Angus Kidman12 September 2008, 11:46 AM
If you've recently downloaded the latest ep of Prison Break, you might potentially find yourself in the less pleasing role of prison bitch -- ask 26 year old Daniel Dove.
Dove was this week given an 18-month jail sentence for his role as an administrator of private torrent tracking site Elite Torrents. Dove had pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and copyright infringement, but was found guilty by a jury in June and now faces a $US20,000 fine on top of his own personal prison break. The US Department of Justice says that its anti-piracy project Operation D-Elite has now resulted in eight successful convictions
The widespread popularity of accessing current TV shows via torrrents, and the in-your-face tactics of popular torrent search sites such as The Pirate Bay, has led many people to conclude that there's little legal risk from "viewing Channel BT".
While it seems unlikely that you're going to get busted for watching torrent copies of Underbelly even if you do live in Victoria, Dove's conviction (the third associated with the Elite Torrents tracker) is a reminder that prosecutors and copyright owners do see some value in prosecuting people who attempt to organise or commercialise the process, no matter how many snarky comments about those convictions appear online.
For movie studios and TV production houses, clamping down on torrents is a means of ensuring that a future where downloads are the norm is also one that maintains their high levels of profits. That future, while often seen as inevitable, is still some time off. A report this week from Futuresource Consulting estimates that 97% of revenues for content sales in Europe come from DVDs, leaving only 3% from legal video download services.