Steven R. Hale, Stealing & Selling Pre-Release DVDs, Tennessee 2022

A Tennessee man has been sentenced to 57 months in prison for stealing and selling pre-release DVDs of blockbuster movies.

Steven R. Hale, 38, of Memphis, was sentenced in a court in Tennessee after pleading guilty to criminal copyright infringement and being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.

Hale worked for a multinational company that manufactured and distributed DVDs and Blu-rays of movies. From February 2021 to March 2022, he stole hundreds of pre-release DVDs and Blu-rays that were being prepared for commercial distribution in the United States.

These included DVDs and Blu-rays for popular films such as ‘F9: The Fast Saga,’ ‘Venom: Let There Be Carnage,’ ‘Godzilla v. Kong,’ ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,’ ‘Dune,’ and ‘Black Widow.’

Hale sold the DVDs and Blu-rays through e-commerce sites. At least one pre-release Blu-ray that Hale stole and sold, ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home,’ was extracted or ‘ripped’ from the Blu-ray by bypassing the encryption that prevents unauthorized copying.

The digital copy of ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ was then illegally made available over the internet more than a month before the Blu-ray’s official scheduled release date. 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 addition to his prison sentence, Hale has agreed to make full restitution to his victims, including the return of the approximately 1,160 stolen DVDs and Blu-rays seized from him to the company where he worked.

The FBI is investigating the case.

Senior Counsel Matthew A. Lamberti of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Raney Irwin for the Western District of Tennessee prosecuted the case.

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