Man who uploaded The Revenant before release has to pay 1 million euros

The man who put a screener on the internet before the release of the film The Revenant has been ordered to pay one million euros in damages from an American judge, and will be placed under house arrest for a period of eight months. The film appeared on Pass The Popcorn.

A federal court in the United States convicted the man, William Kyle Morarity, this week for copyright infringement, TorrentFreak reports. He had previously pleaded guilty to uploading copies of The Revenant, as well as the film The Peanuts Movie. Part of the conviction is compensation of $1.12 million, which amounts to 1 million euros, which he must pay to Twentieth Century Fox. Morarity was also placed under house arrest for eight months.

Morarity worked for a movie studio, gaining access to copies of The Revenant. He then put a version of the film online via Pass The Popcorn, a private torrent tracker. He did so six days before the official release, which resulted in the film being downloaded very often in a short time. According to the judge, that resulted in damages of more than a million dollars for publisher Twentieth Century Fox.

While movies are often distributed through illegal channels, it’s not often that copies appear online before the movie hits theaters. As a result, the case also attracted the attention of the authorities: after a short investigation, Morarity was arrested by the FBI.