MSPAL Power
Copyright violators beware…
March 6th, 2012
The Baltimore Sun ran a short article on Saturday about Timajin Nell, an employee at the National Archives in College Park who is accused of copyright violation. He risks looking forward to up to five years in prison and a hefty fine of $250,000.
The full original article can be found here.
In short, Nell was illegally copying and selling movies and music. He made the one mistake of selling an illegal copy of the movie Zookeeper (yes, that less than B rated movie with Kevin James) to an undercover National Archives employee. From there, things went downhill for Nell. Officers confiscated over 1,800 pirated materials from his home and office and over 1000 commercial materials that he may have been planning to copy. The alleged value of what Nell sold for cheap under-the-table prices came to between 5,000 to 10,000 dollars.
What does this tell us?
1. No one is immune to copyright law- While Nell may have faced lower suspicion at first (he works for an agency that focuses on respecting the rights of document creators), he will still have to pay for the materials he stole and sold illegally.
2. There are people who are determined to uphold the law- If you are selling or buying illegally pirated audio-visual materials, please be aware that your actions are against the law, and that the people you are dealing with just might be setting you up for a fall.
Posted by Mierka in Announcements, In the News | No Comments »
