University of Arizona student Parvin Dhaliwal is believed to be the nation’s first to be convicted under any state law covering illegal music or movie downloading from cyberspace. The ruling follows his guilty plea in February to possessing counterfeit marks and unauthorized copies of intellectual property.
“Generally,” Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Jason Schultz said of the Dhaliwal case, “copyright is exclusively a federal matter. Up until this point you just haven’t seen states involved at all.”
It could have been a federal matter but for the student’s age when the crime was committed: 17.
Dhaliwal was detected by a federal task force designed to patrol cyberspace, according to published reports, which also the FBI then discovered music and films on Dhaliwal’s computer. Those films included work available only in theater at the time he got them, films like Mona Lisa Smile, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and The Cat in the Hat.
Dhaliwal was sentenced to a three-months’ deferred jail sentence, three years probation, two hundred hours’ community service, a $5,400 fine, a court order to take a copyright class at the University of Arizona, and a concurrent court order not to use peer-to-peer file swapping programs.
He wasn’t charged formally until after his eighteenth birthday, but the prosecution kept it in state court to give him the chance for a deferred sentence. He was believed not only to be copying the films but selling them, according to prosecutors.
