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)."
Re:Wow. Up to 15 years. (Score:5, Interesting)
They're basing the punishment on the (theoritical) cost of the crime. They mentioned the value of the pirated stuff at $50mil. That's quite a lot of money - hence quite a lot of software to be pirating.
What they DON'T really mention, as far as I saw, was whether this guy was putting up stuff for download, or was actually *selling pirated software*. If the former, the punishment should be far far FAR more lenient. But of course, the software lobby wouldn't look at it that way.
Reminds me of Operation Sundevil back in the 80's. Three guys in the Legion of Doom (one of which I met shortly after he got released) got sent to the pokey over that E911 document. The baby bell claimed the document was valued at some ginormous amount - and the way they reached that figure? They counted the costs of all the computers, etc. that were used to create the document. Meaning, if one employee opened that document and made one tiny change, they decided that that document was worth however much it was *plus* the cost of the computer or terminal that was used by that guy. Insane!
Why not garnish a chunk of his wages for life? (Score:5, Interesting)
People who are a danger to society should be kept away from society, but why not financially punish non-violent criminals?
Safety in America (Score:3, Interesting)
All the terrorists, rapists, murderers, etc have been eradicated from the earth.
We can all feel so much safer and sleep better tonight knowing this.
Re:Felony Offense? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not sentenced yet (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not sentenced yet (Score:3, Interesting)
Absolutely. Property crimes should never be equated with crimes against a person. There simply is no property crime that warrants incarceration. There are too many alternatives that are much more effective, but they never seem to satisfy the hunger for revenge. Again, only dangerous people should be locked away. Big money says otherwise.
Re:It's not that it's not fair...-Life's not fair. (Score:2, Interesting)
So since you're going for the moral high position here. How is ruining people's livelyhood any better? That "signal" must be worth "something" otherwise we wouldn't be repeatedly having this discussion five times a week.
Since when is it ruining someone else's livelihood? So if Toyata someday comes out with a car that's as good as a Mercedes and sells it for less, are the Japanese destroying the Germans?
Look here.. livelihood involves constantly working to earn your keep. NOT to sit on your ass, come up with one idea, and EXPECT^H^H^H^H^HDEMAND money to come in!
Re:Alright (Score:3, Interesting)
Simple: Asset seizure (Score:1, Interesting)
The answer is really simple: Asset seizure. [lp.org]
Exactly- the price of a human life is about 1.3mil (Score:5, Interesting)
When it was all done and concluded it worked out to be about 1.3 million (if memory serves) per life saved.
Unfortunately, the lack of speed cost society about 4.3 million per life (Very convoluted logic- I didn't follow it) due to increased time 'wasted' while commuting.
So
And then you have money - theft of money almost ALWAYS gets a stiffer sentence than a violent crime... and if you steal in the process of a violent crime it becomes much more stiffer penalties.
I guess software piracy is like a flasher: Everyone says it's a victimless crime. But in reality everyone is hurt at some point... but man oh man, 15 years? Sigh.
This is nothing (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Insanity. Kids trading games. (Score:2, Interesting)
Although I agree with you, I think it's deeper than just dirty politicians. How many of the politicians do you think actually really know what a computer is or even a server. They just have some big company that's coming to them saying, "Hey, we've got all these people stealing from us, can't you do something to make it illegal and help us not go out of business." Then in some cases there is probably a nice campaign "donation."
I'd like to believe that a lot of this could be solved by having technically literate, honest people in the government. (But since we know that honest and government do not go together, we have a problem.)
I know Jathan. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have no knowledge of any crimes he may or may not have committed.
So, that said... Jathan never did me anything but right. He was quiet, kept to himself an awful lot, but in a department which seems defined by professors who keep their office doors shut, Jathan's door was always open--both figuratively and literally.
My first day at UI, I walked into his office to get a registration number. I looked over his bookshelf and found a surprising number of really high-quality texts on C++, which he told me he'd found laying around MacLean Hall or which someone was throwing away, or whatever. (Strangely enough, the engineering library at Seamans Center has a far, far larger programming library than the CS department in MacLean Hall. The ECE, Electrical and Computer Engineering, geeks have a much better library. In MacLean Hall, getting the book with the right information is a matter of borrowing it from the grad student who owns it, or else hitting Amazon.com.) I walked in there just expecting to get my registration processed; I walked out of there with three good C++ texts under my arm, gifts from him. No money, no favors, no nothing: just "here's how the library situation works, and here, have a few books, do you already have a copy of Josuttis? You do? Okay, never mind that, then..."
So. No matter what happens, let's please remember that Jathan's a human being, with real history, and real people he's helped out in the past for no reason at all other than he wanted to help out.
Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson (Score:5, Interesting)
13 Aug. 1813Writings 13:333--35
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents
It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not. As a member of the patent board for several years, while the law authorized a board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with what slow progress a system of general rules could be matured.
Re:Alright (Score:3, Interesting)
But what political group would spend its effort to ask for lower sentences for "pirates"? They risk having all their other aims tarred with the brush of "the same group that supports Open Source supports piracy" -- playing right into Balmer's hands. And most of the technical lobby groups are dominated by the CEOs, not the grass roots. They're exactly the ones pushing to make copying software equivalent to dealing crack.
Re:This Was A Criminal Enterprise (Score:5, Interesting)
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO
He did NOT charge for access to copyright materials
From the report:
In January 2003, Desir and others set up an online library for a private group to share movies, games, utility software and music. The library grew to about 13,000 titles by the time of the federal raid in April. Transfer logs obtained from the computer service show Desir transferred numerous titles between Aug. 16, 2003, and April 2, 2004. Records show he copied and distributed at least 10 items every six months. He accessed the system from his Iowa City home, records show. No address was provided.
It says that he set up a server where a group of people could share the software. He did not charge people in the group for it.
How is this modded insightful? This is completely wrong !!!!
I think he was just suffering from the downloader's syndrome of trying to have every title in the warez scene in his computer just in case that at some time if the need rises for a particular utility he will have it.
He was just being a librarian and a collector. He wasn't asking money for people to access it. THe people who could access it were probably people on a IRC channel. His crime was probably that he became too good a collector and a librarian.
So in philosophy it is equivalent to a teenager sharing his/her collection of digital goodies he/she's found on the web and stored on his/her computer.