Piracy News

April 17, 2009
Pirate Bay four jailed for breaking copyright in Swedish file-sharing trial
A Stockholm court Friday found four men guilty of promoting copyright infringement by running The Pirate Bay, one of the world's top websites for illegal filesharing, and sentenced them to a year in prison. The court also ordered the four -- Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstroem -- to pay damages of 30 million kronor (2.72 million euros, 3.56 million dollars). "The Stockholm district court has today convicted the four people charged with promoting other people's infringement of copyright laws," it said in a statement. Representatives of the movie, music and video games industry had sought some 117 million kronor (10.6 million euros, 13.9 million dollars) in damages and interest for losses incurred from tens of millions of illegal downloads facilitated by the site.

August 28, 2008
Man arrested for sharing Guns N' Roses songs
A Los Angeles man who allegedly posted nine pirated tracks from "Chinese Democracy," the long-overdue album from Guns N' Roses, was arrested today by FBI agents and charged with violating federal copyright laws. According to investigators, Kevin Cogill, 27, first posted the songs to his web site in June and, after being contacted by a lawyer for the band, claimed that traffic to his site was so large that it caused his server to crash. According to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Cogill claimed that he had deleted the songs from his server and from his personal computer. An excerpt from the affidavit can be found below. When confronted by federal agents, Cogill, who uses the name "Skwerl" online, admitted posted the songs on his web site, antiquiet.com. He uploaded the songs from a computer at the online ad sales company where he works. If convicted of the felony count, Cogill faces up to five years in prison.

July 23, 2008
Ebay pirate sentenced to 48 months in prison
SIIA was responsible for providing the DOJ with information that led to Mondello, a resident of Oregon, pleading guilty in May to counts of copyright infringement, mail fraud and aggravated identity theft. SIIA began investigating Mondello in 2007 and later turned the case over to the Department of Justice (DOJ). Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Cyber Crime Center. Mondello used stolen bank account information to create more than 40 fictitious eBay and PayPal identities to sell pirated software via the auction site. His fraudulent sales amounted to a five to six figure sales volume.

May 21, 2008
OiNK.cd shut down
British and Dutch police shut down the website OiNK on Tuesday, the world's biggest source of pirated pre-release chart albums. It is alleged the site was operated by a 24-year-old man who lived near Middlesbrough in north-east England. He was arrested Tuesday. The site's servers, based in Amsterdam, were seized in raids last week. An estimated 180,000 members paid 'donations' via debit or credit cards for OiNK's catalogue of music and other media.

April 4, 2008
Woman loses Download case
Jammie Thomas was found guilty of downloading and sharing 1,702 songs and ordered to pay $222,000 in damages to the six record companies whos copyright's she violated. "This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not OK," said Richard Gabriel, the lead attorney for the music companies.

October 4, 2007
Download case goes to trial
The case against Jammie Thomas is expected to go to jurors today. Six major record companies accuse Thomas, 30, of sharing 1,702 songs online in violation of the companies' copyrights. The record companies claim they found the songs on a Kazaa file-sharing account they later linked to her. "Win or lose, people will understand that we are out there trying to protect our rights," said Cary Sherman, President of the Recording Industry Association of America, which is coordinating the lawsuits.

September 2, 2007
19 indicted RISCISO Software Piracy Conspiracy
Nineteen defendants from across the United States and overseas who allegedly were leaders, members and associates of the underground software piracy group known as “RISCISO” were indicted on federal charges for pirating more than $6.5 million of copyrighted computer software, games, and movies through non-public Internet sites.

August 22, 2007
Well-known piracy sites shutdown
The Federal Bureau of Investigations has shut down www.ibackups.net and www.grokster.com.

June 12, 2007
Swedish court upholds file-sharing conviction
The Appellate Court in Stockholm, Sweden saw 45-year-old Jimmy Sjostrom fined 20,000 Swedish crowns ($2,843) for infringing intellectual property rights by sharing four music files. Sweden made downloading pirated software from the Internet illegal in 2005 after having been singled out for criticism by several anti-piracy organizations.

June 2, 2007
Man charged for distributing TV show
Federal authorities have charged a Chicago man with copyright violations for allegedly uploading several episodes of Fox's "24" to the website "LiveDigital.com" before the show's season premiere. Jorge Romero has been was charged with one felony count of uploading copyrighted material to a publicly accessible computer network knowing the work was intended for commercial distribution. If convicted, Romero faces a maximum of 5 years in prison.

April 4, 2007
Vectortreat.com shut down
After contacting PayPal on behalf of several software vendors, Vector Treat was shut down. However, we suspect that it may still be operating under a front so we will continue watching this one closely.

March 2, 2007
Warez4u.com shut down
Martin Kane was successful in helping to shut down the Warez-4-U website. Damages are now being sought from the owner.

February 25, 2007
Bootleg copies of ScreenMaker removed
Several websites distributing pirated copies of Pinnacle ScreenMaker software were contacted. All complied with demands for removal after ISP's and Hosting companies were contacted.