A 37-year-old Tennessee man was arrested Thursday, accused of stealing Blu-rays and DVDs from a manufacturing and distribution company used by major movie studios and sharing them online before the movies' scheduled release dates.

According to a US Department of Justice press release , Steven Hale worked at the DVD company and allegedly stole "numerous 'pre-release' DVDs and Blu-rays" between February 2021 and March 2022. He then allegedly "ripped" the movies, "bypassing encryption that prevents unauthorized copying" and shared copies widely online. He also supposedly sold the actual stolen discs on e-commerce sites, the DOJ alleged.

Hale has been charged with "two counts of criminal copyright infringement and one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods," the DOJ said. He faces a maximum sentence of five years for the former, and 10 years for the latter.

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A 37-year-old Tennessee man was arrested Thursday, accused of stealing Blu-rays and DVDs from a manufacturing and distribution company used by major movie studios and sharing them online before the movies' scheduled release dates.

According to a US Department of Justice press release , Steven Hale worked at the DVD company and allegedly stole "numerous 'pre-release' DVDs and Blu-rays" between February 2021 and March 2022. He then allegedly "ripped" the movies, "bypassing encryption that prevents unauthorized copying" and shared copies widely online. He also supposedly sold the actual stolen discs on e-commerce sites, the DOJ alleged.

Hale has been charged with "two counts of criminal copyright infringement and one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods," the DOJ said. He faces a maximum sentence of five years for the former, and 10 years for the latter.

Read full article

Comments

A 37-year-old Tennessee man was arrested Thursday, accused of stealing Blu-rays and DVDs from a manufacturing and distribution company used by major movie studios and sharing them online before the movies' scheduled release dates.

According to a US Department of Justice press release , Steven Hale worked at the DVD company and allegedly stole "numerous 'pre-release' DVDs and Blu-rays" between February 2021 and March 2022. He then allegedly "ripped" the movies, "bypassing encryption that prevents unauthorized copying" and shared copies widely online. He also supposedly sold the actual stolen discs on e-commerce sites, the DOJ alleged.

Hale has been charged with "two counts of criminal copyright infringement and one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods," the DOJ said. He faces a maximum sentence of five years for the former, and 10 years for the latter.

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Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-Ho returns to the big screen this weekend with the sci-fi film Mickey 17 . If you're expecting the subtly devastating social commentary of his 2019 drama/horror/thriller-hybrid Parasite , I suspect you'll be disappointed. Mickey 17 is a very different beast in both aesthetic and tone. When the first trailer dropped, I wrote that the film felt like a darkly comedic version of Duncan Jones' 2009 film Moon , with a dash of the surreal absurdity of Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) thrown in for good measure. I stand by that assessment, and it proves to be a winning combination.

(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)

The film is based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. Ashton's inspiration for the novel was the teletransportation paradox —a thought experiment pondering the philosophy of identity that challenges certain notions of the self and consciousness. It started as a short story about what Ashton called "a crappy immortality" and expanded from there into a full-length novel. (Ashton also penned a sequel, Antimatter Blues , which was published in 2023.)

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Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-Ho returns to the big screen this weekend with the sci-fi film Mickey 17 . If you're expecting the subtly devastating social commentary of his 2019 drama/horror/thriller-hybrid Parasite , I suspect you'll be disappointed. Mickey 17 is a very different beast in both aesthetic and tone. When the first trailer dropped, I wrote that the film felt like a darkly comedic version of Duncan Jones' 2009 film Moon , with a dash of the surreal absurdity of Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) thrown in for good measure. I stand by that assessment, and it proves to be a winning combination.

(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)

The film is based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. Ashton's inspiration for the novel was the teletransportation paradox —a thought experiment pondering the philosophy of identity that challenges certain notions of the self and consciousness. It started as a short story about what Ashton called "a crappy immortality" and expanded from there into a full-length novel. (Ashton also penned a sequel, Antimatter Blues , which was published in 2023.)

Read full article

Comments

Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-Ho returns to the big screen this weekend with the sci-fi film Mickey 17 . If you're expecting the subtly devastating social commentary of his 2019 drama/horror/thriller-hybrid Parasite , I suspect you'll be disappointed. Mickey 17 is a very different beast in both aesthetic and tone. When the first trailer dropped, I wrote that the film felt like a darkly comedic version of Duncan Jones' 2009 film Moon , with a dash of the surreal absurdity of Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) thrown in for good measure. I stand by that assessment, and it proves to be a winning combination.

(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)

The film is based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. Ashton's inspiration for the novel was the teletransportation paradox —a thought experiment pondering the philosophy of identity that challenges certain notions of the self and consciousness. It started as a short story about what Ashton called "a crappy immortality" and expanded from there into a full-length novel. (Ashton also penned a sequel, Antimatter Blues , which was published in 2023.)

Read full article

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Nearly 1 million Windows devices were targeted in recent months by a sophisticated "malvertising" campaign that surreptitiously stole login credentials, cryptocurrency, and other sensitive information from infected machines, Microsoft said.

The campaign began in December, when the attackers, who remain unknown, seeded websites with links that downloaded ads from malicious servers. The links led targeted machines through several intermediary sites until finally arriving at repositories on Microsoft-owned Github, which hosted a raft of malicious files.

Chain of events

The malware was loaded in four stages, each of which acted as a building block for the next. Early stages collected device information, presumably to tailor configurations for the later ones. Later ones disabled malware detection apps and connected to command-and-control servers; affected devices remained infected even after being rebooted.

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Nearly 1 million Windows devices were targeted in recent months by a sophisticated "malvertising" campaign that surreptitiously stole login credentials, cryptocurrency, and other sensitive information from infected machines, Microsoft said.

The campaign began in December, when the attackers, who remain unknown, seeded websites with links that downloaded ads from malicious servers. The links led targeted machines through several intermediary sites until finally arriving at repositories on Microsoft-owned Github, which hosted a raft of malicious files.

Chain of events

The malware was loaded in four stages, each of which acted as a building block for the next. Early stages collected device information, presumably to tailor configurations for the later ones. Later ones disabled malware detection apps and connected to command-and-control servers; affected devices remained infected even after being rebooted.

Read full article

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Nearly 1 million Windows devices were targeted in recent months by a sophisticated "malvertising" campaign that surreptitiously stole login credentials, cryptocurrency, and other sensitive information from infected machines, Microsoft said.

The campaign began in December, when the attackers, who remain unknown, seeded websites with links that downloaded ads from malicious servers. The links led targeted machines through several intermediary sites until finally arriving at repositories on Microsoft-owned Github, which hosted a raft of malicious files.

Chain of events

The malware was loaded in four stages, each of which acted as a building block for the next. Early stages collected device information, presumably to tailor configurations for the later ones. Later ones disabled malware detection apps and connected to command-and-control servers; affected devices remained infected even after being rebooted.

Read full article

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