Torrent Site Admin Gets 18 Months in Jail

Sam Gustin notes: Daniel Dove, a 26-year-old former administrator of the now-defunct Bit Torrent website elitetorrents.org, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison, the Justice Department announced today.

Dove's sentencing wraps up the federal government's' high-profile investigation into illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing by elitetorrents.org administrators. Dove, who was convicted of conspiracy and felony copyright infringement on June 26, 2008, was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and a $20,000 fine. He could have faced 10 years in prison.

During the trial, the government successfully portrayed him as "an administrator of a small but crucial group of Elite Torrents members known as 'Uploaders,' who were responsible for supplying pirated content to the group."

Before elitetorrents.org closed in May 2005, the site was one of the most popular Bit Torrent tracking sites on the Web specializing in pre-release copies of movies, including Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith.

Dove was apparently the last member of a group of eight people connected to Elite Torrents to be sentenced, and the only one who did not plead guilty. Two fellow admins who pleaded guilty received five months in jail.
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