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Three Execs Get Prison Time For Pirating Oracle Firmware & Solaris OS Update (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Three of four TERiX executives were sentenced to prison yesterday for a scheme through which they created three fake companies to pirate Oracle firmware patches and Solaris OS updates. By doing this, the execs avoided paying a per-server fee for every Oracle product their company serviced, instead paying for one patch/update alone.
Court documents show that Oracle was aware of the scheme and eventually connected the dots between the fake companies and TERiX when one of the execs downloaded files from Oracle's servers via one of the fake company's accounts from a TERiX IP address. Oracle filed a complaint with the FBI, but also a civil suit. A judge awarded Oracle damages last year totaling $57.423 million. The judge also barred TERiX from servicing Oracle products.
Court documents show that Oracle was aware of the scheme and eventually connected the dots between the fake companies and TERiX when one of the execs downloaded files from Oracle's servers via one of the fake company's accounts from a TERiX IP address. Oracle filed a complaint with the FBI, but also a civil suit. A judge awarded Oracle damages last year totaling $57.423 million. The judge also barred TERiX from servicing Oracle products.
TERiX CEO: So, what are you in for?
Cellmate: I stabbed my mother to death, then fed her remains to a pack of coyotes that live in my neighborhood. And you?
TERiX CEO: I gave away firmware and OS software patches without paying the necessary service royalties to Oracle.
FTFY.
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Hmm..
When I was eight-year-old, we lived in a large hut made of uncooked brick, seven siblings of us plus our father, our mother, an aunt and three cousins.
One week-end our dad set up a rogue Windows Update server to proxy our updates on the LAN, WSUS something, but without paying for the Windows Server 2003 or 2008 license. The next couple of weeks allowed us actual Windows XP security while saving a lot of Internet bandwith among our computers. It was great. We celebrated with a tournament of 4-player MS Hearts, which had become a little goofy ritual after our dad introduced us to 10BaseT networking.
Two weeks after, five or six warlords equipped with machetes and AKs made irruption and massacred every single member of my family, as I was hiding behind a couch.
The amount of blood was so breathtaking. I never thought blood would pool that way, even LAN battles and co-op with Glquake and Winquake didn't prepare me, and the mud floor was vainly trying to soak it.
You can only imagine how life-changing and horrifying this event was. But life is life. It taught me many a lesson. But no matter the hardship, you gotta follow software licenses and copyright law to the letter. I am glad in a way my family was executed, even if I suffered obviously a decade of squalor.