Movie News

SAG Member Faces Piracy Charges

IMDB has a nugget today via Studio Briefing about a set of film piracy related incidents. The first one is pretty extreme: Ronald Redding, a member of SAG, has pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the fact that he shared a screener for the film "Million Dollar Baby." He evidently had a copy in order to facilitate voting for the SAG awards. The possible legal consequences include a six month prison sentence, a $100,000 fine. Warner Bros is also suing him to the tune of $150,000. He was tracked down through watermarking technology. The technology allows the SAG to read in a signature from the copy. This signature matches a person to whom the screener was given.

While this is bad for Redding, it could have been much worse. Variety notes that last November a member of the Academy had to pay Warner Bros and Sony $600,000 for doing the same thing with "The Last Samurai" and "Big Fish." -- Terrence Ryan

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Posted by on September 29, 2005 1:29 PM
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