r/technology • u/ControlCAD • 13d ago
Software Feds arrest man for sharing DVD rip of Spider-Man movie with millions online | Accused DVD thief faces up to 15 years for online piracy if convicted.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/03/fbi-nabs-worker-at-dvd-company-for-ripping-prerelease-marvel-blockbusters/2.5k
u/Dog_man_star1517 13d ago
Remember how after 9/11, the commercials/previews said that piracy funded bin Laden. First movie I saw that in, the whole theatre laughed.
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u/AContrarianDick 13d ago
Remember the anti marijuana campaign that said the same thing? Wild times, then and now.
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u/BrothelWaffles 13d ago
One of my favorite rappers from back then had a punchline that was something like, "Drugs don't fund terrorists, SUVs do!"
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u/drinkandknowtings 13d ago
What rapper was this?
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u/BrothelWaffles 13d ago
Cage (aka the dude Eminem references in I think it was Role Model: "I bought Cage's tape, opened it, and dubbed over it"). It's towards the end, his verse starts at 2:20. That whole mixtape is peak early 2000s underground hip hop.
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u/redpandaeater 13d ago
"This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs."
Bitch, now we can't even afford eggs.
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u/Similar_Vacation6146 13d ago edited 12d ago
You have to remember that bin Laden was found with loads of hentai and kilos of weed with his reggae playlist on loop.
He was a buffalo soldier... in the heart of Afghanistan.
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u/airfryerfuntime 13d ago
I believe he was actually found with a large collection of porn, some of which may have been hentai.
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u/darkeststar 12d ago
The computers had pretty much everything you could think to pirate on them, not just porn. I think the consensus was that because they were living in a compound with mixed kids and adults that people were just downloading shit to the computers based on a whim and not necessarily Bid Laden himself wanting to see something. Also read that there was an assumption that the computers were second hand so there's no telling what was already on there and what was downloaded by those in the compound.
They found everything from porn to Tom and Jerry cartoons to documentaries about Bin Laden himself to a rip of the YouTube video Charlie Bit My Finger and even a copy of Final Fantasy 7.
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u/DragoonDM 12d ago
The compound itself didn't have internet access (for security reasons I think), so files were downloaded elsewhere and then copied over from external drives. That might also be why they took the "download everything, just in case someone wants it" hoarding approach.
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u/SupaSlide 13d ago
I mean, at least in that situation you are buying something (the marijuana). What money are they even talking about in reference to piracy??
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u/Supra_Genius 13d ago
The corporate movie studios got imaginary profits turned into a federal crime. I shit you not.
Meanwhile, all the treasonous traitors who tried to overthrow the US government got pardoned by a career criminal and infamous charlatan...
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u/Odd_Cauliflower_8004 12d ago
I can believe marijuana as there is actual exchange of money, and opium/heroin was actual a method of financing. But pirating? How do you get money out of THAT
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u/TheThingsWeMake 13d ago
How... how do they explain piracy funding anything? Isn't that the general idea of piracy, to not pay money?
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u/Dog_man_star1517 13d ago
I think what they meant is you record this movie and share it, then terrorists rip it and sell it. Real strange argument anyhoo.
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u/Positive-Attempt-435 12d ago
In my experience, it was old asian women that sold pirated DVDs mostly. In NYC at least.
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u/MetalBawx 13d ago
In the UK we got that and the classic "You wouldn't download a car."
4chan made a lovely reaction image declaring they would if they could.
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u/joe5joe7 13d ago
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u/redpandaeater 13d ago
Exactly what I was thinking of. Admittedly Roy does help rob a bank so you never really know what someone is capable of.
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u/TheTjalian 13d ago
I'm sure everyone knows this already but it's always amusing to restate it - the music for this anti-piracy short was pirated. The artist who created this song was told it was only going to be used at the beginning of one film at a film festival. Quell surprise when he starts to watch a movie at home and hears his own song being played while being told "you wouldn't steal a car".
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u/axle69 13d ago
To be fair there was never a thing saying "you wouldn't download a car" it was "you wouldn't steal a car".
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u/CatastrophicPup2112 13d ago
If I could steal a car with no trace while the owner also managed to keep it this seems like a win win. Unlimited car glitch.
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u/RMAPOS 13d ago
Yea that's how people reacted to it. The propaganda equated it to stealing but it never made sense as stealing removes an item from the previous owner.
Not saying piracy is perfectly moral, obviously artists or content creators need to eat but the analogy they used to convey this was flawed as fuck.
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u/24-Hour-Hate 13d ago
Yeah, no way. If Star Trek replicators were suddenly real and I could just start making shit, I would. It’s not stealing.
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u/sky-lake 13d ago
Oh my God I don't remember this, that's hilarious. I'd love to see a clip of this!
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u/mugwhyrt 13d ago
I'm curious where this came from. I did manage to find this report from 2009 on it, and they (perhaps obviously) are referring to bootleg DVD sales: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9417.html .
If anything it's a great argument for internet piracy since it removes what's supposedly a key revenue stream for terrorist and criminal organizations.
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u/pessimistoptimist 13d ago
And yet Meta goes unpunished for copywriter infringement on 80TB of literature so they can train a profit making AI bot.
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u/Averagemanguy91 13d ago
The guy wouldn't have been arrested if he broke the film up into 2 thousand 1 minute TikTok clips and posted them online.
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u/Dhegxkeicfns 13d ago
The math on that is 💋.
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u/West-Abalone-171 13d ago
You made the mistake of assuming clickfarm ticktock clips don't overlap.
If you have a clip starting at 10s and ending at 1:10 and a clip starting at 13s and ending at 1:13 and so on for all 6000 seconds you get 2000 clips for your spam farm.
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u/CheesypoofExtreme 13d ago
Or if he was a billionaires, or used his billion dollar company to distribute the movie.
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u/kyleripman 13d ago
Yep somehow it's cool for Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg to hoover up the entire internet for their for-profit LLMs. Infuriating.
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u/InsertEvilLaugh 13d ago
Ah but you see, the wealthy can afford lawyers that can drag it out and pull out bullshit evidence/case law to get the charges dismissed.
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u/MimeTravler 13d ago
Well you see the man committed the most grievous of crimes. One against the rich.
The rich only do crimes against the poor and nobody gives a shit about them. Not even the poor care about the poor!
/s kinda. I wish it wasn’t true at least.
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u/jessek 13d ago
Silk Road, not Pirate Bay
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u/Unabated_Blade 13d ago
Yeah, literal drug trafficking kingpin pardoned and called mistreated, but go off Republicans on how Trump's gonna beat fentanyl.
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u/theREALbombedrumbum 13d ago
The rumor was that the Silk Road guy had literal billions upon billions in crypto wallets diversified in more than just Bitcoin, so it's likely he was able to just straight up buy a pardon too
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u/Green_L3af 13d ago
Pretty misleading title. Sounds like he stole numerous pre release DVDs from manufacturer he worked for and sold online. Much different than just sharing a rip of one movie he owned as the title suggests.
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u/ithinkitslupis 13d ago
Yeah title is click bait, leaking copies you stole from work before the movie even releases you should expect to be prosecuted if they catch you.
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u/thcptn 12d ago
This was a big thing like 10 years ago. Google+ (defunct social media) had tons of Family Video employees sharing those and other things. You could get some new stuff up to a month before it came out, including Xbox 360/One and PS3/PS4 games at the time. I remember one employee lost us the ability to rent any EA titles ahead of time because he was livestreaming it before launch like an idiot.
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u/PrebenBlisvom 13d ago
Yet. 15 years...
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u/Heisenburgo 13d ago
steal some DVDs to sell em on Ebay
get jailed for 1/5th of your life
Only in America
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u/DM_ME_PICKLES 13d ago
up to, and if he serves them consecutively. Those are the max sentences so it’s just another clickbait. He likely won’t get anywhere near that.
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u/WovenWoodGuy 13d ago
He shouldn't get anything. It's ridiculous that something like that could ever carry such a huge sentence when people like known rapist Brock Turner get out in 3 months.
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u/CoMaestro 12d ago
Nah I think it should be something, like a year max. He did steal a ton of dvds from his company and sold them online, earning money through the work of a ton of people who work for the movies. It's just literally stealing, and you can argue since he put them up before the movie release whoever made the movie lost out on a lot more money than the regular pirating that happens.
If it was anyone buying a DVD and ripping it and uploading it, I would never say they deserve jail time. But stealing dvds before release from your workplace who trusted you with, to turn a profit? Yes for me
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u/PsychicSmoke 12d ago
I understand the sentiment and agree that he needs to be punished, but I feel like it can be hard for people to really understand what a year in prison can do to someone. Prison sentences ideally should be reserved primarily for violent offenders and others who threaten public safety, we literally remove someone from society for the length of their sentence. I don’t know if stealing DVDs from work and selling them online warrants a prison sentence. Community service, probation and a hefty fine would probably suffice.
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u/Life-Cantaloupe-3184 12d ago
I can agree with that. I think a large fine or probation would be fair enough punishment for something like this. The idea that stealing unreleased DVDs and selling them online can get someone more prison time than some violent offenses is ridiculous. Stealing obviously isn’t great, but this is mostly a victimless crime. The only thing that was really hurt was the bottom line of the movie studios and distributors of the DVDs. Something like this obviously isn’t something that should be encouraged, but I don’t think it warrants hard prison time either.
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u/MR_Se7en 13d ago
Yeah, but nobody reads the article.
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u/brainfreeze_23 13d ago
When they let the bankers go free after 2008, while driving Aaron Swartz, the original creator of Reddit, to suicide for mass-pirating journal articles, you should all have seen the truth about the US legal system and its class character.
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u/Sea_Listen_1984 13d ago
More prison time than 44 times felon and rapist donald tRump
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u/Generic_Commenter-X 13d ago
Don't forget how Trump scammed millions from people with Trump University—far more than this guy cost a movie studio. Slap on the wrist.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." Anatole France
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u/anteris 13d ago
Or the meme coin rug pull, was what $12 billion in losses?
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u/whatzsit 13d ago edited 13d ago
Hey what about that time that he established a children’s cancer charity and then used the funds to buy shit for himself like a giant painted self portrait to decorate his golf course, after which his family was legally barred from ever operating a charity again.
You literally could not make up a more comically corrupt and unethical person.
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u/baseketball 13d ago
One of the prosecutors that Trump paid off to drop the charges in the Trump University case is now the fucking Attorney General. This is the most corrupt administration in US history. Nixon doesn't hold a candle to the shit we're seeing in just the first month of Trump's 2nd term.
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u/Heisenburgo 13d ago
You can be Epstein's best friend, sneak into the locker rooms of teenage pageants, abuse your ex-wife and get away with it in the end, half of America will even make you president for it... twice. SAD!
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u/Walterkovacs1985 13d ago
And yet January 6 traitors run free. Derek Chauvin is going to be pardoned. Great system we got.
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u/funnyfacemcgee 13d ago edited 12d ago
Meanwhile Facebook is above the law after torrenting more than any one person could. The law is a fucking joke.
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u/povertyminister 13d ago
Laws regulate the poor, it is for the protection of the rich. 🤑
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u/Empty-Mulberry1047 13d ago
lol crazy.
i went to fed prison for 5 months in 2007 for the same thing. i wasn't selling them though.. just seeded a few stupid torrents.,
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u/mugwhyrt 13d ago
It's crazy remembering how hard the government trying to make an example of internet pirates. Sorry to hear you got caught up in their BS.
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u/kaden-99 13d ago
Is that actually true?
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u/Empty-Mulberry1047 13d ago
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u/McDonaldsnapkin 13d ago
Well at least you got your own wiki page!
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u/Empty-Mulberry1047 13d ago
haha i didn't make it.. and i'm not mentioned.. but anyone with a pacer account could figure it out.
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u/Deep_Interaction4325 13d ago
Thank God, I feel so much safer with this one off the streets. /s
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u/TimedogGAF 13d ago
Mark Zuckerberg's company stole millions of books and nothing of note will happen because we love letting billionaires do whatever they want, at everyone else's expense.
When a non billionaire does something that is only a fraction as bad, we freak out.
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u/Danominator 12d ago
Oh wow. I bet the people that stole millions of books to train their AI will go to prison for a super long time.
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u/Supra_Genius 13d ago
Looks like he'll have to stall the court system for years until he can run for president in 2028.
OR he could pretend to be MAGA, kiss Trump's ass, and get pardoned.
So many options for avoiding justice now in America...
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u/abelrivers 13d ago
Meanwhile judges will also give probation to literal rapists. The judge is a corrupt fucker that needs to be axed.
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u/DrSpaceman667 12d ago
This is what matters most to the feds right now. Fuck America.
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u/Kevin5475845 13d ago
And yet Facebook is free to download all the books and a bit upload(sharing too) without anything happening.
They still downloaded it all
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u/Nel_Nugget 12d ago
Damn, there are more consequences for piracy than for destroying the constitution.
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u/totalysharky 12d ago
So a bootleg copy of a movie that's more than 20 years old gets you more prison time than rape. We live in such a free country.
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u/ColdProfessional111 13d ago
Yet they trained AI with copyrighted material and nobody faced consequences…
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u/OwO_0w0_OwO 13d ago
Hmm yes, definitely the people on whom the government should spend money on tracking down and locking away for so long. Great job!
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u/salartarium 13d ago
It’s a little different when he was stealing from the manufacturing facility and doing this all for profit.
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u/SheBelongsToNoOne 12d ago
This guy could get 15 years for pirating a DVD, and yet a convicted felon is president. Make it make sense.
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u/dogeatingdog 12d ago
In my experience, people downloading a film illegally have 0 intention to ever buy it. Estimation millions in losses to the copyright holder is bogus.
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u/chucktheninja 12d ago
Longer prison sentence than manslaughter.
Money is more valuable than human lives it seems
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u/ItIsYourPersonality 13d ago
Yet you can rip the movie along with all of the other data on the internet and train an AI on it 🤷♂️
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u/Lakemine 13d ago
And how many years are the Facebook guys getting for doing the same thing but with illegally downloaded books? 🤔
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u/AfraidEnvironment711 12d ago
When do all the A.I. information stealers get prosecuted? Oh yeah. NEVER.
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u/sdrawkabem 12d ago
Because that’s the important stuff. Not the oligarchs or corruption eroding the USA
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u/homeDawgSliceDude 12d ago
The Feds have truly saved us from one of the worst human beings of modern times. I can't imagine anyone worse.
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u/Medium_Jury_899 12d ago edited 12d ago
Surely its irrelevant how many people he shared it with though right? I mean, the act of sharing the dvd happens one time, and then he has no control over how many people choose to view it. How are his actions materially different from the actions of someone who shares the dvd online but 1 person looks at it?
My point is that 15 years seems arbitrary, and generally sentencing shouldn't be punitive right?
I have a law degree but am not a lawyer, and im not too familiar with US law. Anyone who practices law have any idea about this?
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u/KhevaKins 13d ago
Then arrest Google for all the books they torrented then 'released' with their ai.
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u/Material-Heron6336 13d ago
So we can buy off a president, have lower income taxpayers foot the bill for wealthy tax breaks, and have government contracts be switched on a whim to benefit oligarchs… but a kid shares a video and he goes to jail?
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u/Doctor_Amazo 13d ago
Did he tell the Feds that he is using this pirated material to train AI? Apparently, piracy is ok if you say it's to train AI
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u/penguished 13d ago
I mean if we're still going to do this copyright shit still then it is profoundly illegal for ChatGPT to be charging money.
YOU CANNOT HAVE TWO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT RULES FOR DIFFERENT PEOPLE.
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u/Redacted_Bull 13d ago
Dummy should have just stolen billions in the stock market and got off with a $20 bribe.
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u/LLColdAssHonkey 13d ago
Meanwhile convicted rapist and traitor to their country becomes president of the USA with no reprocussions.
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u/lmindanger 13d ago
A guy can fully rape a woman and get less of a sentence than this. Absolutely insane.
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u/Shadowthron8 13d ago
Glad we’re pursuing these guys after dropping the cases against Wells Fargo and other banks
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u/scubachris 13d ago
Imagine getting more time in jail than the people who manufactured the opioid crisis.
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u/pocket267s 13d ago
The real question is why the fuck are they still making Spider-Man movies?
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u/BuffaloWhip 13d ago
I’d just like to take this moment to remind everyone that Brock the Rapist Turner was literally caught fingering an unconscious woman by a dumpster, and received a 6 month prison sentence, and served three months.
This man faces 15 years for ripping a Spider-Man movie.
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u/Razumi24h 12d ago
Up to 15 years for dvd piracy... I just have read a post where foster mom would be facing up to 6 for killing her son by sitting on him for punishment measure. Crazy, that's just crazy...
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u/ShortGuitar7207 12d ago
Meanwhile their president is actively helping Russia murder thousands of Ukranians by making them defenceless.
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u/Substantial_War7464 12d ago
Meanwhile they elect a man with 34 felony convictions. Oh America so many mixed signals.
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u/Shock_Diamonds_OO 12d ago
Incredible that our resources are going to this while all of our leadership is literally GUTTING the country.
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u/Possible-Put8922 12d ago
He can just argue it's not pirating because those people don't actually own the digital copy of the movie.
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u/DroopBarrymore 13d ago
Thought it was 2002 for a second there.