Probation in Case of Stolen Cruise Photos
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A man who tried to extort $1.3 million from Tom Cruise in exchange for stolen photographs of his wedding to Katie Holmes was sentenced to two years probation, The Associated Press reported. Marc Lewis Gittleman was also fined $3,000 after pleading guilty on Sept. 21 to interstate transportation of stolen property. Mr. Gittleman, a computer technician, obtained thousands of photos from a damaged hard drive that was brought to his workplace by a photographer. He then contacted David Hans Schmidt, 47, who was known for peddling nude pictures and sex tapes of celebrities, and sent Mr. Cruise an e-mail message demanding $1.3 million to keep the pictures private. The authorities set up a sting operation to catch the two men. Mr. Schmidt pleaded guilty to transmitting threatening communications with intent to extort and hanged himself in September.
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By The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson  Sep. 22--A Rio Rico man was sentenced to more than three years in prison Wednesday for downloading child pornography from the Internet.
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Piracy trials in Hong Kong and japan have led, respectively, to jail time and fines for two men convicted of copyright infringement.
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Two jail inmates used photos of bikini-clad women to hide holes they used to escape and left behind a thank-you note, signed with a smiley face, for a guard they claimed helped them, officials said Monday.
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Two people arrested in an international investigation into child abuse pictures are to appear in court.
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Calling video voyeurism the new frontier of stalking, the House on Tuesday approved legislation to make it a crime to secretly photograph or videotape people, often for lascivious purposes.    Under the legislation passed by voice vote, video voyeurism on federal lands would be punishable by a fine of not more than $100,000 or imprisonment for up to one year, or both...
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Photocopying wallet information pays off.
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[World News] Washington, Oct 6: A suitcase reportedly containing Beatles memorabilia, that was stolen from George Harrison&#39;s sister Lou has been recovered by the police, but the photographs are missing.
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PARIS - A Paris appeals court on Tuesday upheld the acquittals of three photographers accused of invasion of privacy after they took pictures of Princess Diana and Mr Dodi Fayed at the scene of their deadly crash.
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Nathan Peterson, a 26-year-old California man who pleaded guilty to criminal copyright infringement last December, has been sentenced to serve more than seven years in prison.
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Microsoft has begun a short-term validation programme aimed at tackling software piracy. Users are invited to have their copies of Windows XP analysed, with the promise that they will be replaced free of charge if found to be counterfeit.
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HR.4077, the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act, has been approved by the United States&#39; House Judiciary Committee. The bill specifies up to five years&#39; jail for anyone making over a thousand copyrighted works available for download.
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Paper files exempt The Government's planned two-year jail sentence for information thieves will not apply to people who steal or trade in personal information from most manual filing systems. Apart from some Government files, the penalties will only apply to electronic databases.â¦
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People who took items washed ashore from the MSC Napoli off Lyme Bay have until Tuesday to report their finds.
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It is to become an offence in Northern Ireland to cruise town and city streets looking for prostitutes.
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Controversial plan could force file swappers to face criminal charges.
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(InfoWorld) - A U.S. judge on Friday sentenced the owner and operator of iBackups.net to 87 months in prison, the longest sentence ever given for software piracy, according to a software trade group. Nathan Peterson, of Antelope Acres, California, also forfeited nearly all of his assets to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, and he agreed to pay more than US$5.4 million in restitution, the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) said. Peterson pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal copyright infringement in December. At that time, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) called Backups.net "the largest for-profit software piracy site ever shut down by law enforcement." The Web site illegally sold software that would have been worth $20 million on the retail market, the DOJ said. Peterson will begin paying off the remaining $5 million in damages 60 days after his release from prison, at a rate of $200 per month. In criminal piracy cases, the average damages resulting from pirated software are just over $9 million, or less than half of the $20 million caused by iBackups, SIIA said. The $5.4 million Peterson agreed to pay in restitution is eight times the average fine of $659,000, according to a SIIA study tracking U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation cases on software piracy reported since 2000. Peterson's site used Google.com text ads to find customers, SIIA said. Buyers should be aware of the possibility that software being sold through text ads might not be legal, the trade group said. Neither the prosecutor nor Peterson's attorney immediately returned calls seeking comment.