If you want to stop a movement, you have to take off its head. (But dont crucify him, that just makes it worse) This is a principal known throughout the ages, and now it looks like someone caught on and has applied it to bootleggers.
A prolific movie bootlegger, dubbed “The Prince of Piracy,” has been sentenced to seven years in federal prison for covertly taping and distributing movies. 36-year old Johnny Ray Gasca was the first person ever to face federal charges for using a camcorder to tape movies from inside of a theater. Gasca was found guilty of taping Anger Management, 8 Mile and The Core
Convicting the High tech Movie theif, Gasca represents the first in a line of effective control of the bootleg industry. We have said it here before on TMB that arresting a 13 year old boy for downloading movies is not going to stop the bootlegging. In the case of street sales of pirated bootleg dvds there will always be someone buying them. Arresting someone for buying one might remove a customer, but they have plenty of those. Gasca was reportedly making $4500 a week selling these movies.
I wonder if the person who turned him in got a free bag of popcorn?
