Afternoon.. I am Gilberto Sanchez, Skillfulgil. I've been reding through lots of pages and comments about this topic, and no 1 has asked the relevant question here. Why isn't WILLIAMS arrested? Oh, Williams. That's the name that appears on the workprint. The 1 I bought on the streets for $5. I got in contact with FOX about that and their response 2 that question was, "We are no longer interested in that Subject. The guilty party (ME) has been arrested. Now why would you let a worker that copied a movie and leaked it off the hook? Maybe he was doing what he was told to do? Monetary losses?
How can you lose something you never had? 4,1 Million downloads? My files were deleted after 198 downloads. Before any1 posts a movie they do a check to see if it's already up. I saw 14 links on hold. meaning, 14 people had their own prints and would've been up 15 minutes after mine anyways. I just had a faster internet connection. 6 people re uploaded my upload. Yes, I'm guilty of that. I'm not trying to justify my actions. But I was NOT the 1 who stole it from FOX studios. they know who did, but he or she is getting a pass. Their job was done. Leak it. Read the comments. Fix what people didn't like about it. Make a lot of money. No Studio is going to stop what's put up on the internet. They'll have to bend like the blades of the grass bend with the wind to fix things. Go with the flow. Use the internet to their advantage. If I could turn back time? I would have never bought that movie. Nut what's done is done. I really don't care about the comments left by MPAA and FEDS. They work for corporate America. Could you believe a total of 14 FBI agents came to my house on 2 separate occasions? And they all were laughing about this being blown out of proportion. I wasn't laughing. this here has made my life a mess. How much time (If Any) I will do? How much of a fine I will pay when I make $50 a day if that? Anyways. I'm pretty sure this comment will be bombarded with MPAA and FEDS rationalizing, but like I said, I don't care about them. Most of the comments are to my favor and I thank you all for that.

Piracy sucks for the industry in general. If you like watching movies, and would like to continue to watch them in the future, then you shouldn't pirate them. That said, Fox is one of the most evil corporations in the world, so I see any blow to them as good. I'm mixed on this one.

Every single person who's argued that this man belongs in jail has at one point or another downloaded something online they should've paid for, be it music, movies, software, or fonts, and needs to promptly shut the fuck up.

The leak didnt hurt the movie, the movie itself is what hurt it. The movie absolutely sucked, that workprint couldve actually been something that helped the movie. And i know everyone is going to say I sound like dumb ass for saying that but if you think about it its actually kinda true. If i saw a work print of a movie and it was a good movie, id be out there on opening night buying a ticket. I know the argument will come up saying even people who did like the work print still didnt pay.But like I said the movie was shit, the special fx were shit (workprint and actual copy). Fox just needs something to fall back on, and this leak was their easiest excuse.

I actually liked the movie. I felt that it got A LOT wrong, but it was enjoyable. I always like Hugh Jackman as Wolverine and think that the sequel will be very promising so long as the producers don't get in the way too much this time. I mean, this one was supposed to be a hard R movie, it was supposed to be gritty! And then the re-write...
I also downloaded the screener. The missing effects were so annoying that I stopped it about 2/3s of the way through.
I went to the theater opening week and I payed my own hard earned money to watch it.

Same thing with video games for 360. I download the games first to see if they are worth my money (so many games these days are just cash ins) and I buy accordingly. This is so much better, as I get to play the games sometimes months in advance of the release because video games get leaked all the time. And then when they are released, if they are good and I played them for more than five seconds, I buy them. Most torrent sites encourage this, the actual purchase of the game if it's really good.

I pay for what I determine deserves my money. Sorry, but it's harsh economical times out there and I'm not spending my money unless the product is absolutely worth it.

Sorry for the long rants. I could go on, this subject is just so awesome to talk about, so complex and filled with so many differing perspectives. This age of the internet is crazy, and it's only gonna get crazier!

PS

When the heck are they gonna (finally) put the Sentinals into a live action X-men movie? They were in the game (which I also bought, you're welcome Fox). BRING ON THE SENTINALS!!!

"Estimates have claimed that some 4.1 million people saw the film between the April leak and May opening of the film"

Whose estimates? FOX's?

The guy got caught PIRATING. From his HOME.
...
...He deserves to be arrested. Natural Selection, buddy.

Anyone involved in distributing this piece of crap to the public deserves to go to prison for a very long time.

It would be impossible to prove that any of the people who downloaded the film would have actualy paid money to see it. I only watched it cause it was avalible and I had no desire to see it.

I love how they put him under house arrest when he probably committed the crime of uploading the movie from his house.

Wolverine the film was garbage anyway, this will learn Fox to make better movies

what if the film had been a masterpiece?

It wasn't a leak. It was a warning.

I don't give a damn what FOX lost... I care about movie theaters though. that's somewhere around $28,000,000-- granted everyone who watched it would've seen it in the theater.
Remember it was a work print... which is just embarrassing. What artist would want 4 million people to see a shitty version of something they created?

Having said that, Wolverine was awful and the leak saved people some hard earned money.

Your $28 million figure presupposes that everyone who downloaded the film didn't go see it in the theaters or buy the DVD, which you can't prove.

Poor bastard now has to tell everyone he went to jail for illegally downloading Wolverine. Yeesh

90% of the posts here are people raving about how FOX deserved it and how FOX should be punished for making a bad movie.

Jesus, stop looking at the little picture of FOX and look down the line of all the workers who were hired to make the movie. The fact that Fox sucks as a corporation in making movies is completely a different subject. Or how ones view of their news network is enough for them to think the company deserves it. Remember, it is a company, and people like ME, an artist who could possibly be hired for a job like this would lose money because of people on the internet thinking its okay to DL a link that had work I WORKED HARD ON and not have me get any compensation for it?

Thats bullshit.

There ARE some gray areas of pirating. Very few. But something like this, no matter how "shitty" the movie was, and no matter how "evil" the fox corporation is, it is still theft.


Find other ways to tell Fox they suck. Don't steal like an idiot and try justifying it.

If a film makes its budget, everyone involved gets paid what they initially deserved. Everything off the top of that is surplus for the producers, director, and acting talent, and a relatively tiny amount of that goes to everyone else.

you have no clue how the film industry works.

when (if) a film makes a profit the studio boys don't just go out and spend the money on hookers and cocaine (and very very very few people EVER get profit participation)....they do this crazy thing called 'invest in other movies'...and help pay for the films that didn't make back their costs.

Way to spout off something that has nothing to do with anything I wrote.

I didn't make ANY comment on what people do with their surplus money. I just said that the crew doesn't get a large fraction of that surplus. Also, big studio producers (like those at Fox) do walk away with a lot of the money. That's why they do what they do (make shitty movies that will rake in cash).

Anyways, you really didn't say anything that shows that I know nothing of the industry. It's really not that complicated.

those actors usually go out with that surplus money and buy crap from the working class, tip waiters, buy cars etc, so no fox having a surplus of money from the making of the film is not a bad thing, it creates more opportunities.

Did I ever say it was a bad thing? Guess what the actors do with the cash that's NOT a surplus? All the same things. This is called "earning a living." Everything on top of their initial contract is just extra cash, considering the top actors are already earning more than any one human being could ever need. Some actors become producers, some actors blow cash away on big houses and a bunch of luxuries, but none of this really has to do with my point, does it?

Because my point was that the crew of a film isn't going to make as much extra money if a film makes a surplus as the directors, actors, and producers do.

It's a way of scaring 15 YO kids into thinking that new album their downloading can cost them their freedom and a bunch of money they don't have.

It wouldn't surprise me if FOX spends $100,000 to have the FBI convict a guy that'll pay $10,000 and spend a few months with an electronic bracelet...

In my eyes, the guy's a hero. In time of a great financial crisis, Gilberto Sanchez saved us. I say let the "Free Gilberto" protests and petitions begin.

do you even understand how an economy works?

spending money boosts the economy jackass, if more people payed for shit, even pointless crap shit like wolverine, then we wouldnt be in this "financial crisis" The circulation of money and goods defines the strength of an economy. Just because fox gets millions doesnt mean that money vanished into thin air. The people who work there, get a salary, they go out and buy goods with thier salary, people who make and retail those goods get that money, and then those people use the money to buy stuff. So if you want fox to lose money, youre basically making poor kids in china who make nike shoes lose money if you think about it, because money doesnt just sit in one place usually, it gets passed around.

Oh, I get it now. My not seeing Wolverine caused the financial crisis.

No, but really, the kids in China thing was just the most ridiculous statement ever in the history of the Internet.

I work in VFX and some friends of mine worked on Wolverine...
this is a VERY simple issue
it's called theft.
there are tons of things wrong with the film (and music etc) industry, they really need to get their shit together and realize this isn't 1975...change their business model and make shit loads of money and make consumers happy at the same time...
BUT
just because Fox etc are a bunch of idiots and Wolverine was a piece of shit that should never have been made, or at least not make by fools, doesn't change the fact that the person who leaked this print - almost certainly from a post house - is guilty of theft and damaged the rightful owners of that property.
did the publicity boost the box office?
did how shitty the workprint was hurt the boxoffice?
it doesn't matter (except in the area of punishment, another messed up topic)

saying that Fox deserves it or whatever is bullshit...try applying that argument to other crimes...rape? murder? someone walking into your house and taking your TV?
piracy in general does have an impact on the film industry...it shouldn't be viewed as a confirmation of people's opinions of the film industry's business model or as a deserved punishment for being idiots.
sending this guy to jail is meaningless - find the person(s) who leaked it.

Can we stop this once and for all - piracy is not the same thing as theft. They're both morally wrong and against the law, but they are not the same thing.

What this guy did was wrong and he should be punished (although, like others have said, I think the bigger punishment should go to the person who leaked the film in the first place). I do not, however, believe piracy is hurting the industry - even with a recession, the movie industry had another record year at the box office and is growing. So please don't start the whole "putting camera operators and VFX guys out of work" argument - they're working a heck of lot more than a lot of other Americans.

The big problem here is the movie studios really believe that punishing these "pirates" is the right way to go (rather than giving consumers a reason to buy in the first place). Just this week, our vice president and his entertainment industry friends decided to give $30 million of taxpayer money to the industry to "fight piracy", so we'll likely see more crap like this. Can anybody here honestly say that's money well spent?

LOL copyright infringement = rape. Tell that to a rape victim and see what they have to say about it.

When you steal something, the person you took it from doesn't have it anymore. That's what makes it theft, and not some other crime. Sadly, this was not the case with WOLVERINE, which was ultimately inflicted on an unprepared world right on schedule.

So if you write a book and I make a copy of it for my own personal use without compensating you, you'd be okay with it? Because technically, it's not like me taking it/making a copy is preventing anyone from having it, right?

Yes.

I didn't equate them...it's called an analogy...
when someone is murdered we don't let the murderer free because we didn't like the victim...and we don't free rapists if we don't like their victims...

just because digital theft leaves the owner still in possession of a copy doesn't mean it isn't theft...
if you have the blueprints to a new fangled device in your home and I sneak in and take pictures of them - then start manufacturing this device...are you just shit out of luck? or are you protected under the law? this is what happens when a movie is leaked or copied and then sold on the street corner.

Gah, I hope that this guy gets worse than the guy with the Hulk leak. Of all the people that have been sued/prosecuted for piracy, the uploaders, the ones who start the chain (and especially those who do it for profit) are the only ones that are truly liable for any damages. End users are participants, but unfitting targets for $2m fines. Especially if the sole purpose of those fines are to "serve as a warning to others". Trackers and search engines make technology itself look like the crime, even if The Pirate Bay was a fine example of how not to act when you're on trial (it was amusing, though).

But this guy? There's no innocent angle to leaking an unreleased movie. What, exactly, could be the defensible angle to that? No harm done? 4 million views. Just a bystander? You uploaded the video to start this mess. All information should be free, viva la revolution!!!? Umm, no.

This guy is the exact person who needs to be prosecuted, and the fact that the leaks aren't brought up more often is appalling at best.

I respectfully disagree. I think that the people they need to be looking for (if anybody, I mean, the movie did make money, right? So now they're just out for blood?) are the people who leaked it from the post house.

There was obviously SOMEBODY who was actually hired to do work on the movie and who decided to take a copy of said work out of work. Where it went from there is simply not relevant. The people who initially had the material in their hands were the people who were, in part, being paid to protect it. This man or woman went against their job and should be fired. As for fined? This is up to opinion here, but mine is that Fox should have played this one closer to their chest, they should have made this an impossibility IN THE FIRST PLACE. And now, they should be taking steps to making future leaks from happening, that's where people's money and time should be spent.

This guy just did what people refer to as "sharing". He came up on a digital entity that people want (just as he would if he had not been the one to obtain it first) and he uploaded it to a community of users who do the same thing for an ever growing amount of digital material. This man made no profit. He got no benefits from doing this. So then, the real question is: Did this man "share" the material or did he... what? Steal it? Nope, that's the person at the post house. Leak it? Nope, post house again. This guy just did what any other (ballsy) file sharer on the internet would have done. That's how I see this.

I tend to agree, but what reason did this man have to upload it in the first place? Other people do it, so why not me? Not a good reason. I think it should be a slap on the wrist (jail time would be ridiculous) compared to the actual "leaker", but it's still punishable.

That said, I don't believe Fox should be concentrating so much on finding people who do this; it's definitely not hurting them as much as they say it is. They'd be much better off coming up with ways to use piracy to their advantage (it is, after all, free promotion) and giving consumers a reason to go out and buy their product.

The "angle" is that it's completely insane to think that someone who posted something on a file-sharing Web site deserves to be behind bars. Civil court exists for a reason.

Wow. I post on a forum site where this guy freqently posted. He told me the feds were on him for leaking that Wolverine movie months. I didn't really pay it any mind. I knew his first name was Gilberto and that he lived in the Bronx but since he was still active on the said site I thought maybe he made it up. Guess I was wrong. Interesting news though.

The story I've heard from the inside is that a Fox exec wanted to see the latest cut of the film and instead of making a DVD copy internally, his idiot lackey took it to a duplication service, whose employees then made a copy for themselves, which resulted in it being leaked online. I haven't heard any update on how this was resolved, but I was told this before the movie was released in theaters.

Obviously a tall tale if the FBI didn't just go straight to this duplication service. Companies keep receipts for people they pay to do things, it's not like that would be hard to track down.

FOX should be fined for making the movie.

they should be paying him for wasting his time pirating such a horrible movie

it sounds like they're just going after download link posters...I'm sure he downloaded it like others did and posted links so others could get it...it reminds me when that poor guy was arrested for sharing the bootleg of the Hulk on a P2P program and got arrested....notice how it wasn't a person who worked for Fox or on the film, who actually leaked it...they arrest one of the 4 million who saw it and it's a victory for Fox

I'm under the belief that sometimes these leaks help promote the film...it's only an issue if it's bad a film...people will go to theaters and pay the money for the DVD no matter what....you can speculate they lost millions but you can't really prove it...the leak was the biggest news item for that week and promoted the hell out of the movie....plus how is Fox loosing money if downloders aren't getting the same film in theaters, I'm sure they were like we have to see this with the special effects...

I just wish studios would push forward a quicker turn round times for DVD/BR and VOD releases to combat these leaks... It might even be better if they released them on DVD/BR a month after the film's theater release

Hey FBI, guess all the terrorists, serial killers, mobsters and pedophiles are caught, right?

White Collar Crimes Division has been fairly corrupted.

The man quite literally sacrificed himself in order to warn us of the crappiness of this movie. I think he deserves a statue or something.

Word.

at the very least.

They made Alvin and the Chipmunks.


Does anyone care if they lose cash?

Its not just fox that loses money here douchebag... Fox is the main financer, but there are hundreds of people who work on movies, people who drive cars, get coffee etc, people who have no control over the final products creative licence, and those people should not get screwed over. If things keep going the way they are, millions of people will be out of jobs and there wont be anymore movies because people will just outright stop paying for them.

No one who drives cars or gets coffee has ever lost their job because of movie piracy, ever.