'Wolverine' pirate gets one year in federal prison

'X-Men Origins: Wolverine'A NY man has been sentenced to one year in federal prison for illegally uploading an unfinished version of 20th Century Fox's "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," one of the harshest punishments ever handed down for internet piracy.Bronx resident Gilberto Sanchez was found guilty of uploading a nearly final "workprint" copy of the film in 2009 more than one month before its theatrical release. "We believe this is the longest sentence ever imposed for a defendant charged with uploading a single copyrighted film to the internet," assistant United States Attorney Lisa E. Feldman, who works with the FBI's computer and intellectual property crimes section, told Variety.Sanchez made the film available for download to Megaupload.com for about a day before Fox was able to get the pic removed.In addition to a one-year prison term, Judge Margaret M. Morrow also imposed one year of supervised release and numerous computer restrictions on Sanchez.Sanchez's upload illicited widespread shock and horror around Hollywood and was seen as the industry's most damaging incident of piracy up until that point. At the time, Fox estimated that 15 million people downloaded the movie. If accurate, that would theoretically put ticket sale losses in the tens of millions of dollars. Contact Rachel Abrams at Rachel.Abrams@variety.com