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DoD Warez Leader Faces 10 Years in Jail
An anonymous reader writes "After spending nearly 3 years in a detention center fighting his extradition from Australia, a leader of notorious warez group 'DrinkorDie' was yesterday arraigned before a U.S. District Court to face charges of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and one count of actual criminal copyright infringement. If found guilty he faces 10 years in jail & a $500,000 fine."
If not, I doubt he'll do much time if any at all. He will probably end up getting probation and a large fine.
The informative Karmawhore Wikipedia Link on DoD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DrinkOrDie
For actual links in the text below, go to Wikipedia above.
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DrinkOrDie (DoD) was an underground software cracking and warez trading network during the 1990s, shut down by a major raid in 2001.
DrinkOrDie was founded in 1993 in Moscow by a Russian with the handle "deviator" and a friend who went by the code name "CyberAngel." By 1995, the group was global. One of its earliest major accomplishments was the Internet release of Windows 95 two weeks before Microsoft released the official version. It is also known for its DoD DVD Speed Ripper released in 1999 shortly before DeCSS. The activity of the DoD group diminished after 1996, and they were not considered major players in the warez scene by 2000. The DrinkOrDie network is considered criminal for copyright infringement. As a rule, they made no financial profit from their activities.
The DoD network primarily consisted of university undergraduates, but was supported by software company employees, who would leak copies of software and other digital media. DoD also received such files indirectly, from other networks.
[edit] Member raids
In 2001 the group was busted in an FBI operation called Operation Buccaneer. At the time, DrinkOrDie had two leaders, one in the United States and another in Australia.
The Australian leader Hew Raymond Griffiths 40 (from Bateau Bay on the Central Coast), known by his screenname "Bandido", has been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and one count of criminal copyright infringement, and has been involved in legal action in Australia. As of March 2005, Griffiths has lost an appeal against extradition to the United States, to face charges under US copyright laws.
The American leader John Sankus Jr. of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, known by his screename "eriFlleH" (HellFire spelled backwards), was convicted and sentenced to 46 months. Sankus was also a member of the group HARM at the time of his arrest.
The National Hi-Tech Crime Unit in the UK also arrested eight members residing in Britain. Two of those arrested were charged and convicted for Conspiracy to Defraud, Alex Bell of Grays, Essex and Steven Dowd of Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside.
The raids were initiated after information was given to United States Customs by longtime member and co-leader James Cudney, known as Bcrea8tiv; Blah-. Once turned informant, Cudney spent 18 months working undercover for US Customs, logging conversations in chat rooms and channels visited on IRC. Through an arrangement with US Customs, Cudney was paid $104 an hour.
Also charged and convicted were:
Christopher Tresco age 23, of Boston, Massachusetts, who used the screename "bigrar", pled guilty May 28, 2002 to conspiracy to violate the criminal copyright laws, and was sentenced to 33 months of jail time. Tresco was also a member of Rise in Superior Couriering (RiSC). Tresco at the time of his arrest was the Systems Administrator for the MIT Economics department.
Barry Erickson age 35, of Eugene, Oregon, who used the screename "radsl", pled guilty on May 2, 2002 to one felony count charging conspiracy to violate the criminal copyright laws, and was sentenced to a term of 33 months, with three years of probation to follow. Erickson was a systems engineer at Symantec Corporation and provided prerelease software to DoD and RiSCiSO. He was also a founding member of Parents On 'Puterz (POPZ) a warez group that specialized in the release of children's learning software and games.
David Grimes age 25, of Arlington, Texas, who used the screename "chevelle", pled guilty on March 4, 2002 to one felony count charging conspiracy to violate the criminal copyright laws. Grimes was a computer engineer at Check Point Software. Grimes supplied Check Point firewall software to DrinkOrDie on at least two occasions, and he operated an FTP site
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.