MONTREAL - Geremi Adam is the first person in Canada to be sent to jail for pirating movies.

Adam, 28, was found guilty of taping movies and then illegally circulating several pirated copies on the Internet. On Tuesday was sentenced to two-and-a-half months in prison. He's been held since Jan. 12 in another case.

Quebec Court Judge Suzanne Coupal also imposed a two-year suspended sentence and 100 hours of community work on Adam. He is also prohibited from entering any movie theatre for two years.

Coupal said the sentence had to both set a precedent and discourage others.

Adam was charged under the Copyright Law, which was enacted in 2007.

Adam's attorney, Richard Brouillard, told the court his client had a difficult past and noted several times during the trial that Adam made virtually no profit from his illicit activities. Instead, he devoted himself to pirating only because he wanted to become an Internet celebrity.

Adam was first arrested in 2006 for distributing illegal copies of the films How to Eat Fried Worms and Invincible. By then, he had already been singled out by the FBI as one of the biggest film pirates in North America.

He was stopped a second time in 2008 filming a screening of Street King.

Adam, a self-taught computer expert, taped the movies for the benefit of a small network called Maven, which made their viewing available for free on line.