generating income at the expense of legitimate artists and businesses
sounds exactly like the music industry …
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2026
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too bad he didn't use AI somehow to skirt the copyright claims.
A FOUR YEAR INVESTIGATION.
Was justice served in any just way?
Were the millions of $ and thousands of hours worth it?
Who authorized the absurd use of taxpayer money that could otherwise been used to stop real criminals and real crimes affecting real people?
If this guy made a million on these CDs, only a grand would have gone to any artist.
Justice is not blind, it is being fucked by corporations.
The fact that we weren't told how much he "profited" is very telling to me. Guaranteed its not more than a few thousand. They need to make an example if him though, throwing him in jail with murderers and rapists so he learns his lesson of not creating mix CDs. This is probably the most corrupt thing I've seen happen to non violent ceiminal. Should have been community service and a fine.
Not sure if you're just too young to remember the height of the "war on drugs", but this is nothing compared to the sentences people got for a few joints back in the day.
A $31 pot sale got her a stunning 12-year prison sentence. In the two years she has been incarcerated, she has seen her children only twice.
Paralyzed from the neck down after being hit by a drunk driver at the age of four, Magpie was charged with marijuana possession in 2004 after cops found a joint and a loaded gun in a vehicle in which he was the passenger. Though he had never been convicted of a criminal offense and required medical assistance 20 hours a day, he was given a 10-day sentence in a DC jail. With no ventilator to sustain his breathing, he died in jail four days later.
) In 1992, Mark Young received a life sentence for playing the role of middleman in a large pot sale. That same year, Larry Jackson, a man with a long rap sheet of small-time, nonviolent offenses, received a life sentence for a minuscule amount of pot — 1/100th of a gram — and a tiny bit of cocaine.
https://www.salon.com/2012/10/29/ten_worst_sentences_for_marijuana_related_crimes/
And then there was that era when 3 strikes laws that sent people to prison for LIFE for things as minor as stealing a pack of gum.
There is no justice in America. Only private prisons, profits, and vengeance.
Jesus. Fucking. CHRIST 🤬
Music industry doesn't care how much he profited, they live in a fantasy land where someone buying 10 pirated CDs for $5 is a loss of $300 for them, because without piracy they would have obviously bought the real ones for full price instead.
The profit of the middlemen in the cartel that keep musicians from making any money has been preserved.
"This activity enabled him to commercially exploit protected material, generating income at the expense of legitimate artists and businesses within the music industry.”
You mean how OpenAI et al have been doing for the past few years?
No, it's fine for OpenAl to do it, because they are wealthy. Rules only exist for poor people.
For the CD guy, the proper pockets were not greased prior to engaging in illicit activity.
Pockets get lined (with cash presumably), palms get greased, unless you’re lining the pockets with grease, in which case carry on.
Dude should've been putting out remixes of books and lyrics.
but that's.... different!
Meanwhile, AI companies get a free pass to steal every work online.
If it's not consistent, it's not justice.
Wild how companies just sic police on ppl, how (in most countries, especially (but not limited to!) in today's British empire adjacent countries) that's always been the case.
That’s literally the cops job. To protect capitol.
Well, in a capitalist society you better have some (financial) capital, otherwise you are just another system slave.
Wild how we allow it (the system) to have so much concentrated power, and not like dismantle it out of principle alone (not to mention all the illogical, needles, or directly harmful things that it's doing).
Commenting on the sentencing, a council spokesperson said of Kearns “This activity enabled him to commercially exploit protected material, generating income at the expense of legitimate artists and businesses within the music industry.” A local councilor also highlighted the potential for generating “significant illicit profit” from the trade in counterfeit and unauthorized goods. They hoped that the sentencing of Kearns, even though it is suspended, would deter other pirate traders.
it’s very confusing, just how big is the pirate cd market? i wouldn’t take them if you gave them to me for free
yet they make it sound like he’s generating millions of dollars
I have a waist-high CD rack with music and games that's collecting dust for 15 years. If I finally throw it away, and someone picks it up from a garbage bin, will I become a pirate too?
It all had to funnel through their lazer tag empire.
Could have been cds sold to stores to play in pa speakers, the rights to play music like that is a lot more expensive
Somebody is still purchasing burned CD compilations, even in 2018??
Unless he had some of the rarest lost media ever, I can't see him making more than £100 per year
There's still a few shops that sell them in Singas.
So those FBI warnings at the beginning of my VHS movie tapes were true after all.
You don’t get those on the pirated versions :)
this old but not totally abandoned physical medium.
Damn...
Doing it for the game.
I thought this was a headline from LA or Australia...