Guilty Plea in Movie Piracy Case

A 19-year-old movie theater cashier faces eight years in prison after pleading guilty to bootlegging movies and posting them to the Web, prosecutors said.

Curtis Salisbury, who worked in a St. Louis multiplex theater, admitted that he recorded “Bewitched” and “The Perfect Man” this summer. He uploaded the movies onto a site created by FBI agents in Northern California as part of Operation Copycat, a sting to fight movie piracy.

Salisbury pleaded guilty Monday in U.S. District Court in San Jose to a provision of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, which prohibits using recording equipment to make copies of movies in theaters. The conviction is the first in the sting.

Salisbury and several friends sneaked into the projection room after the theater closed and recorded directly from the projector. He was not paid for uploading the movies but had discussed payment, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Sentencing was scheduled for February. Salisbury also faces a $250,000 fine.

Six people in the federal court’s Northern District of California have been charged in connection with the sting operation, and investigators have conducted 40 searches.