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File Sharing Admin Gets Prison Term

A network administrator for a peer-to-peer Internet file-sharing system has been sentenced to five months in prison for copyright infringement.

Grant T. Stanley, 23, was also given five months of home detention, three years of supervised probation and a $3,000 fine for his role in the Elite Torrents service, which used a sharing technology known as BitTorrent. Stanley, who had pleaded guilty to copyright-related charges, was sentenced Oct. 17.

Stanley is one of three people convicted through Operation D-Elite, a federal crackdown on suppliers of pirated works to Elite Torrents, which agents shut down in May 2005.

At one time, the Elite Torrents network had more than 133,000 members and allegedly facilitated the illegal distribution of more than 2 million copies of movies, software, music and games. Federal officials said "Star Wars: Episode III _ Revenge of the Sith" was available through Elite Torrents six hours before it even debuted in theaters.

"We hope this case sends the message that cyberspace will not provide a shield of anonymity for those who choose to break our copyright laws," U.S. Attorney John Brownlee said in a statement.

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