China sentences U.S. citizens for piracy

[icymist]

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 · Last updated 6:17 a.m. PT

China sentences U.S. citizens for piracy

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

SHANGHAI, China -- A court in Shanghai has sentenced two U.S. citizens to jail terms of up to 2 1/2 years in prison for selling pirated DVDs online in a case China has used to highlight the difficulties of enforcing anti-piracy laws.

Shanghai No. 2 District Court judge Xue Zheng ordered Randolph Hobson Guthrie, 38, to serve a two-year, six-month jail sentence and pay a $60,500 fine for selling pirated DVDs. Fellow American Abram Cody Thrush, convicted as an accessory, was sentenced to one year in prison and fined $1,200.

A charge of illegally operating a business was dismissed.

The four people on trial were accused of using the Internet to sell more than 180,000 counterfeit DVDs to buyers in 25 countries. Officials said about 20,000 of the DVDs were sold to American buyers.

(More)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/aptech_story.asp?category=1700&slug=China%20US%20Piracy

[Zynx]

1. Ouch...Chinese prison

[Javaman]

2. I find this amusing...

I have a friend that does business in SE Asia on a regular basis. There are so many people selling pirated DVD's in Indonesia. He says he can get anything he wants for a buck.

These two boobs arrested in China are morons. I bet they didn't pay off the officials there and got pinched. Or the feds and the Chinese were hell bent on putting on a show and picked these two idiots to be "examples".

Much like music downloading, pirate DVD's are going to be extraordinarily hard to stop. They may round up a few now and then, but the reality is: there are so many avenues to get that stuff now, it will be impossible to hold back the tide.

[dArKeR]

3. You can buy anything from pirated DVDs to 12 year old girls/boys in China

What a joke this is! This is the Communist Mafai setting an example, "don't you foreigners dare try to move in on our business." Any person who has visited China knows you can buy anything on the streets of China. Which leads me to... Why doesn't CBS or some Whore Investigative Media group just go there and film all of this and air it? Same as the child prostitution in the PI next to Arroyo's office. Why don't they film this and it isn't on the 10PM news the same day? They do these realtime reports all the time on other subjects. Any backpacker walking around these countries sees this when not even looking for it so why can't the great honest moral and Christian American media find this with their "experts"?