Quick: what comes to mind when you think about a movie pirate? A sinister looking youth working late into the night in the basement of his parents house uploading the latest Hollywood movies to an online file sharing site?
Well, meet "Big Hy," one of the most prolific movie pirates. He has pirated more than 300,000 DVDs in the past few years. I bet he doesn't look like anything you pictured in your mind:
“Big Hy” — his handle among many loyal customers — would almost certainly be cast as Hollywood Enemy No. 1 but for a few details. He is actually Hyman Strachman, a 92-year-old, 5-foot-5 World War II veteran trying to stay busy after the death of his wife. And he has sent every one of his copied DVDs, almost 4,000 boxes of them to date, free to American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And who helped him distribute his bootlegged DVDs to soldiers? Army Chaplains.
So, is Big Hy a "Sharing is Caring" hero or a crook? Or perhaps both?
Alan Schwarz of The New York Times has the story: Link (Photo: Todd Heisler/NY Times) - via Boing Boing