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Feds Convict Warez Dealer
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Dec 28, 2004 07:14 PM
from the sympathy-glands-are-quite-dry dept.
from the sympathy-glands-are-quite-dry dept.
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)."
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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
Re:Alright (Score:5, Insightful)
-Restil
Re:Alright (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong...this is not a state case, its federal. He will receive a nice chunk of the 15 years. Read the Federal Sentencing Guidlines [ussc.gov]. Judges usually and typically do not depart due to potential career ramifications. It has been done...but its not usual. However, if a judge truely believes that 15 years is excessive (and hopefully he/she will), they will depart. Cross your fingers for this kid.
What is amazing to see is this kid is facing the possibility of doing more time than your average homicide, rape or sexual assault criminal. According to the National Criminal Justice Reference System (NCJRS), the following sentences are listed as the average:
Make note this potential sentence exceeds the averages for violent crime, and exceeds the time given by the Department Of Justice to Andrew Fastow, the CFO of Enron convicted of bilking millions of dollars from employees and investors. This poor kid is looking at 180 months. We have a problem with our criminal justice 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.
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.
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.
Re:It's not that it's not fair... (Score:5, Informative)
It's rare for the federal government to claim jurisdiction in cases of rape or murder.
1% of federal prisoners are serving time for sex offenses, 3% for homicide, aggravated assault, or kidnapping, 4% of a prison population of 180,000. Federal Bureau of Prisons QUICK FACTS September 2004 [bop.gov]
To be among the 38% sentenced to more than ten years, you have to had mucked up your life pretty badly.
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.
People are going to think I'm a troll... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want "free software", use free software that's really free.
Re:Not sentenced yet (Score:4, Interesting)
Warez "Dealer"?? (Score:5, Funny)
Dupe (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Anybody else find this disturbing? (Score:5, Insightful)
15 Years? My 2 cents (Score:5, Insightful)
advice (Score:4, Funny)
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?
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-(
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: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!
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: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.
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.