FBI Busts Screen Actors Guild Member Over Pirate Bay Uploads

It may seem obvious that most Hollywood leaks come from within Hollywood itself, but it’s not often – if it’s happened at all – when someone gets caught red-handed. Usually, it’s a cammer who gets caught, or someone who found their way to a screener somehow, and then proceeded to upload it. A recent case changes things, however, as a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild was caught uploading pre-release movies to The Pirate Bay.

Although it may sound like a small organization, the Screen Actors Guild consists of nearly 140,000 members, so it could be assumed that tracking someone down would be quite difficult. But thanks to the clever use of watermarks, the FBI was able to conclude that Wes DeSoto uploaded various movies to the popular BitTorrent tracker. Such films included The King’s Speech, Rabbit Hole, 127 Hours and The Fighter.

While watermarks were incorporated as a method of catching Mr. DeSoto in the act, part of what made the search easier on the FBI is that on one torrent, the uploader claimed that the release was unique to SAG members. This is what lead to watermarks being distributed, and ultimately an FBI raid on Mr. DeSoto’s house.

It’s hard to predict what’s to come from a case like this, as some guilty parties have gotten off relatively scot-free in the past, while others faced a prison term. Hollywood could use this to set an example to other SAG members and related insiders, however, as no other group would have a better opportunity to leak movies to the Web than it. This case is going to be interesting to follow, regardless of which side you’re on.

According to a copy of the affidavit obtained by Wired.com, during the raid the FBI searched for software and records relating to the release group ‘TiMPE’ and ‘thepiratebay.org’. The nature of the alleged relationship between and DeSoto and the release group is unclear at this point, but it could be related to the watermarks that led the FBI to the actor who himself starred in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.