Spider-Man: no way home

Ex-DVD company employee gets 4 years for leaking Spider-Man Blu-ray

Hale, a 38-year-old with prior felony convictions for armed robbery, risked a potential sentence of 15 years for these crimes, but he reduced his sentence to a maximum of five years through his plea deal. At the time, the DOJ credited him for taking “responsibility,” arguing that he deserved a maximum reduction partly because the total “infringement amount” was likely no more than $40,000, not the “tens of millions” the DOJ claimed in today’s release.

Ultimately, Hale pleaded guilty to criminal copyright infringement, while agreeing to pay restitution (the exact amount is not clarified in the release) and return “approximately 1,160 stolen DVDs and Blu-rays” that the cops seized to his former employer. Hale also pleaded guilty to “being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm,” the DOJ noted, after cops uncovered that he “unlawfully possessed a pistol that was loaded with one live round in the chamber and 13 rounds in the magazine.”

Combining the DVD theft and firearm charges, the US District Court in Tennessee sentenced Hale to 57 months, just short of the five-year maximum sentence he could have faced.

In the DOJ’s press release, acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew R. Galeotti claimed the win, while warning that “today’s sentencing signals our commitment to protecting American innovation from pirates that would exploit others’ work for a quick profit, which, in this case, cost one copyright owner tens of millions of dollars.”

Feds arrest man for sharing DVD rip of Spider-Man movie with millions online

Blu-ray, copyright infringement, copyright law, dvd, Marvel, marvel movies, online piracy, Policy, Spider-Man: no way home / Kelly Newman / March 8, 2025

A 37-year-old Tennessee man was arrested Thursday, accused of stealing Blu-rays and DVDs from a manufacturing and distribution company used by major movie studios and sharing them online before the movies’ scheduled release dates.

According to a US Department of Justice press release, Steven Hale worked at the DVD company and allegedly stole “numerous ‘pre-release’ DVDs and Blu-rays” between February 2021 and March 2022. He then allegedly “ripped” the movies, “bypassing encryption that prevents unauthorized copying” and shared copies widely online. He also supposedly sold the actual stolen discs on e-commerce sites, the DOJ alleged.

Hale has been charged with “two counts of criminal copyright infringement and one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods,” the DOJ said. He faces a maximum sentence of five years for the former, and 10 years for the latter.

Among blockbuster movies that Hale is accused of stealing are Dune, F9: The Fast Saga, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Godzilla v. Kong, and, perhaps most notably, Spider-Man: No Way Home.

The DOJ claimed that “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.”

In 2021, when the Spider-Man movie was released in theaters only, it became the first movie during the COVID-19 pandemic to gross more than $1 billion at the box office, Forbes noted. But for those unwilling to venture out to see the movie, Forbes reported, the temptation to find leaks and torrents apparently became hard to resist. It was in this climate that Hale is accused of widely sharing copies of the movie before it was released online.

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