NORTH CAROLINA MAN SENTENCED TO 3 YEARS FOR CRIMINAL COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT

Ouprasith – a 23 year old from North Carolina and the owner and operator of 3 illegal music download sites – was recently convicted of criminal copyright infringement for stealing copyrighted music and making it available for download.

He was sentenced in Nov to 3 years in prison, ordered to pay more than $45,000 in restitution, and to forfeit nearly $51,000 in earnings from his sites.

One of the sites Ouprasith operated was RockDizMusic.com, which was originally hosted on servers in France and later moved to Canada. Ouprasith’s MO was to obtain digital copies of copyrighted songs and albums then upload them to his sites, effectively making them available for anyone download for free. The music often included pre-release songs that were not even available yet commercially. 

Ouprasith also operated RockDizFile.com and Cyberlocker. Ouprasith solicited affiliates to upload copyrighted songs and albums to both of these sites, which were founded on servers in Russia, France, and the Netherlands. Ouprasith admitted that he paid affiliates based on the number of downloads from his sites, so he not only pirated music himself but also enlisted others to do it for him. 

Ouprasith even admitted that he ignored past government requests to take down files from RockDizMusic.com and RockDizFile.com. He also stated that he would only pretend to take down the music in compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In actuality, he would just take the links down for a short time and then later post new links to the same copyrighted material.

The sites were shut down last year but, “as part of his guilty plea,Ouprasith admitted the market value of his illegally obtained material was more than $2.5 million. (1)”

The Recording Industry Association of America trade group released a statement thanking federal officials for pursuing Ouprasith. Brad Buckles, RIAA’s anti-piracy Executive Vice President, also said that this “sentence should send a message that operating a flagrantly illegal business that steals from others by engaging in criminal activity online has real consequences. (2)”

I should also tell you that “The [Homeland Security Investigations’]Intellectual Property division has an entire operation dedicated to shutting down counterfeit sites called ‘Operation In Our Sites.’They seize and redirect websites to display a seizure notice as opposed to offering the content. From 2010-2013, over 1,700 sites and $3 million were seized. (3)”

So consider this a heads up, because you just never know who’s watching.

1. http://goo.gl/L1GLUH 2. http://goo.gl/WWFx0p 3. http://goo.gl/L1GLUH