Sparks Group member pleads guilty to copyright infringement
A British citizen has admitted his involvement in the Sparks Group, an international piracy ring that illegally distributed films and television shows online, in a US district court.
The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced that George Bridi had entered a guilty plea at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Thursday, November 18.
Bridi was, from 2011, a member of the infamous Sparks Group, which was thought to be one of the largest piracy networks in the world before it was taken down in a coordinated operation between the US and 18 other countries in August 2020.
As explained by the US Attorney’s Office, the Sparks Group was a criminal organisation that disseminated entertainment content online before its official release date, compromising the content’s copyright protection.
The Sparks Group did this by fraudulently obtaining copyrighted DVDs and Blu-Ray discs from wholesale distributors in advance of their release date. They then used specialised software to compromise the copyright protections on the discs, often referred to as “cracking” or “ripping”, enabling the content to be reproduced and encoded before being copied and distributed over the internet.
The content was uploaded onto servers controlled by the Sparks Group where further members could reproduce and disseminate the content on streaming websites, torrent networks, and peer-to-peer networks, making it available to the general public.
According to the US Attorney’s Office, the Sparks Group is responsible for causing film production studios losses of tens of millions of dollars.
Bridi’s role was to arrange for the discs to be collected, mailed, or delivered from distributors located in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and New Jersey to other members of the Sparks Group prior to official release dates of the content.
He assisted with the reproduction of the discs, by cracking their copyright protections and reproducing the content for distribution online.
Bridi, who is 52 years of age, has now pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, which has a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment and/or a monetary fine. Bridi will be sentenced on January 20, 2022.
His arrest occurred when the Sparks Group was taken down in coordinated action between US authorities, Europol, Eurojust, and law enforcement in 18 other countries in August 2020. The investigation resulted in Bridi and two other men connected to the Sparks Group being indicted.
Bridi was, at the time, in Cyprus. After approximately a year, he was extradited to the US.
Meanwhile, US-based Jonatan Correa pleaded guilty and received a sentence of time served and 27 months of supervised release in May 2021. Correa was ordered to pay $54,000 in damages to the Motion Picture Association.
The other man who was indicted is Umar Ahmad, a resident of Norway; he has not been located.
As reported by TorrentFreak, Bridi said that he initially got involved with the Sparks Group due to unemployment. He claimed that he only had contact with one member of the Sparks Group and did not truly see himself as being part of the collective.
Bridi estimates that he obtained 500 pre-release films as part of the Sparks Group. However, Bridi was not interested in the films and television shows; rather, he was motivated by the competition in what is commonly known as ‘The Scene’—a collection of people, organisations, and networks who source and distribute pirated content online.
Bridi said that he wanted to win the race against other groups within The Scene, by obtaining and releasing material first. This work relieved him of boredom and made him feel important. The fact that his actions were not motivated by profits was reportedly highlighted by his attorney.
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