First conviction for Software Piracy in Operation Fastlink
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A warez group being operated by a 26 years old college student started in January 2003. In few months, they collected a database of around 13000 titles and made them available online.
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Microsoft last week quietly launched a pilot program to tackle the increasing problem of software piracy. Windows Genuine Advantage is the first trial of a validation scheme operating on Microsoftâs Download Center.
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A man caught with missile blueprints on his computer was convicted of a terrorist charge Friday. His wife was acquitted of withholding information from authorities.
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The owner of one of the nation's largest Internet software piracy Web sites has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison.
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Police in Greece and Britain have broken up a software piracy ring and arrested two men who are accused of selling millions of dollars worth of pirated business software.
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(InfoWorld) - The leader of one of the oldest and most widely recognized Internet software piracy groups was sentenced Friday to 51 months in prison on one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, the U.S. Department of Justice announced. Hew Raymond Griffiths, 44, was extradited to the U.S. from Australia in February, and in April, he pleaded guilty to two copyright-related charges in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria. Griffiths, a British national, was the long-time leader of the DrinkOrDie software piracy network and an elder in the underground Internet piracy community, known as the warez scene, the DOJ said. He faced a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a US$500,000 fine for the charges. Griffiths "became one of the most notorious leaders of the underground Internet piracy community by orchestrating the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars in copyrighted material," Alice Fisher, assistant attorney general at the DOJ, said in a statement. Griffiths had fought extradition for almost three years, and he was held in an Australian detention center during that time. His extradition was one of the first for a copyright offense, the DOJ said in a press release. "Whether committed with a gun or a keyboard -- theft is theft," U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg of the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement. "And, for those inclined to steal Intellectual Property here, or from half-way around the world, they are on notice that we can and will reach them." DrinkOrDie was founded in Russia in 1993 and expanded internationally throughout the 1990s. The group was dismantled by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in December 2001, with more than 70 raids conducted in the U.S. and five other countries, the U.K., Finland, Norway, Sweden and Australia. The operation targeting DrinkOrDie has resulted in more than 30 felony convictions in the U.S. and 11 convictions elsewhere, the DOJ said. The DOJ estimated that DrinkOrDie was responsible for the reproduction and distribution of more than $50 million worth of pirated software, movies, games and music. In a 1999 interview, Griffiths said he ran DrinkOrDie's day-to-day operations and controlled access to more than 20 top warez servers worldwide. He said then he would never be caught. DrinkOrDie specialized in cracking software codes and distributing the cracked versions over the Internet. The group distributed software from large companies such as Microsoft Corp., Adobe Systems Inc. and Symantec Corp., as well as smaller software vendors, the DOJ said. The group used encryption and other security measures to hide their activities from police.
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(InfoWorld) - Two more defendants have pleaded guilty to charges of criminal copyright infringement for selling counterfeit software with a retail value of nearly $6 million on eBay Inc., the U.S. Department of Justice announced. Robert Koster of Jonesboro, Arkansas, and Yutaka Yamamoto of Pico Rivera, California, both pleaded guilty Monday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, the DOJ said in a news release. The two pleaded guilty to selling counterfeit software from Rockwell Automation. The two will be sentenced in November, along with four other defendants who pleaded guilty in Milwaukee in April. Rockwell Automation produces, among other products, specialized factory management software. The majority of the software applications sold by these defendants on eBay had retail prices ranging from about $900 to $11,300. From September 2003 to September 2004, Koster offered counterfeit software in 105 or more online auctions, receiving a profit of more than $23,000, the DOJ said. The retail value of the software was more than $5 million. From December 2003 to August 2004, Yamamoto initiated at least 92 auctions, for a profit of $6,000, the DOJ said. The retail value of the software was about $543,000. Including Monday's pleas, the DOJ has gotten nine convictions involving eBay auctions of counterfeit Rockwell Automation software. In addition to six pleas in Wisconsin, there have been two convictions in the Eastern District of Michigan and another in the Southern District of Indiana. The combined retail value of the counterfeit software in all nine prosecutions is approximately $30 million, the DOJ said.
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Athens police said they had arrested a Greek citizen who pirated and sold a computer software program, costing the multinational company that owned its copyright hundreds of million of dollars (euros).
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InfoWorld - The leader of one of the oldest and most widely recognized Internet software piracy groups was sentenced Friday to 51 months in prison on one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.
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The US government has secured the first conviction in its ambitious Operation Fastlink program designed to nab software pirates. The Iowa City Press-Citizen reported that Jathan Desir, 26, has admitted to
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A brother and sister who sent junk e-mail to millions of America Online customers were convicted yesterday in the nation&#39;s first felony prosecution of Internet spam distributors.
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Pirates sink 'selves A week after Windows Vista's official launch hackers have devised their first attack, targeting pirates trying to install illegal copies of Microsoft's operating system.â¦
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Is Microsoft's anti-malware giveaway part of a master plan to flush out software pirates?
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A court found a German software dealer guilty of counterfeiting Microsoft products, and sentenced him to three years in prison, authorities said Wednesday.
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Two men have pleaded guilty to  copyright-infringement for distributing music, software and  movies over the Internet in the first U.S. convictions for  piracy over "peer to peer" networks, the Justice Department  said.
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A state media report says Chinese law enforcement nabbed and destroyed millions of pirated software discs, CDs and DVDs in a campaign against intellectual property theft.
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Prosecutors unveil the first forensic evidence in the murder trial of Linux-coder Hans Reiser.