The FBI has arrested a man in connection with the X-Men Origins: Wolverine to the web last spring. The 47 year old man may be involved with the illegal upload of an early cut of the movie, which had over four million downloads before the film had a chance to make its theatrical debut.
According to a copy of a grand jury indictment that was unsealed last week in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Gilberto Sanchez is accused of uploading the film to file-sharing network Megaupload.com under one of his online aliases, which include “theSkilled1” and “SkillyGilly.”
It is unclear at this point how Sanchez was allegedly able to obtain a working copy of the film.
The grand jury charges:
[17 U.S.C. ? 506(a)(1)(C) and 18 U.S.C. ? 2319(a), (d)(1)]
On or about March 31, 2009, in Los Angeles County, within the Central District of California, and elsewhere, defendant GILBERTO SANCHEZ, also known as (“aka”) “theSkilled1,” aka “SkillfulGil,” aka “Skillz101,” and aka “SkillyGilly,” did willfully infringe the copyright of a copyrighted work by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making the motion picture “X-Men Origins:Wolverine” available on www.Megaupload.com, a computer network accessible to members of the public, when he knew and should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.
1 Comment
Interesting. I’m more curious about what part of the chain he got this from, did he work at any of the companies working on it or did he get it through hacking?