One of the largest criminal music piracy cases in the United States has ended with 25-year old Barry Gitarts being convicted of copyright infringement. The man, who was part of the so-called Apocalypse Production Crew, was found guilty by a jury last week in the Eastern District of Virginia. The APC was an online piracy group that specialized in stealing and disseminating music.

Gitarts, who is expected to be sentenced on August 8, faces a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000. The man has also been ordered to make a full restitution to injured parties.

According to a press release from the US Attorney's Office of Eastern District of Virginia, the man had collaborated with the piracy group starting at least with June 2003, through April 2004. Gitarts was known under the alias name of "Dextro" and was the group's 15th member.

Records and testimony introduced at the trial proved "Dextro" was the one who paid and administered a computer server located in Texas, which the APC members used to upload and download copies of pirated music, movies, software and video games. The number of these files is reported to have been in the range of hundreds of thousands. Evidence introduced at the trial also showed that Barry Gitarts received payment for his services from the leader of the APC group.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay V. Prabhu said that members of the APC group were responsible for 8,142 music releases stolen between 1997 and 2004. From the Assistant Attorney's statement, it looks like once the group released a pirated album, it was uploaded on servers all over the world, within just five minutes. Practically, the APC acted as a "first-provider" of pirated content on the Internet, which makes the group accountable for the majority of pirated works distributed and downloaded via the Internet.

Apparently, Gitarts tried to destroy the evidence by installing Linux software on his server and deleting his Windows applications. The Government forensic specialists managed to find fragments of emails in which Dextro talked about music piracy.

The case is part of an ongoing federal action to take down piracy groups, an action known by the name of "Operation FastLink". Up until now, FastLink is responsible for more than 200 search warrants executed in 15 countries.