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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.
Seriously, now I need to go get an insurance policy to pay out if Oracle sticks me with criminal charges? Sounds like this should have been purely a civil matter.
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.
Fake billing old people is a much safer crime.
I think there is a difference between profiting off of distributing pirated software, as this was the case, and normal piracy (especially media piracy). I'm not upset with this outcome.
This gets prison time? The entire US Economy was crashed in 2008 by people lying about the value of derivatives and _this_ is what we send people to jail for?
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FTFY.
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If you cannot afford to pay for Oracle firmware, say to them "I have n customers on Oracle, how about I get these patches for free or I will go to SQLServer, DB/2, postfix, mariadb etc...". And just work the deal
Yet one more reason why I won't do business with Oracle. These updates and firmware use to be free, now they're throwing people in prison because they got free updates that fixed Oracle's shitty products. Screw HPE too... Dell still offers free unencumbered firmware updates.
Cisco pulls the same shit; no active maintenance contract on the hardware or software means no updates / fixes for you.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
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.
I have been saying this for a few years now ever since the Java lawsuit against Google that no one is a bigger threat to innovation, FOSS, and software development freedom than Oracle.
Their products suck, buggy, ultra expensive, and require contracts which are leased rather than rented with SAAS with all sorts of stipulations.
MS on the other hand is moving in the other direction but still have a ways to go. Windows being free for non commercial use is one example and unlike Oracle their products are at least improving. Oracle is going the other way around and throwing people in jail who want a bug fix.
The most outdated shit requiring insecure IE and ancient versions of Windows on desktops is all because of fucking Oracle because they charge an arm and a leg to upgrade so Java6 (last employer) is still being used with customer financial data all because Oracle wants to charge too much money to upgrade that the cost accountants won't pay. .... end rant
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That will just further alienate Oracle's customers and hasten the demise of Solaris and SPARC
Come on. This is Oracle we are talking about. Like MS before them their customers are on lockin with P-SQL specific code and financial stuff they can't get rid of. Why bother to be nice?
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