By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

Founder of Ninjavideo pleads guilty to criminal copyright conspiracy

Posted Friday, September 23rd, 2011 - Comments Off on Founder of Ninjavideo pleads guilty to criminal copyright conspiracy
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WASHINGTON – A North Carolina man pleaded guilty today for his role in founding a website that provided millions of users with the ability to illegally download copyright-protected movies and television programs. This investigation is being conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in conjunction with the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center).

Matthew David Howard Smith, 23, of Raleigh, N.C., pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga in the Eastern District of Virginia to conspiracy and criminal copyright infringement. At sentencing, scheduled for Dec. 16, 2011, Smith faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison on each count.

The guilty plea was announced by ICE Director John Morton; Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; and U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride for the Eastern District of Virginia.

According to the court documents, Smith was one of the founders of NinjaVideo, which operated from February 2008 until it was shut down by law enforcement in June 2010. He admitted that he designed many of the operational elements of the website that enabled millions of visitors to illegally download infringing copies of movies and television programs in high-quality formats. Many of the movies offered on the website were still playing in theaters, while others had not yet been released. While visitors to the website were permitted to download infringing content for free, they were also invited to make donations, which provided them access to private forum boards that contained a wider range of infringing material. A premium member obtained the rights to request specific infringing content, which the NinjaVideo administrators would then locate and add to the website.

Smith admitted that he made agreements with online advertising entities to generate income for the website, and he and his co-conspirators collected more than $500,000 during the website’s two-and-a-half years of operation.

On Sept. 9, 2011, Smith was indicted along with four other alleged co-conspirators associated with NinjaVideo. The remaining defendants are scheduled for a jury trial on Feb. 6, 2012.

The investigation was conducted by ICE HSI in conjunction with the IPR Center. The ICE HSI-led IPR Center is one of the U.S. government’s key weapons in the fight against criminal counterfeiting and piracy. As a task force, the IPR Center uses the expertise of its 19 member agencies to share information, develop initiatives, coordinate enforcement actions, and conduct investigations related to IP theft. Through this strategic interagency partnership, the IPR Center protects the public’s health and safety, the U.S. economy and the war fighters.

NinjaVideo was seized during the first phase of “Operation In Our Sites,” a sustained law enforcement initiative to protect consumers by targeting counterfeiting and piracy over the Internet.

This case is part of efforts being undertaken by the Department of Justice Task Force on Intellectual Property (IP Task Force) to stop the theft of intellectual property. Attorney General Eric Holder created the IP Task Force to combat the growing number of domestic and international intellectual property crimes, protect the health and safety of American consumers, and safeguard the nation’s economic security against those who seek to profit illegally from American creativity, innovation and hard work. The IP Task Force seeks to strengthen intellectual property rights protection through heightened criminal and civil enforcement, greater coordination among federal, state and local law enforcement partners, and increased focus on international enforcement efforts, including reinforcing relationships with key foreign partners and U.S. industry leaders.

The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Glenn Alexander of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jay V. Prabhu and Lindsay A. Kelly.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon