Feds Convict Warez Dealer 560
XaviorPenguin writes "News.com.com.com has a story that says the DoJ has '...landed its first conviction against an American defendant trapped via Operation Fastlink, a multinational law enforcement effort undertaken against online software piracy. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa said that Jathan Desir, 26, of Iowa City, has pleaded guilty to charges related to his role in a criminal enterprise that distributed pirated software, games, movies and music over the Internet.' Desir is the first conviction that Operation Fastlink has done. He will possibly serve up to 15 years in prison when his sentencing is in March 18, 2005. Previous Slashdot articles are included here(1), here(2), and most recently here(3)."
Alright (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Alright (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not a troll, it is a point ov view from someone in the Tech industry.
-nB
Wow. Up to 15 years. (Score:3, Insightful)
What? What's that, you say? You can be in prison for less than a year for beating the shit out of another human being?
Something is terribly wrong with this system.
It's not that it's not fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
In one case you've destroyed an individual- taken his/her dignity, the right to be safe, the very 'temple' of his/her body with a violent act such as rape.
In another, we have little bits of signal that have 'more' importance than the afore mentioned victim.
I have always been cynical and said everything comes down to money- religion, lawyers, corporations- it all revolves around that little dollar sign.
But when you hear about someone getting locked away for 15 years (sorry Kevin)
And it scares me.
The genie is out of the bottle... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps, they should re-think their distribution methods on how they receive payment for their work/art.
I don't have the answers or even a suggestion...but jailing people left and right certainly isn't working on drug use...why do they think it will work here?
I can't believe people are still using warez... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, people are still having unprotected sex, too.
Re:Alright (Score:5, Insightful)
But seriously...
Individuals lobbying congress will never acheive anything. You need a political group (EFF anyone?) that has political clout in numbers and can play the politics game on that level.
Even that maybe fruitless. One would have to have backing and understanding by mainstream media or an enlightened political leader to take up the cause which won't happen anytime soon. Unless of course computer geeks everywhere formed their own political party and marched on Washington.
Hey. It could happen.
Not sentenced yet (Score:2, Insightful)
Violent rapists should obviously be punished severely. But what about cases where both individuals were drunk but it's somehow the man's fault because the woman was too drunk to say no?
Anyway you just can't compare the two.
Re:Felony Offense? (Score:2, Insightful)
Anybody else find this disturbing? (Score:5, Insightful)
15 Years? My 2 cents (Score:5, Insightful)
The moral of the story is... (Score:1, Insightful)
It's awesome (Score:2, Insightful)
Screw the software/music/movie pirates.
Re:Alright (Score:5, Insightful)
-Restil
This Was A Criminal Enterprise (Score:2, Insightful)
Realistic net worth? (Score:3, Insightful)
You think if this guy was sitting on $50 million dollars that he would be peddling warez and playing games?
Re:Felony Offense? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wow. Up to 15 years. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not if you're the one running it. Rapists: not a threat to your empire. People breaking laws which make you rich: a threat.
People are going to think I'm a troll... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want "free software", use free software that's really free.
War on drugs?^H^H^H^H^H^H^HWarez? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I can't believe people are still using warez... (Score:1, Insightful)
This is not very much of a problem at all actually. Warez and viruses have been around for a lot longer than the internet has been mainstream. It's a subculture which has survived and evolved around those kind of threats. This is the primary practical reason "distro groups" came into existence in the 80s. This is the warez version of branding. A distro group exists solely for the purpose of maintaining its reputation, so longevity and number of releases can be used as an easy heuristic to determine risk. While it is true that this could theoretically be abused once per group lifetime, it is also true that the warez subculture interprets viruses as damage and routes around it.
Re:Not sentenced yet (Score:3, Insightful)
We're not living in a hippified property-free utopia. Someone who steals my assets is preventing me from living my life the way I want. Hell, when he steals my PC the burglar is preventing me from earning money to STAY alive.
I'd rather have a guy on the street who, in the heat of passion, shot his wife when he caught her in bed with another man than somebody who is a habitual thief.
Re:It's not that it's not fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose I ask, "Which deserves more punishment, sending X spam messages, or killing someone?" How high would X have to be for you to think it worse than murder? Many people would say that X can go to infinity, but murder is still worse. But say you send 100,000,000 spams that take 15 seconds each to deal with. You have then robbed society of 48 man-years of time, an equivalent loss to a murder.
People are willing to concede that time = money and life = time, but they are unwilling to follow it to the conclusion that life = money.
It would be an interesting criminal justice system that punished in proportion to the economic damage inflicted.
Re:It's not that it's not fair... (Score:2, Insightful)
Who got locked away for 15 years? Oh, you read "up to 15 years" and overreacted to the fact that crimes do have varying punishments based on their situations, based on individual judges. Nobody got sentenced to anything. Yet.
I firmly believe all these "Rapists get less time" posts are just distractions meant to paint the justice system as a bad guy for taking away the piracy free ride. I know that's an unpopular opinion and so someone will downmod it to make sure the hegemony of thought around here remains unbroken...but I believe over 80% of the replies to these articles are just people who have pirated software who don't like the idea of the major ringleaders getting punished for it, as though major economic sabotage is some sort of minor crime.
Doesn't anyone notice that this guy hasn't (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Charged? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not sentenced yet (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea is that you can take someone who steals and rehabilitate them -- or at least make them work so hard for so long that they will never want to do it again. Take away the incentive to steal -- make them work 18 hours a day until they've paid off that PC they stole (forced restitution -- you get your property back plus whatever fee the court decides is just) and they'll hopefully decide it's not worth the effort to steal again. This doesn't have much of an effect when you're talking about someone who commits a violent crime -- there is no restitution for a rape or murder. And that guy who "in the heat of passion" shoots his wife has serious issues in my opinion. Maybe he'll never kill anyone again, but how do you know that? He's proven himself capable of taking another person's life in a situation that doesn't warrant it.
Re:Safety in America (Score:2, Insightful)
The thing is, if all they wanted was for people to go slow if there happens to be a cop around, then yes, using unmarked cars and disguises would make no sense. But what they want is for people to be paying due care and attention and not speeding even when there isn't a cop around to enforce it.
If people would obey the law at all times (instead of only when it's risky to break them) then there'd be no need for these tactics. Then again, if people would obey the law at all times there'd be no need for police either.
So, because people are jerks and have the attitude of "if I don't get caught, it's okay to do" then the police have to put the idea into people's head that they could get caught at any time. So it may not enhance public safety at that particular moment in time, but it does enhance it by making those drivers wary in future.
To those actually DEFENDING this sentence... (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of you are just throwing around "numbers of years in prison" as if they mean nothing at all. The maximum sentence this guy could receive is 15 years. Don't you have any concept of just how LONG that is? 15 years ago, it was 1989. Think about where you were in 1989 and everything you've done between now and then. Now imagine it ALL WIPED OUT, instead spent in a cell. And not because you killed or raped someone. No. Because you committed "copyright infringement".
Now does the punishment really fit the crime?
Others of you say if we disagree with the penalty, we should lobby our congressmen. This is laughable. If you're not a sizable organization, namely one with a lot of money, you're not going to get to DO any lobbying. And that's the problem here. The system is currently set up completely in favor of the big corps. Due to the money they have, they can influence the laws to favor maximum profitability for them, rather than what's best for the entire country. They can also scare almost anyone out of doing something, whether it's an illegal activity or not, simply with the threat of an expensive lawsuit. And this is without even getting into the ridiculous patent issues - again, because they have the money, they can afford to use a good chunk of it snapping up questionable patents and then trying to profit from them later (again, usually via "scare" lawsuits, and not from actually defending the patents).
But... I'm going off on something else now. The point is: I don't argue against copyright infringement being illegal. What I argue is that it should be no more severe than a misdemeanor.
Re:15 days would be more effective ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Your math is a bit off, it's 1.2 million. Still though, you bring up an interesting point. The best way for those who feel that copyright infringement should not be punished by jail time is to hit "the man" back where is hurts him the most...his pocket.
Be creative and think of possibilities here. If everyone who sincerely believes that it is their right to ignore copyright law stood up and proudly shouted "look at me, I'm going to share whatever I damn well please" then no one could be imprisoned because it would be impossible to afford to do so.
Insanity. Kids trading games. (Score:2, Insightful)
I know some collectors. The mentality is to get copies of everything, they never even install 1/10 th of the stuff, use my maybe 1% of what they install. It is just like a big game to them.
Blah blah this is the law... Frankly it is an insane law. The law is bought and sold by psychopathic corporations and dirty politicians.
We have a system were someone trades information at no personal gain and no measurable loss to the "owner" and they are a federal criminals.
I see a bleak future for the individual and small buisness. As corporations buy more laws and patents and monopilize more technology, eventually you won't even be able write software without being part of the giant corporate hegemony.
Every day I look at this I see a steady trend toward corporate police state.
Re:People are going to think I'm a troll... (Score:3, Insightful)
Except this just your postulate, you have shown no proof.
And I will postulate the opposite: It has no effect on the economy and social structure: Its only downloaded by two groups: people who are curious but who wouldn't want to buy it if that was the only way to get it (they would then do without) or people who couldn't afford to buy it anyway.
The United States economy has for a large number of people become an intellectual property economy. Many people don't want to go back to the days where they had to toil in factories for minimum wage
You haven't shown proof that anyone has actually gone from toiling in a factory on minimum wage to suddenly producing "intellectual property" so we'll assume nobody actually have and you just made it up. However it does seem likely that a lot of people want a job where you just have to do the work ONCE and then can keep raking it in over and over and over - those without morals probably dream about that.
Anyway, people like this--whether they are distibuting for profit or not--are undermining the economy of the United States and we will not allow that to happen.
If you want "free software", use free software that's really free.
So your argument is that if someone downloads a program he hurts the economy but if he uses free software he doesn't? Since this appears to be utter nonsense you will be hard pressed to show why this is not so.
The US has come full circle. (Score:5, Insightful)
That system was intended to create long-term monopolies on many manufacturing processes and devices, such as thread mills and power looms. Part of the point of these patents was to keep colonies agricultural and raw-material producing, dependent on the "mother country" for their manufactured goods (rather than competing with it and becoming a world power).
The arrival of people with knowlege of mill manufacture, who set up their own plants here, was a major factor in the colonies achieving the ability to break away. And the "mother country"'s attempts to enforce these monopolies produced some of the major greviances that lead to the revolution.
So now it looks like the US has come full circle. B-(
Re:Doesn't anyone notice that this guy hasn't (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's try an experiment - why don't you write a remarkably successful game, sell several hundred thousand copies, have twice that many more pirated - and then get raped. Physically raped - in the ass, preferably. Bonus points for STDs or for permanent injury. Post back here and tell us which one deserves more punishment. Specific dollar amounts, please.
Re:Wow. Up to 15 years. (Score:5, Insightful)
They claim that every download or copy is a lost sale, which is total crap. I'm sure many people here on slashdot remember the days of dialing in to the local pirate BBS, downloading crazy expensive business programs, and playing with them for the fun of it. Did I need autocad? No. Was I using autocad for business? No. Was it lost revenue from Autodesk? No. Did I even know what I was doing? No.
I understand the software publishers desire to get paid for their work. Things are much better today, I downloaded a preview of Combustion!! Didn't know what to do with it (like Autocad) but got a glimpse of the real software.
We all knew those people that had the insane software collection. They didn't play the games. They didn't use the applications. They stored it away, stacks and stacks of disks.
Re:Anybody else find this disturbing? (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't even have to be convicted of a crime. A lot of the time, they keep the property anyway.
Guy: Whew. Glad I was finally found not guilty of that possession charge. Too bad I have a large debt to pay to my lawyers. So when do I get my house back?
Cops: Your what?
Guy: My house. You confiscated it and all of the stuff in it when you raided me.
Cops: Exactly. We confiscated it. It's not your house anymore.
Guy: I want my property back.
Cops: You should have thought of that before you committed the crime.
Guy: But I was found not guilty. There was no crime.
Cops: Yeah. Right. Sure. Doesn't matter anyway, we get to keep anything we confiscate.
Re:It's not that it's not fair... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wasting 15 seconds of 100,000,000 people's lives is in no way an equivalent loss to a murder. Those people aren't actually harmed.
Criminal law should focus on one thing: Preventing and punishing those who do actual harm to others. Harming someone means doing something that would change that person's life negatively, in a way that that person or those around him would be aware that he was harmed.
When someone stole my laptop on the first of this month, I felt that. I still feel that. -and while piracy is wrong, and while I don't condone piracy, the person whose software is pirated is not harmed if he's not aware of it, but I'm sure aware that my laptop was stolen.
How about the government starts focusing on murderers, rapists, and thieves. When government can catch even half of them, then maybe it will be time to go after software or music pirates.
The U.S. government works too hard trying to protect corporations, and does a really horrible job protecting its citizens. It's pathetic.
Re:Alright (Score:1, Insightful)
How does that change the insanity any?
Killing a person. Culpable homicide gets you less time than
Fuck. You could kill the guy who dreamt up the abomination that's Microsoft office and get less time than giving away free copies of it.
You'd probably have to kill and rape him to get more time.
That's such fucking insanity it's not even funny.
You know, software piracy really is, let's just face it, completely harmless. Not a single person on the face of this Earth went hungry due to software piracy. It's completely harmless. Every rational human being capable of independent thought knows this. Every pedant Slashdot troll knows this. The president of the United States knows this. Fucking Bill Gates knows this.
Fuck, already.
Re:Alright (Score:2, Insightful)
I am very familiar with the federal penal system, so praise me and cook some soup for me.
Re:Alright (Score:3, Insightful)
Software piracy is not harmless. The impact may not be as large as the xxIA say it is, but it is stealing. It does cost a real loss of real income to intellectual property rights holders. And that trickles down to real people -- not just rich people, either. To say that piracy is completely harmless is completely fucking retarded. It's impact may be overstated, but, Blackbeard, don't try to justify your theft by saying no one's ever been hurt by piracy.
Finally, making *a* copy of M$ office isn't what this dude plead guilty to. And, he knew the sentencing possibilities and still plead guilty. I feel for the guy, because I think first-offender prison sentences are too long generally, but the fact that this guy may be getting fucked doesn't make what he did any less wrong.
reply to self... (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, one of the ways in which software piracy hurts the economy is not in a direct way. Suppose someone wants Photoshop, but doesn't want to pay $500. Suppose he can afford to pay perhaps $100. There are a LOT of these people out there. Many of them right now pirate Photoshop. However, there are photo manipulation programs out there that cost around $100 that they could legitimately buy. If these people with $100 didn't pirate Photoshop, then there would be a larger market for $100 photo manipulation softwares. Some company would hire programmers and software designers and marketers to produce and sell $100 photo manipulation software.
By the way, with digital cameras being so popular, the market for photo manipulation software has exploded recently and there are many more choices available. Your Mom and Dad generally don't buy a digital camera and then go onto suprnova or torrentreactor. They'll either use the software that came with the camera (and the camera maker paid the developer a couple of dollars to include) or they will buy some low-cost program or maybe they will go all-out and buy Photoshop. Personally, I think this is a Good Thing. Money changes hands, people are employed, the market grows, more choices are available.
Second, as far as affecting society being more serious than affecting an individual: of course a crime against society is more serious. Look at the case of the Rosenbergs for example. In one sense, they just copied some information and gave that copy to someone else. Sounds like copyright infringment, maybe. No one was directly injured by it. The original people still had their information. However, they gave vital information on the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. For this they were found guilty of treason against the United States and were executed. Obviously that's an extreme example, but it does show how a seemingly simple crime can be elevated in seriousness when it affects a large number of people, an industry, or an entire nation.
Lastly, regarding free software: Free software is just filling another segment in the market for software, even if it is at a $0 price point. I think the best part about free software is that it raises the bar for commercial software. Any program that someone is charging money for had better be superior to free alternatives otherwise it's not a good value. Also, commercial software companies have obviously not had a problem competing with free software in most cases.
Re:Alright (Score:2, Insightful)
Adobe didn't lose that sale because they can't lose what they've never had to begin with. That's why IP "piracy" is not stealing.
This whole IP mess just reminds me of when I was a kid and my cousin would draw a dog. Then, my brother , seeing what my cousin was drawing, would also draw a dog. My cousin would go crying to his mom saying that my brother was copying him!
I think it's time we grew up as a culture.