US authorities have arrested a suspected movie pirate who allegedly made advance copies of major Hollywood movies supplied by an Oscar voter available on the Internet, they said Thursday.
The FBI arrested Russell Sprague, 51, in the midwestern state of Illinois on charges of criminal copyright infringement and illegal interception of a satellite signal, prosecutors in Los Angeles said.
Sprague is accused of pirating hit movies such as this year's Oscar hopefuls Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, with Russell Crowe, Last Samurai with Tom Cruise and Clint Eastwood's Mystic River.
Other recent films including Something's Gotta Give, Brit-flick Calendar Girls, and Thirteen, were also put on the Web after being illegally passed to Sprague by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences member Carmine Caridi, prosecutors said.
"Stealing movies is tantamount to taking money out of the pockets of everyone involved with the film industry," said US Attorney Debra Yang.
"Illegally copying movies and illegally posting them on the Internet is a growing problem, and my office is working with Hollywood to combat this theft of intellectual property," she added.
The FBI and prosecutors allege that Caridi, a veteran character actor and 22-year member of the Academy which runs the Oscars, has supplied Sprague with advances copies of movies over the last three years at least.
Over that period, Caridi illegally passed on almost every one of the 60-odd advance copies of movies, known as screeners, that he receives on video each year to allow him to consider which films to vote for as an Oscars voter, prosecutors claim.
The movie industry moved late last year to ban supplying copies of screeners to members of movie voting juries -- with the exception of Oscar voters -- because of rampant piracy.
Forensic analysis of films allegedly posted on the Internet by Sprague revealed that many bore digital watermarks showing they had been copied from a screener, prosecutors said.
The watermark also reveals who the screener was originally sent to.
Prosecutors said that a search of Sprague's house turned up hundreds of Academy screeners, many of which had been converted to DVD, along with an array of duplicating equipment.
The search also turned up devices that can be used to pirate signals of a satellite television company called DirecTV.
Sprague was due to make his initial appearance in federal court in Chicago on Friday.
Officials of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has warned members that they could be expelled if caught flouting the strict rules attached to screeners, were not immediately available for comment.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to