This should take care of that pesky piracy problem

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An jury in Alexandria, Va., became the first in the country to convict someone of criminal copyright charges primarily involving online music, the Recording Industry Assn. of America said today.

The federal jury found 25-year-old Barry Gitarts, who understandably preferred such online handles as ‘Dextro,’ guilty Thursday of conspiracy to commit criminal infringement.

In order to avoid panicking many millions of garden-variety file-sharers, we should probably point out that Gitarts went quite some distance beyond grabbing a few Grateful Dead bootlegs off BitTorrent. In fact, the U.S. attorney said (download a PDF of the news release here), he was a major player in the Apocalypse Production Crew piracy ring, among other things administering a computer server that members used to upload and download hundreds of thousands of files.

Such rings are the original source of most pirated material on the Net, said U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg, and are being targeted in multiple investigations by the FBI. Many other criminal copyright cases have been brought successfully, ending before trial when the defendants plead guilty.

Gitarts faces fines and up to five years in prison. At last, record executives will be able to sleep soundly, secure in the knowledge that no one will dare rip them off again.

-- Joseph Menn