can appeal if given over 10 months."
  
  Why should an unknown actor get preferencial treatment versus anybody else? Why prosecutors are seeking 3 years of probation? That's like saying you won't do time in prison if you behave for at least 3 years, but if anybody else got caught doing the same as this wannabe actor, they would be facing jail time for sure, and that's just no fair, rules and punishements should apply equaly to all, regardless if you a member of SAG or not.

  14.9.2011 17:07 #6

• Mrguss

  Originally posted by gDavid: This dude needs to pay billions and billions of dollars for this, he was the PRIME PIRATE to get movies on the net.
  Maybe, for try to be "2-famous-2-fast" and not cover his tracks; like mask his IP, etc.
  How he get caught:
  http://bit.ly/oWQIsT
  

  +4000

  14.9.2011 17:09 #7

• mystic

  they caught him through the water mark not his ip look your printer has a watermark as well as all dvds this tells them what lind of person (who) they gave a copy to to review it .. look soon they will have watermarks incoded on all dvds that will be linked to you credit card that you used to buy it .. this guy wasnt even smart enought to know that this could have been on the dvd remember when wolverine was pre-released by some one at the specail effects house well they tracked it back to them and the knew which copy was used as the uploaded material .. he will get somewhere like 3 years probation and 300,000.00 fine and this will go to appeal if he's smart...
  

  15.9.2011 10:48 #8