VIRGINIA
A federal judge sentenced the operator of a music piracy website to three years in prison after the defendant admitted to criminal copyright infringement by reproducing and distributing without permission millions of digital copies of copyrighted works, officials said.
This included copies of popular songs and albums before they were commercially available, federal officials said.
In connection with his guilty plea, Rocky P. Ouprasith, of Charlotte, N.C. admitted that the market value of his illegally pirated material was more than $2.5 million, according to authorities.
But court evidence indicate that the market value of Ouprasith’s illegally-pirated material was more than $6 million, officials said.
U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith of Virginia also ordered Ouprasith to forfeit $50,851 and pay $48,288 in restitution.
On Aug. 21, Ouprasith pleaded guilty to one count of criminal copyright infringement
According to the Recording Industry Association of America, in 2013, RockDizFile.com was the second-largest online file sharing website.
According to the Statement of Facts and other evidence, between May 2011 and October 2014, Ouprasith operated RockDizMusic.com, a website originally hosted on servers in France and later in Canada, from which Internet users could find and download infringing digital copies of popular, copyrighted songs and albums.
Ouprasith admitted that he obtained digital copies of copyrighted songs and albums from online sources.
He also encouraged and solicited others, referred to as “affiliates,” to upload digital copies of copyrighted songs and albums to websites, including RockDizFile.com, that were hosted on servers in Russia, France and the Netherlands, and that hosted hyperlinks to content being offered for download on RockDizMusic.com., according to officials.
Ouprasith further admitted that to encourage such activity, he agreed to pay the affiliates based on the number of downloads from his website, officials said.
Officials said Ouprasith admitted that, in 2013 and 2014, he either ignored or pretended to take remedial action in response to complaints from copyright holders and their representatives that the website contained links to infringing copies protected songs and albums.
In October 2014, federal law enforcement authorities shut down RockDizMusic.com and RockDizFile.com, and law enforcement authorities in the Netherlands and France seized file-hosting servers utilized by Ouprasith, according to authorities.