Seven people face jail time for pirating Star Wars III

**muchlove** · January 26th, 2006, 02:40 PM

LATEST: Seven people have admitted piracy charges after copying and sharing a DVD copy of STAR WARS: EPISODE III - REVENGE OF THE SITH before it was released in cinemas last year (MAY05).

The six American men and one woman face a maximum $100,000 (GBP56,000) fine and one year in jail for allowing an eighth individual to upload the film onto the Internet.

ALBERT VALENTE, 28, swiped a copy of the GEORGE LUCAS-directed film from his workplace in Los Angeles and passed it along to the others until it reached an eighth party, MARC HOAGLIN, 28, who has admitted to putting a copy on the internet (DEC05). Hoaglin is due to be sentenced in March (06).

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) said in a statement, "We are glad to see the Star Wars thieves brought to justice.

"Stealing copyrights is a serious problem, and the theft and illegal distribution of Revenge of the Sith was a glaring example of how the actions of dishonest people can cheat the movie-watching experience."

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**buttmunch** · January 26th, 2006, 02:44 PM

George Lucas, etc haven't made enough money off this sucker already? I know it's intellectual property and all that but really. He was milking the cow dry on that last one.

**redcat** · January 26th, 2006, 04:22 PM

my thoughts exactly .

**SVZ** · January 26th, 2006, 04:23 PM

I think actually the state sued them, it's such a bad movie and to release it before we developed a callous of it's shitty ads from 30 second commercials is a front to humanity.

that's what commercials are for, it's 30-40 seconds of exposure to crap, it allows us to acclimatize to the level of crap.