Man Gets 7 Years For Software Piracy
By Steven Musil
The owner of a software piracy Web site has been sentenced to more
than seven years in prison--the longest sentence ever handed down
for software piracy.
Nathan Peterson, 27, of Los Angeles, sold copyrighted software at a
huge discount on his site, iBackups.net, prosecutors said. The FBI
began investigating the site in 2003 and shut it down in February
2005.
U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III on Friday ordered Peterson
to pay restitution of more than $5.4 million. Peterson pleaded
guilty in December in Alexandria, Va., to two counts of copyright
infringement for illegally copying and selling more than $20 million
in software.
Justice Department and industry officials called the case one of the
largest involving Internet software piracy ever prosecuted.
Last month, Ellis sentenced Danny Ferrer, a Florida man who pleaded
guilty to copyright charges in connection with multimillion-dollar
sales of pirated software, to six years in prison.
Software piracy resulted in a loss of $34 billion worldwide in 2005,
a $1.6 billion increase over 2004, according to a study commissioned
by the Business Software Alliance.
