Defending their copyright with your taxes
Published: 12 May 2005 12:45 BST
The conviction of four self-proclaimed Robin Hoods for conspiracy to defraud last week has raised some serious questions over just how much public resource should be diverted into helping software companies protect their wares when they don't use all the security technology currently designed for just this purpose.
The gang members, collectively known as DrinkorDie, who were arrested between December 2001 and January 2002, were sentenced at the Old Bailey last week for their part in a global software counterfeiting ring. Three of the four — Alex Bell, Mark Vent, and Andrew Eardley — worked or were previously employed as IT managers while the fourth — Steven Dowd — was unemployed. Sentences ranged from 18 months to two years, with Eardley's sentence suspended for two years.
The gang was charged with conspiracy to defraud after being arrested by the UK National Hi-Tech Crime Unit, which acted on information coming from US investigations including Operations Blossom and Buccaneer in 2001.
DrinkorDie formed part of a so-called "warez" group — from the plural of software — which operate by allegedly disseminating pirated copies of computer software, games, movies and music on the Internet. According to the US Justice Department, warez members distributed material to "select clientele" over secure servers, and those files eventually end up on an IRC network or a peer-to-peer file-sharing service.
The latest major US operation against warez groups, termed "Operation Fastlink", began last year and consisted of 120 searches in 27 US states and 10 other countries with US authorities estimating that the seized copyright material was worth $50m.
But despite the apparent success of such investigations some experts have questioned whether so much public sector time and money should be spent on what could be seen as essentially copyright infringement.
Peter Sommer, a security specialist called as an expert witness for the defence in the DrinkorDie case, claims the group should never have been prosecuted under charges of conspiracy. "The main concern that I have is the colossal expenditure of the UK investigating trial, which stems from the way the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided to charge this. Because the CPS decided to go with conspiracy charges rather than charging individuals substantively under copyright or trademark law, it increased costs by several million pounds," he says.
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