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X-Men Origins: Wolverine pirate caged

How much for a movie that isn’t a howler?

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A Bronx man found guilty of uploading a copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine to a file-sharing service has been sentenced to a year in federal prison and another year of supervised release.

Reuters is reporting that 49-year-old Gilberto Sanchez copped the sentence from US district court judge Margaret Morrow, who described the act of uploading a “workprint” copy of the movie to Megaupload.com as “very serious”.

Wolverine in a cage - X-Men publicity pic

No Wolverine break-out for X-Men Origins pirate

When the copy of the unfinished movie leaked in March 2009, Wolverine alter-ego Hugh Jackman rather optimistically complained that watching the unfinished print was like buying “a Ferrari without a paint job”.

As it turned out, it was more like a pig without its lipstick: Rotten Tomatoes gives it an average rating of 5.1, although the movie did manage to turn in more than double its budget of around $US150 million.

Sanchez claimed that he’d bought the DVD as a bootleg (at least a feasible explanation given the alternative, that the glass installer had an inside line to the studio) and uploaded it to Megaupload. It appears at this stage that the studio and the FBI have failed to identify the original source of the leak.

In a fine display of exaggerated outrage, US attorney Andre Birotte Jr said the Justice Department “will pursue and prosecute persons who steal the intellectual property of this nation” (The Register’s emphasis; we’re tying to untangle the thinking that draws equivalence between property of America and property of Hollywood movie studios, so far without success). ®

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He got off lightly really compared to what the Romans would've done.

I mean consider the story of the bloke who bought 5 loaves of bread and fish, and then copied them a thousand times! They nailed that pirate to a cross and left him there until dead!

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Prorities

Well, there's one law enforcement official with the right priorities. Never mind robbers, muggers, burglars, murderers and rapists. Let's REALLY show a film pirate who's boss. A year inside should suffice in putting the country to rights. I write this as a UK observer who often marvels at the discrepancies between the sentence and the so-called crime. A year for pirating? She has got to be joking! Totally excessive and way out of proportion to the "crime". What, exactly, does she hope to achieve by doing this, apart from creating hostility? One could be forgiven for thinking that she might be in the entertainment industry's pocket after THAT performance.

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Criminals

I saw that film (both the rough and final cut) and I can say without doubt that the real criminals were those behind the film.

A more heinous crime against the art of film making would be hard to find.

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