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Man Gets 6 Years for Software Piracy
smooth wombat writes "In what prosecutors are calling 'the ultimate case', a Florida man has been sentenced to six years in prison for selling illegal copies of computer programs. From the article: 'Danny Ferrer, of Lakeland, Fla., pleaded guilty in June to conspiracy and copyright infringement charges after an FBI investigation of his Web site, BuysUSA.com. Ferrer also was ordered to pay more than $4.1 million in restitution to software makers Adobe Systems Inc., Autodesk, and Macromedia Inc.' The judge ordered that items he bought with the money, including airplanes, a Lamborghini and other cars, be sold off to pay for the restitution."
He should've just wiped his hard drive, and presto! no evidence. Oh, wait...
It's one thing downloading software illegally online, but charging others for it brings things down to a whole new level, whether it be Office or the NES famiclone knockoffs.
He was charging suckers for this pirate software and not even providing the courtesy of an nfo.
Good riddance.
I can understand the steep financial penalty, but 6 years seems awfully harsh for a crime where no one was physically harmed.
I'm certain the victims of Michael Milken and the Enron brass see things differently.
dear, we've got alpo or ken-l-ration for dinner tonight
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This is the kind of thing that we should be cracking down on, the commercial pirates, not teenagers and old ladies who download a song or two.
This guy is driving exotic cars and ripping off people at both sides, the companies who actually create the stuff, and the unsuspecting comsumer (read: idiot) who paid for this stuff thinking he was getting a good deal, and winds up getting screwed (not that you can really sympathize with anyone dumb enough to fall for this, but I guess greed overcomes common sense).
Now there's one business model that certainly could have benefited from picking FOSS.
Hey, here's an idea: maybe we should push this as counter-FUD:
Man sentenced to six years for picking proprietary software
Intrinsic risks of "poison pill" licenses overlooked by many
It's just a thought.
--MarkusQ
I can understand the steep financial penalty, but 6 years seems awfully harsh for a crime where no one was physically harmed.
By that definition, the Enron board, the WorldCom board and all others who cause purely financial damages should be given light sentences.
Noble ideals aside, in a monetized society, money does become essential: Without it, you don't get to eat, don't get health insurance, lose your home, etc.
This guy made enough he could buy sportscars, planes, the works. Even if you just look at the $4.1m restitution, that's a lot of salaries Adobe, Macromedia and Autodesk could have paid. It's easy to dismiss it as "Oh well, they're big companies, no harm, no foul." but it becomes much more of an issue when they cut the job of a guy whose health insurance got his daughter treatment for cancer.
So, yes, there's no easy direct link to physical harm caused. But the trickle down effect, just like the Enron and Worldcom guys wiping out people's retirements, may well be far more dramatic overall than a single assault. Given that you can't track down every indirect result, all you can do is look at the quantity of money, get a feel for the effects the fraudulent reappropriation of that likely had, and then accept that increasing dollar amounts can be translated in to just as increasing "likelihood" of physical harm.
Is say physical assualt bad? Absolutely. And whilst worse for one person, I'm not convinced the overall suffering is actually worse than say ten guys facing the gnawing fear of layoffs, ten wives dealing with losing their homes they poured their souls in to, ten kids having to deal with daddy suddenly being unemployed and having to move away from friends and ten families living with the risk of no medical insurance.
It sounds like you've never worked in corrections. Ever stepped foot inside of an American correctional facility? 6 years in a Florida prison is decidedly not 'nothing'. My company contracts with the FL DOC and a day in one of those facilities would be too much for me.
Also remember that once a felon, always a felon. A convicted felon has major obstacles in housing, employment, etc for the rest of their life. I'm not saying that I have a better way, but lock 'em up and throw away the keys isn't any kind of solution. After spending 6 years in the pokey, this gentleman will have a very difficult time re-entering society.
Finally, the law is simply not black-and-white. Dealing in absolutes is a frightening thing, and most judges tend to understand this (fortunately). Prosecutors tend to go for the maximum available sentence. Imagine getting into a bar fight and by way of a freak accident, you kill a man with a single punch. Do you think that you deserve to get locked up for life? What about for a consentual sex act and your partner changes their mind about it after the fact and presses charges? Does that justify rotting away in prison for the rest of your life?
While I think that our justice system is flawed, I can't think of a better way. However, the absolute and totalitarian justice system that you envision is pretty frightening to me. I'm sure glad that's not the country that we live in.
-Turkey
j-turkey: Imagine getting into a bar fight and by way of a freak accident, you kill a man with a single punch. Do you think that you deserve to get locked up for life? What about for a consentual sex act and your partner changes their mind about it after the fact and presses charges?
neonprimetime: What if, what if, what if. Don't put yourself in those positions and you wouldn't have to worry about it.
Let's see, your advice is to NOT get into the position where you are drinking at bars and having sex with women. j-turkey is worried about "accidentally" killing a man with a single punch when shit goes down. Yeah, I think I'm gonna go hang out with j-turkey.
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA