US investigators have arrested an employee at a DVD and Blu-ray disc manufacturer for leaking films to video pirates before their official release.
The employee, 37-year-old Steven R. Hale of Memphis, Tennessee, allegedly stole and then sold numerous pre-release copies of Hollywood movies, according to federal prosecutors.
“These included DVDs and Blu-rays for such popular films as F9: The Fast Saga, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Godzilla v. Kong, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Dune, and Black Widow,” federal officials said on Thursday.
According to the indictment, Hale sold the stolen copies on an unnamed e-commerce site. An official copy of Spider-Man: No Way Home was sold weeks before the official digital and Blu-ray release, for example. Pirates then “ripped” or copied the film from the disc and posted it online, which led to massive pirating of the film in 2022.
“Copies of Spider-Man: No Way Home were downloaded tens of millions of times, with an estimated loss to the copyright owner of tens of millions of dollars,” the indictment adds.
Hale allegedly stole and sold the pre-release films from February 2021 to March 2022 —the same month the pirated copy of Spider-Man: No Way Home became available. The indictment doesn’t say which company Hale worked for, but it distributed films for the US market.
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Federal investigators also didn’t say how they caught Hale. But in 2023, news emerged that international law enforcement had arrested the leaders of the piracy group EVO, which was behind the release of the pirated copy of Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Hale now faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison if convicted on two counts of criminal copyright infringement and one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods.
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About Michael Kan
Senior Reporter
