UK Software Pirates Get Banged Up

A group of British men prosecutors said was part of one of the world's largest software-piracy rings on the Internet was sentenced to jail Friday, the latest turn in a 3-year-old criminal probe.

Prosecutors said the men ran British operations of DrinkOrDie, an international crime organization that U.S. and British officials believe cost the software industry millions of dollars in potential sales.

The group, which gained notoriety when it released a pirated copy of Microsoft's Windows 95 operating system before its 1995 debut, was shut down in 2002 after raids in the USA, Britain and elsewhere. More than 20 people in the USA were convicted in 2002.

On Friday, Alex Bell, 29, a banker, was sentenced to 2½ years, and Steven Dowd, 39, who is unemployed, was given two years. At a trial earlier this year, both were found guilty of conspiracy to defraud. Mark Vent, 31, a computer network administrator, was sentenced to 18 months after pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud.

Andrew Eardley, a 35-year-old computer-systems manager, was given a suspended jail sentence.

British prosecutors said the men, motivated by a hatred of software companies, cracked security codes to give away software over the Internet for free.

"They think of themselves like latter-day Robin Hoods or sea pirates like Johnny Depp in the film Pirates of the Caribbean," prosecuting lawyer Bruce Houlder said, according to Reuters. He said the gang - corporate executives, university administrators and technology managers - were just "plain thieves."

"The activities of all four of you struck at the heart of the software trade," Judge Paul Focke said, according to Reuters. "The loss of software to owners through piracy is staggering. Also, the effect on related businesses and the lives of employees can be rendered catastrophic."

The prosecution followed what Houlder called unprecedented cooperation between U.S. and British authorities. They arrested 70 suspects in 12 countries.

Often using moles in large corporations, the group cracked security codes for Norton AntiVirus and Microsoft's Word and Excel products, and pirated games and design programs.

Story source: news.yahoo.com.