Man Gets 7 Years for Software Piracy

mytrip writes to mention a C|Net article about the largest sentence for software piracy ever handed down by a U.S. court. Nathan Peterson of Los Angeles has been levied with an enormous fine after selling millions of dollars worth of software between 2003 and 2005. "U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III on Friday ordered Peterson to pay restitution of more than $5.4 million. Peterson pleaded guilty in December in Alexandria, Va., to two counts of copyright infringement for illegally copying and selling more than $20 million in software. Justice Department and industry officials called the case one of the largest involving Internet software piracy ever prosecuted. "

Comments

So?

[HairyCanary]

This is considerably different than the average "pirate" who downloads software for him/herself and perhaps distributes copies to friends. This guy was *selling* pirated software. That's a whole different ballgame, and it makes him a garden variety criminal in my opinion. Not really news, and certainly not relevant to me in a "Your Rights Online" sort of way.

Re:So?

[ewl1217]

I don't know what you're rambling on about here...

Why shouldn't third parties be able to sell the things they own for profit?

There's nothing wrong with selling something you own, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about software piracy. Software piracy is when you take a paid-for program that someone else owns, break the copy protection on it, use it, and possibly redistribute this. Nowhere in this do you own the software.

Binary is the property of whose media it is on, and to hell with anyone who wants to say otherwise.

Really? So does that mean I own the music on a CD I bought? Of course not! The artist owns it (I don't feel like dragging the RIAA into this, so please don't bring that up...). In the same respect, I don't own the words in a book I buy. That work is owned by the author, through copyright. Do you think that pirating a book in a similar fashion to software should be allowed (provided you had a means of doing this)?

Re:So?

[Qadesh]

If you own the music on the CD what is the economic incentive for the artist to share it in the first place? While IP laws may be wrong in some instances, to adopt an extreme position that denies the artist (or other creators) rights in their own work does not adequately address the balance that needs to be sought between the creators rights to profit from their intellectual effort and the public interest in disseminating, sharing and building on that work.

Re:So?

[SharpFang]

The basic fallacy of criminalizing -any- copyright infringement is that it implies loss of profits, while way more often than not no profit is lost.

The way of thinking of RIAA and friends is: If I copy the file, I have it for free. If I didn't copy it, I would have paid for it. This obviously doesn't take into account the far more likely case: if I didn't copy it, I wouldn't ever have it - I wouldn't pay, I wouldn't buy. The likehood I'd spend $3000+ on a legit copy of AutoCAD is near zero, so implying that I cause any loss to Autodesk by drawing a plan of my garden in an illicit copy, is simply bullshit.

This case is entirely different though: the buyers were paying money for software they believed legit. The money would go to authors of the software, but instead they went to that guy. In this case the loss of profit is not potential, assumed and unlikely, but definite and a fact.

It's like a difference between charges of causing risk of life or injury and a first degree murder.

A tad harsh

[saskboy]

I think people who cheat others out of their legitimate software purchases ought to get jail time when it's obvious they or others will do it if no harsh penalty is on the table.

Isn't 7 years a bit long in comparison to more serious crimes of violence and fraud? Perhaps 7 years is average for a fraud conviction, but I don't understand why rapists [in Canada at least] get about 5 year sentences, mercy killers [Robert Latimer] 10 years, and serial killers [Karla Holmolka] gets 9 years. Where is the equity?

Espically since

[Sycraft-fu]

Selling illegally copied software is fraud. Unless you are being explicitly clear that people are buying an illegal copy (in which case they aren't likely to buy) you are defrauding them. They believe that they are getting a great deal on legit software. Ok, you can argue they should be smarter than that but hey, fire sales happen sometimes (for example I got a free copy of Visual Studio 2005 for going to a launch event). Regardless, the crime is on the seller's end. They are the ones pushing their merchandise as legit.

So while I firmly believe that copying software illegal for personal use is a minor civil infraction, like speeding, and should be punished accordingly (a small fine that's enough to make you not want to do it but proportional to the harm) I believe that commercial copyright infringement is much more serious.

Re:Espically since

[Richard W.M. Jones]

So while I firmly believe that copying software illegal for personal use is a minor civil infraction, like speeding, and should be punished accordingly (a small fine that's enough to make you not want to do it but proportional to the harm) I believe that commercial copyright infringement is much more serious.

Where to start? Speeding endangers not just yourself but other road users and pedestrians. The amount of energy in your car increases with the square of speed making stopping harder and your car more deadly when it hits someone. Rules about speeding are one of the ways to prevent injury and death (rules against careless or dangerous driving, and driving under the influence being others). In the UK speeding is very much not a minor crime. People can be and are routinely banned from driving and imprisoned for speeding.

The "war on copying" is something like the modern "war on drugs". Computers are all about copying - it's their most basic operation. Networks have brought the price of copying down to almost nothing. The question becomes, in a world where distribution costs nothing, how to make sure people keep creating stuff? Should that be through the old industries who controlled distribution very tightly? Well, probably not. In the arts, it turned out that those industries were both very bad at producing works of art, and they didn't compensate the artists very well either. In software it seems that for whatever reason people will write the software for free and live by selling support.

Now I'm no more going to defend this guy who was caught selling millions of $$$s of software illegally. He's rather like a crack dealer. I may think that coca-derived products should be legalised (ie. regulated), but I won't defend someone who makes his living in the current unregulated environment selling crack to anyone.

Rich.

Not piracy,illegally selling copies of software

[Anonymous Coward]

"piracy" is that marketing thing they put on dvds, to convince you that copying/downloading information is
similar to assaulting people on boats.

"You wouldn't steal a car"
"You wouldd't steal a DVD"
"You wouldn't re-sell stollen slave children abroad"

"Downloading is stealing"

-MPAA

Re:Not piracy,illegally selling copies of software

[Zixia]

'Piracy' is the term used to describe illegally copying software for as long as I can remember, including back to the early days of the C=64, over 20 years ago. It's not a new term, nor is it specific to DVDs.

The term may have been adapted from imagery over pirates of the seas, but I would venture that it is the software pirates who adopted the imagery and term themselves, not the authorities who wanted to make the crime seem more sinister.

'Piracy' is just another bit of jargon used in the world of computer software, nothing more. To say that it's 'not piracy' but simply 'illegally selling copies of software' is like saying 'it's not water, it's H20'.

Proof You Can Do Anything With Statistics

[cyberbian]

Software piracy resulted in a loss of $34 billion worldwide in 2005, a $1.6 billion increase over 2004, according to a study commissioned by the Business Software Alliance.

The BSA has been making up numbers of this type since its founding. Please note, that their acronym has many other fun derivations. These Bull Shit Artists are claiming that there has been a 34 BILLION dollar loss, and worse, it's a 1.6 Billion dollar increase over last year! While they have yet to PROVE unequivocably that there is this type of loss, they're getting plenty of press on the reason you're getting DRM shoved down your throat. Perhaps those 'perceived losses' are from the software vendors who are having trouble making their bottom line. Perhaps those losses are coming from a tanking of the PC industry because they keep rehashing the same processor and stamping it with a different name. 'Ooooh, I know, let's up the voltage on the clock and see if people buy last years fab!'

There is absolutely no proof of these losses. They are estimates based on what they think people should be buying. Being an industry lobby (well paid by the vendors) OF COURSE they think people should be buying more software.

Here's the rub, people can't afford to buy them... They're still reeling from when computers used to be 2-3 THOUSAND dollars each (or more), and still needed to be upgraded every five years (or less)... Let's face it, the PC business has raped the populace for 25 years now, we're starting to get a little sore down there...

Re: Especially since

[Bodrius]

I'd take a guess that if the price was right for pirated copies, he wouldn't be making US$ 20 million dollars selling them.
Or maybe it's like the 'change bank', it's all about volume?

What Ibackups.net did, kind of like MP3.com

[twitter]

I see lots of people saying things like, "He deserves it and death!" but no one bothering to report exactly what ibackups.net actually did. According to this, the guy was selling "backup coppies" of software that people claimed they already owned. The business model, presumably, was made to fill the very real service gap in commercial software for people who manage to lose their original distribution media. As far as M$ and many other companies, people like that are out of luck and have to buy the software all over again. This happens much more often than you would think. Unlike MP3.com, it was not possible to check if the customer had a copy by asking them to insert it though he could have asked for product activation keys. In any case, this guy was not simply pressing CDs and selling them, he depended on the honesty of his customers.

It's no surprise that this guy got slapped down after the demise of MP3.com's similar backup scheme.

I don't really understand the vindictiveness of the responses. Once again, using free software avoids all of this monkey business. Why give money to people who throw people in jail for trying to help you? It's not like the guy actually hurt anything but the bottom line of some of the country's most wealthy companies. Seeing as those companies are still doing just fine selling software to complete suckers, I don't see where this person hurt anyone. Financial ruin should be punishment enough. I don't want my government wasting law enforcement resources on nonsense like this.

Crimes and Punishments

[edward.virtually@pob]

I don't like those who sell pirated versions of software. They deserve to be heavily fined and driven out of business. However, in a world in which the man who started a war in the middle east based on pretenses continues to roam free and unpunished, I think condeming them to seven years of being imprisoned, subject to the whims of power tripping bureaucratic thugs and regular anal raping is a bit disproportionate. I'm sure this will be mod'd off-topic, but it really isn't.

Re:Serves him right.

[TrekCycling]

Meanwhile you have to drive drunk a few dozen times before they put you in jail, if they even do.

Yes, complete suckers.

[twitter]

Yeah, I know I'm a sucker for thinking proprietary software is ever worth anything. The GIMP is so much better than Photoshop, right? Can you really claim with a straight face that Audacity is better than SoundForge?

I can tell you with a straight face that only a few professionals actually need the one or two tweaks found in non free software and that even they would be better off if software patents and device makers games did not make things that way. Given the choice between a free and non free program that do the same things, the one with less restrictions is the obvious winner. Given the choice between software costing $100s of dollars and a free, restrictionless program that does everything you need or want, the choice is also obvious.