Years ago it was Metallica knocking down doors to bring in song sharers. Now it’s Jack Bauer going after the most dangerous of all criminals… copyright violators! Jorge Romero of Chicago has been charged by Federal authorities with copyright violations after allegedly uploading episodes of Fox’s TV show 24 to LiveDigital.com. The complaint states the episodes were made available online a week before the season premiered. According to USA Today:

Romero was charged with one felony count of uploading copyrighted material to a publicly accessible computer network knowing the work was intended for commercial distribution.

He has agreed to surrender at the US District Courthouse in Chicago on Tuesday, when arrangements will be made for his travel to Los Angeles, Department of Justice Spokesman Thom Mrozek said.

The sad thing is that this guy wasn’t even the source of the episodes. He had downloaded them from another website before uploading them to the other site. If Romero is convicted he could go to prison for up to 3 years! Wow, that’s pretty bad. Now I’m not condoning what he did, but was Fox just pissed because he did this before the season started?

If you ever see anything here at Wild Bluff Media that is a copyright violation then Walt did it. I told him not to, but he did it anyway. My lawyer, Bob Loblaw, can verify that.