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Feds Convict Warez Dealer
XaviorPenguin writes "News.com.com.com has a story that says the DoJ has '...landed its first conviction against an American defendant trapped via Operation Fastlink, a multinational law enforcement effort undertaken against online software piracy. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa said that Jathan Desir, 26, of Iowa City, has pleaded guilty to charges related to his role in a criminal enterprise that distributed pirated software, games, movies and music over the Internet.' Desir is the first conviction that Operation Fastlink has done. He will possibly serve up to 15 years in prison when his sentencing is in March 18, 2005. Previous Slashdot articles are included here(1), here(2), and most recently here(3)."
Queue "Rapists get less time" posts. If you think this is unfair punishment, lobby your congressmen, complaining about in on /. will accomplish slightly less then nothing.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Why go with "warez" but eschew the customary "d00d"?
Fifteen years for distributing data. The jail time for violent crimes must be way longer than that!
What? What's that, you say? You can be in prison for less than a year for beating the shit out of another human being?
Something is terribly wrong with this system.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
... it's just scary.
... it's just another world.
In one case you've destroyed an individual- taken his/her dignity, the right to be safe, the very 'temple' of his/her body with a violent act such as rape.
In another, we have little bits of signal that have 'more' importance than the afore mentioned victim.
I have always been cynical and said everything comes down to money- religion, lawyers, corporations- it all revolves around that little dollar sign.
But when you hear about someone getting locked away for 15 years (sorry Kevin)
And it scares me.
Only on /. do dupes include links to previous versions.
I see this going the way of the "war on drugs" in the way they jail people...but is this really going to stop the flow of mp3's or software or movies? I mean, do they REALLY think they're going to stop this now that the genie is out of the bottle?
Perhaps, they should re-think their distribution methods on how they receive payment for their work/art.
I don't have the answers or even a suggestion...but jailing people left and right certainly isn't working on drug use...why do they think it will work here?
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Of course, people are still having unprotected sex, too.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Violent cimes-- the ones that really matter-- tend to be crimes that lend you in state prison. State prisons are overstuffed so if you go in, you get out on parole in a fraction of the time you were sentenced for.
Crimes against property and society, like running a web server or giving someone drugs, tend to be felonies. Federal prison == no parole.
Well, it doesn't cost (in theory) millions of dollars to fix some jackass's face after a well-deserved ass-whuppin'.
They're basing the punishment on the (theoritical) cost of the crime. They mentioned the value of the pirated stuff at $50mil. That's quite a lot of money - hence quite a lot of software to be pirating.
What they DON'T really mention, as far as I saw, was whether this guy was putting up stuff for download, or was actually *selling pirated software*. If the former, the punishment should be far far FAR more lenient. But of course, the software lobby wouldn't look at it that way.
Reminds me of Operation Sundevil back in the 80's. Three guys in the Legion of Doom (one of which I met shortly after he got released) got sent to the pokey over that E911 document. The baby bell claimed the document was valued at some ginormous amount - and the way they reached that figure? They counted the costs of all the computers, etc. that were used to create the document. Meaning, if one employee opened that document and made one tiny change, they decided that that document was worth however much it was *plus* the cost of the computer or terminal that was used by that guy. Insane!
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
Yeah, copyright infringment is a felony offense, and is under United States Code Title 17 sections 501 and 506. I have seen enough of these FBI Warnings when playing movies on DVD/VHS... Penalty: 5 years in prison and $250,000 fine per work infringed. Harsh? yes. Fair? Debatable? Yep. But it is the law...
Some call me Howie Feltersnatch
Violent rapists should obviously be punished severely. But what about cases where both individuals were drunk but it's somehow the man's fault because the woman was too drunk to say no?
Anyway you just can't compare the two.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
He suffers of stuttering.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
I just hope any 'attempted murder' sentences will last more than 15 years because if software pirates get 15, then convicts arrested for shooting somebody should have double!
a little tip to the guy thats serving 15 years...you're close to canada, GO THERE.
Have gone unanswered. What you dont realize is that 'elected officals' only listen to people that are worthy of their time. ( i.e. people or corporations that can 'donate' huge amounts to their campaigns... ) The little people dont count anymore. Have not for a LONG time. And in this fight, the *AA has the bigger pot....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why should I spend even more money keeping him in prison?
People who are a danger to society should be kept away from society, but why not financially punish non-violent criminals?
I'm happy to read this, as it means the FED's have nothing better to do then run around enforcing **CIVIL** issues ( on MY dime even )..
All the terrorists, rapists, murderers, etc have been eradicated from the earth.
We can all feel so much safer and sleep better tonight knowing this.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So, what? Should whoever makes the law sit down and say 'well, really this isnt as bad as murder, so we shouldnt punish them as much. Oh, but is it worse than this crime, or that crime?'. Seriously, where do you draw the line? This law had a maximum sentance placed on it. Get it, a MAXIMUM SENTANCE. Not a MINIMUM SENTANCE. When they created the law, they LIMITED how badly this person could get punished. There is no maximum sentance on murder or in a lot of cases, manslaughter. If it was a mandatory minimum, you might have a point.
I think it's awesome that someone finally got the book thrown at them for cheating hard working professionals out of their profit. It's fun to watch.
Screw the software/music/movie pirates.
This was not a case of the teenager down the street sharing movies and music for free with others via Kazaa or Bit Torrents. This was a person who was involved in a ring that charged for access to copyrighted materials. I think the time fits the magnitude of the crime.
The Justice Department estimated that the seized copyright material alone was worth $50 million.
You think if this guy was sitting on $50 million dollars that he would be peddling warez and playing games?
hehe, what's interesting is, most do not ask for spam. A lot of people want warez. I guess where there is demand, somebody will supply despite the risk.
Some call me Howie Feltersnatch
Not if you're the one running it. Rapists: not a threat to your empire. People breaking laws which make you rich: a threat.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Copyright law violations are a federal matter, rape and murder are a state matter. If you feel that the latter are not being enforced properly then push for reform in your state if after some investigation, you still believe it's not level. Your state may be tougher on such crime that you think, VA for example which doesn't seem that tough compared to some, has the second highest execution rate in the U.S. last I checked.
The irony of your choice, rape, is that it is so often not punished because so many young women lie about it. I know tons of girls who claim they were raped. Some even go so far as to claim that several guys have raped them because their standard of rape is being pushy, not literally forcing them to. One of the biggest problems now are how so many college age women in the U.S. will get drunk, fuck and then freak when they're sobre and cry rape. I know guys who've been caught up in that before.
If you want to blame anyone for rape laws not being enforced much, blame the young women who cry rape as a weapon against guys they don't like. The situation has gotten so bad that a friend of mine watched a number of her girlfriends get literally raped back home in New Jersey and the cops said that since they had no real injuries they wouldn't believe them. The only way to get justice back is to take all of the Tawana Brawleys and lock them up in the deepest, darkest hole in a maximum security prison, "coed" and let Bubba have some "real sweet meat" for a change.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
The sad thing is that the E911 document was originally valued at $79,449 but had roughly the same information as the "BellSouth E911 Service Interfaces", available for $13 from a Bellcore catalog (_Hacker_Crackdown, by Bruce Sterling).
So since you're going for the moral high position here. How is ruining people's livelyhood any better? That "signal" must be worth "something" otherwise we wouldn't be repeatedly having this discussion five times a week.
Since when is it ruining someone else's livelihood? So if Toyata someday comes out with a car that's as good as a Mercedes and sells it for less, are the Japanese destroying the Germans?
Look here.. livelihood involves constantly working to earn your keep. NOT to sit on your ass, come up with one idea, and EXPECT^H^H^H^H^HDEMAND money to come in!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
...but an individual rapist affects only a handful of individuals. Someone unlawfully distributing software like this is negatively affecting the economy and social structure of the United States of America. The United States economy has for a large number of people become an intellectual property economy. Many people don't want to go back to the days where they had to toil in factories for minimum wage. Instead, we'd rather be writing software, making games, making movies, writing music, or designing products that get assembled in China by poor workers there. Anyway, people like this--whether they are distibuting for profit or not--are undermining the economy of the United States and we will not allow that to happen.
If you want "free software", use free software that's really free.
My other first post is car post.
I live in Iowa. Warez is like a pastime here. If it's gone we might have to resort to spamming to make up for all the spare time.
Way to go, waste more money on prison time for people responsible for non violent crime. Who cares about people murdering people when we have people out there pirating software!
been sentenced to 15 years. It is simply the maximum he could get. In reality, he will get one or two - much less than a typical rapist. In any case, here is a fun argument as to how this person could have caused more harm than a rapist. Let us presume for a moment than the $50 million figure cited was correct (actually, it is more complicated than this, of course). How much harm, in monetary terms, does a rapist do? Many people quibble about how one can do this, but I have no problem with it at all. First, we start with the pretty solid basis that a typical American values their life at roughly ten million dollars. How do you figure this? Risk analysis - people with risky jobs are paid more than otherwise similar jobs. One can then simply extrapolate the risk/reward curve to figure that at the margins, $1 is worth about 1/10 million of your life. Other methods of calculation by various economists produce similar results. Now, given that your whole life is worth about $10 million, it is obvious that being raped, while sucking quite hard, is clearly better than dying. Maybe 10% as bad, at most. So therefore, a rape is something on the order of $1 million dollars in damage, mostly to the victim, but also to society in general which experiences fear and must pay for police protection, courts, etc. So at least by this logic, this guy caused 50 times the damage of a rapist. The primary difference is not that he did less damage, but that his damage is diffuse - spread among thousands of stockholders, rather than essentially focused on one person. Stealing a few bucks from millions of people doesn't manifest itself as clearly as stealing a million bucks from one person.
The portion of the article you quoted didn't say ANYTHING about charging. Last time I check in IRC, the stuff wasn't being charged for, nor do most peer to peer networks. These groups, I would tend to call "clubs", as people collect it, just to have it. They would never buy it if it costs money, but it's cool to "have" a copy of say, Autodesk, or 3d studio.
Maximum sentence for rape is variable from state to state, whether it's a federal issue, and whether it's aggrivated or not. Aggrivated rape carries a maximum of life in prison, otherwise, it's 20 years max.
State rape statutes here.
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... I really don't know where to begin with you.
Most of you are just throwing around "numbers of years in prison" as if they mean nothing at all. The maximum sentence this guy could receive is 15 years. Don't you have any concept of just how LONG that is? 15 years ago, it was 1989. Think about where you were in 1989 and everything you've done between now and then. Now imagine it ALL WIPED OUT, instead spent in a cell. And not because you killed or raped someone. No. Because you committed "copyright infringement".
Now does the punishment really fit the crime?
Others of you say if we disagree with the penalty, we should lobby our congressmen. This is laughable. If you're not a sizable organization, namely one with a lot of money, you're not going to get to DO any lobbying. And that's the problem here. The system is currently set up completely in favor of the big corps. Due to the money they have, they can influence the laws to favor maximum profitability for them, rather than what's best for the entire country. They can also scare almost anyone out of doing something, whether it's an illegal activity or not, simply with the threat of an expensive lawsuit. And this is without even getting into the ridiculous patent issues - again, because they have the money, they can afford to use a good chunk of it snapping up questionable patents and then trying to profit from them later (again, usually via "scare" lawsuits, and not from actually defending the patents).
But... I'm going off on something else now. The point is: I don't argue against copyright infringement being illegal. What I argue is that it should be no more severe than a misdemeanor.
I remember reading up on a study on the highway speeds and how 75 vs 65 resulted in less fatalities...
... yes. There's a price for taking a life- and it should be small for a true accident (kid running out in front of a car from behind an SUV and with NO chance to stop) ... but it should be high for a planned, premeditated execution (Peterson (I'm not getting into exactly *how* they reached that) for example).
When it was all done and concluded it worked out to be about 1.3 million (if memory serves) per life saved.
Unfortunately, the lack of speed cost society about 4.3 million per life (Very convoluted logic- I didn't follow it) due to increased time 'wasted' while commuting.
So
And then you have money - theft of money almost ALWAYS gets a stiffer sentence than a violent crime... and if you steal in the process of a violent crime it becomes much more stiffer penalties.
I guess software piracy is like a flasher: Everyone says it's a victimless crime. But in reality everyone is hurt at some point... but man oh man, 15 years? Sigh.
15 years, minimum security, approximately 80000 per year, 12 million.
Your math is a bit off, it's 1.2 million. Still though, you bring up an interesting point. The best way for those who feel that copyright infringement should not be punished by jail time is to hit "the man" back where is hurts him the most...his pocket.
Be creative and think of possibilities here. If everyone who sincerely believes that it is their right to ignore copyright law stood up and proudly shouted "look at me, I'm going to share whatever I damn well please" then no one could be imprisoned because it would be impossible to afford to do so.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Show me where people from the political donor class who cheated on millions of dollars in taxes got 15 year sentences. It just about never happens.
Industry in the US, back in the clolnial days, started out by explicitly violating the British patent system.
That system was intended to create long-term monopolies on many manufacturing processes and devices, such as thread mills and power looms. Part of the point of these patents was to keep colonies agricultural and raw-material producing, dependent on the "mother country" for their manufactured goods (rather than competing with it and becoming a world power).
The arrival of people with knowlege of mill manufacture, who set up their own plants here, was a major factor in the colonies achieving the ability to break away. And the "mother country"'s attempts to enforce these monopolies produced some of the major greviances that lead to the revolution.
So now it looks like the US has come full circle. B-(
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Blah blah this is the law... Frankly it is an insane law. The law is bought and sold by psychopathic corporations and dirty politicians.
Although I agree with you, I think it's deeper than just dirty politicians. How many of the politicians do you think actually really know what a computer is or even a server. They just have some big company that's coming to them saying, "Hey, we've got all these people stealing from us, can't you do something to make it illegal and help us not go out of business." Then in some cases there is probably a nice campaign "donation."
I'd like to believe that a lot of this could be solved by having technically literate, honest people in the government. (But since we know that honest and government do not go together, we have a problem.)
Did the software companies report $50 million in losses? No.
They claim that every download or copy is a lost sale, which is total crap. I'm sure many people here on slashdot remember the days of dialing in to the local pirate BBS, downloading crazy expensive business programs, and playing with them for the fun of it. Did I need autocad? No. Was I using autocad for business? No. Was it lost revenue from Autodesk? No. Did I even know what I was doing? No.
I understand the software publishers desire to get paid for their work. Things are much better today, I downloaded a preview of Combustion!! Didn't know what to do with it (like Autocad) but got a glimpse of the real software.
We all knew those people that had the insane software collection. They didn't play the games. They didn't use the applications. They stored it away, stacks and stacks of disks.
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
I'm a graduate student at the University of Iowa, pursuing a Master's in CompSci, focusing on computer security. Until last year, Jathan was the Graduate Student Secretary at UI.
I have no knowledge of any crimes he may or may not have committed.
So, that said... Jathan never did me anything but right. He was quiet, kept to himself an awful lot, but in a department which seems defined by professors who keep their office doors shut, Jathan's door was always open--both figuratively and literally.
My first day at UI, I walked into his office to get a registration number. I looked over his bookshelf and found a surprising number of really high-quality texts on C++, which he told me he'd found laying around MacLean Hall or which someone was throwing away, or whatever. (Strangely enough, the engineering library at Seamans Center has a far, far larger programming library than the CS department in MacLean Hall. The ECE, Electrical and Computer Engineering, geeks have a much better library. In MacLean Hall, getting the book with the right information is a matter of borrowing it from the grad student who owns it, or else hitting Amazon.com.) I walked in there just expecting to get my registration processed; I walked out of there with three good C++ texts under my arm, gifts from him. No money, no favors, no nothing: just "here's how the library situation works, and here, have a few books, do you already have a copy of Josuttis? You do? Okay, never mind that, then..."
So. No matter what happens, let's please remember that Jathan's a human being, with real history, and real people he's helped out in the past for no reason at all other than he wanted to help out.
Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson
/ v1ch16s25.html
13 Aug. 1813Writings 13:333--35
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents
It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not. As a member of the patent board for several years, while the law authorized a board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with what slow progress a system of general rules could be matured.
The west is looking more like great justice nations such as Saudi Arabia and China, 15 years is just insane, thats most of this guys life ruined, I really hope he did some bad things to deserve this, he should have atleast attempted to beat one of the agents to death with a CD rack.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Okay, there are a couple of posters here to whom I can better explain my ideas.
First of all, one of the ways in which software piracy hurts the economy is not in a direct way. Suppose someone wants Photoshop, but doesn't want to pay $500. Suppose he can afford to pay perhaps $100. There are a LOT of these people out there. Many of them right now pirate Photoshop. However, there are photo manipulation programs out there that cost around $100 that they could legitimately buy. If these people with $100 didn't pirate Photoshop, then there would be a larger market for $100 photo manipulation softwares. Some company would hire programmers and software designers and marketers to produce and sell $100 photo manipulation software.
By the way, with digital cameras being so popular, the market for photo manipulation software has exploded recently and there are many more choices available. Your Mom and Dad generally don't buy a digital camera and then go onto suprnova or torrentreactor. They'll either use the software that came with the camera (and the camera maker paid the developer a couple of dollars to include) or they will buy some low-cost program or maybe they will go all-out and buy Photoshop. Personally, I think this is a Good Thing. Money changes hands, people are employed, the market grows, more choices are available.
Second, as far as affecting society being more serious than affecting an individual: of course a crime against society is more serious. Look at the case of the Rosenbergs for example. In one sense, they just copied some information and gave that copy to someone else. Sounds like copyright infringment, maybe. No one was directly injured by it. The original people still had their information. However, they gave vital information on the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. For this they were found guilty of treason against the United States and were executed. Obviously that's an extreme example, but it does show how a seemingly simple crime can be elevated in seriousness when it affects a large number of people, an industry, or an entire nation.
Lastly, regarding free software: Free software is just filling another segment in the market for software, even if it is at a $0 price point. I think the best part about free software is that it raises the bar for commercial software. Any program that someone is charging money for had better be superior to free alternatives otherwise it's not a good value. Also, commercial software companies have obviously not had a problem competing with free software in most cases.
My other first post is car post.