Jeramiah Perkins, leader of the once extremely popular IMAGiNE movie piracy group, has been sentenced to five years of jailtime, the harshest sentence yet seen for a copyright crime.
In 2011, the P2P top group stopped distributing new CAM and TS releases, and the P2P world began speculating that maybe they had been caught. This proved true as rumor has it a rival P2P group sold them out to the MPAA which then turned to the authorities. The group had released hundreds of films, many of which were recorded in movie theaters by members of the group.
Other members of the group have already received sentences ranging from 23 months to 48 months, alongside fines.
Perkins, the sysop for the group, got it worse. After his jailtime, which will undoubtedly be nowhere near 5 years being he is a non-violent offender, Perkins will have three years of supervised release including a ban of "any electronic device with the capability or reproducing and distributing copies of copyrighted materials." Yes, this means no computer access for three years after his jail sentence.
Wrote United States Attorney Neil MacBride: "The nature and circumstances of defendant Perkins' offense are serious, as he both organized and led the IMAGiNE Group – one of the largest and most effective organized copyright crime groups on the Internet."
In their case against IMAGiNE, prosecutors claimed that the group was responsible for 40 percent of all line audio piracy in the world for an almost 2 year period.