DVD Employee Gets 4 Years in Prison for Leaking Spider-Man, Other Movies

A former employee at a DVD and Blu-ray manufacturer has been sentenced to more than four years in prison for helping to leak major Hollywood films on the internet, fueling video piracy.

A US district court in Tennessee sentenced 38-year-old Steven Hale to 57 months, partly for stealing and then selling DVD and Blu-ray copies of major films before their home video release.

It’s unclear which DVD manufacturer Hale worked for, or how he was caught. But from February 2021 to March 2022, Hale stole hundreds of “pre-release” DVDs and Blu-rays and sold them on e-commerce sites, according to federal investigators.

“These included DVDs and Blu-rays for such popular films as F9: The Fast Saga, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Godzilla v. Kong, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Dune, and Black Widow,” the Justice Department said.

A May plea agreement also says that in March 2022, police seized 1,160 DVDs and Blu-rays that Hale stole. In addition, he snatched and sold a pre-release copy of Spider-Man: No Way Home. The buyer then ripped and uploaded the film, enabling users to easily pirate the blockbuster Marvel movie. “Copies of Spider-Man: No Way Home were downloaded tens of millions of times, with an estimated loss to the copyright owner of tens of millions of dollars,” the Justice Department said.

Hale’s indictment shows that he was charged for copyright infringement and the transportation of stolen goods. His sentencing documents haven’t been made available through court records. But the Justice Department says Hale “pleaded guilty to criminal copyright infringement and agreed to make full restitution to his victims, including the return of the approximately 1,160 stolen DVDs and Blu-rays seized from him to the company where he worked.”

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In May, he also pleaded guilty for being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. “Hale has prior felony convictions for armed robbery and attempted robbery,” federal investigators said. Court documents indicate he’ll serve time for the gun possession charge and copyright infringement concurrently.

“Today’s sentence should send a strong message that willfully stealing another party’s intellectual property is a serious crime and the FBI is committed to holding violators accountable,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Joseph Carrico added in the announcement.