WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - A member of the online piracy group IMAGiNE on Wednesday pleaded guilty in federal court to copyright infringement.
The group wants to release Internet copies of new movies only showing in theaters. Jeramiah Perkins, 39 and of Portsmouth, Va., pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to willfully reproduce and distribute tens of thousands of infringing copies of copyrighted works without permission, including copies of movies before they were commercially released on DVD. He was indicted on April 18, along with three other leading members of IMAGiNE.
According to court documents, Perkins admitted he took the lead in renting computer servers in France and elsewhere for use by the IMAGiNE Group. He used receivers and recording devices in movie theaters to secretly capture the audio soundtracks of copyrighted movies and then synchronized the audio files with illegally recorded video files to create completed movie files suitable for sharing over the Internet among members of the IMAGiNE Group and others.
Perkins admitted to registering domain names for use by the IMAGiNE Group, as well as receiving donations and payments from persons downloading or buying IMAGiNE Group releases of pirated movie copies and other copyrighted works. He also admitted the IMAGiNE Group's conduct resulted in a readily provable and reasonably foreseeable infringement amount of more than $400,000.
Co-conspirators SeanLovelady, Willie Lambert and Gregory Cherwonik each previously pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright.