Jiri Klimecek was a member of a group that overrode copyrigh

Solution

Yes, Klimecek committed a crime.

A defendant is a “minor participant” if he “plays a part in committing the offense that makes him substantially less culpable than the average participant” and “is less culpable than most other participants, but [his] role could not be described as minimal.”

Conceding that the evidence about the other participants’ roles in the copyright infringement scheme was sparse, Klimecek baldly asserts that he was only a lackey who did the bidding of higherups.  But this is not dispositive; even if other participants were more involved and more powerful than Klimecek, he cannot be deemed a minor participant if his function was an essential component of the scheme.

He was “crucial” to the operation, and certainly he was:  had he not bought the hardware and software components, set up the server, connected it to the Internet, and paid half of the monthly Internet service charges, the dissemination of the copyrighted materials could not have occurred.

Hence, he was not a “minor participant” and notentitled to a reduced sentence.