A city resident and employee of Pandora’s Cube received a four-month jail sentence this week after pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit felony copyright infringement and violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
He was charged after federal agents simultaneously stormed the store’s three locations, including the College Park branch, Dec. 1 of last year. The agents discovered pirated game software and illegally modified Xboxes, Entertainment Software Association officials said.
Judge Peter J. Messitte of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland sentenced 31-year-old employee Hitesh Patel of College Park to four months of home detention and two years of supervised release in addition to jail time. Patel managed one of the locations and served as a technician for all three stores.
The owner of Pandora’s Cube, Biren Amin of Laurel, and two managers of Pandora’s Cube stores, Mrugesh Amin of Laurel and Herbie Walker of Hyattsville, also pleaded guilty. Their sentencings are scheduled for August.
“Sentences of this magnitude send a strong message to the pirate community that intellectual property theft is a serious crime with serious consequences,” ESA president Douglas Lowenstein said in a press release.
Pandora’s Cube, which specializes in anime and video games, was known to carry a variety of illegally modified, or “modded” Xboxes, anti-piracy counsel for the ESA Chunnie Wright said. She said the so-called “Super Xboxes” were equipped with larger hard drives than their factory-equipped counterparts and contained dozens of illegally installed games.
In addition to the College Park location, Pandora’s Cube also has branches in Springfield, Va. and one in White Marsh Mall in Baltimore.
Wright said modded Xboxes are equipped with software that permits users to load pirated or counterfeited copies of games onto the system’s hard drives so game discs are unnecessary for play.
“This is a phenomenon we are witnessing all across the country,” Wright said.
The ESA, a lobby organization whose members include game publishers such as Sony, Nintendo and Universal Games, originally discovered Pandora’s Cube’s activities and notified law enforcement. ESA members collectively accounted for more than 90 percent of the $7.3 billion entertainment software sales in the U.S. in 2004, Wright said.
Senior neurophysiology major Sameer Sawnhey said he modded his Playstation 2 so he could play imported games. He said, however, many people use mods to play burned games instead of the original copies. By modding a game system, the owner can play games copied from a friend’s or video rental store’s original version.
“[Mods] are getting more popular, but a lot of companies are getting more strict with copyrighted material,” Sawnhey said.
He said he remembered Pandora’s Cube charging considerably more for modded Xboxes than a variety of stores on the Internet.
Video game enthusiast Ritsaart Marcelis also owns a modded PlayStation. The senior architecture major said Xboxes are easiest to mod because owners can download games onto its hard drives, which is not possible with other game systems.
Wright said piracy is becoming more and more common.
“We certainly hope that … the fact that the defendant received significant jail time will serve as a deterrent message for other businesses and individuals that are engaged in or contemplating this type of illegal activity,” Wright said.
But Sawnhey and Marcelis said they thought pirates would find ways around the increased crackdown on illegal modifications.
“If people want it, there’s always going to be a way for them to get it,” Marcelis said.
