On Tuesday, Jose Duarte, a Sydney man who was arrested in August for uploading a pirated copy of
The Simpsons' feature film, was fined $888 by a magistrate for breaching copyright.
Duarte, 21, had uploaded
The Simpsons Movie to the Internet after capturing it on his cell phone. Twentieth Century Fox worked with the Motion Picture Association and the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) in an international operation, and their search eventually led them to the home of Duarte.
Your Take
ahains said:
$888?
That is quite the difference in approach.
In the U.S. he would have lost all of his worldly assets ...
Duarte's lawyer, Ken Stewart, said his client tried to upload the animated film twice on July 26, the day which it was released, several hours before it was shown in other parts of the world.
Before the upload was taken down, the footage had received 3213 hits, but according to Stewart, Duarte tried to access it several times but was unsuccessful, which led him to believe that he failed.
"It would appear that this young man had the sophistication of a dead fish," Stewart said. "I have sat and spent time with this young man... and I am quite satisfied that he had no idea what he was doing."
Prosecutor Chuan Ng disagrees with Stewart's assessment, saying that Duarte had made a "deliberate and conscious decision to attend the movie and film it.” Ng also said that the defendant had previously downloaded content from the Internet, and that what happened was not an isolated incident.
Earlier, AFACT announced that Duarte's recording of the film is the first illegal copy to be intercepted anywhere in the world. The private organization also said that the file spread rapidly to BitTorrent sites and other file-sharing websites, and in three days had been downloaded by more than 100,000 people.
The Simpsons Movie, the first big screen adaptation of FOX's long-running animated series
The Simpsons, earned $30.7 million on its opening day in the United States. It took in $74 million on its first weekend out, and opened at the top of the international box office, earning $96 million from more than seventy territories abroad.
While a sequel has yet to be formally announced,
The Simpsons is still going strong, with its 19th season currently airing on FOX.
-Lisa Claustro, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: Associated Press, AsiaMedia
(Image Courtesy of FOX)