A US software pirate has been sentenced to 18 months' jail by a Virginia court for punting illicit programmes via a pay-for-access website, Australian IT reports [1].

Over six months, Kishan Singh, 33 of Lanham, Maryland, sold thousands of cracked copies of Adobe, Autodesk, Macromedia, and Microsoft programmes with an estimated (presumably retail) value of between $70,000 and $120,000.

On 14 October Singh pleaded guilty to a charge of copyright infringement. The prosecution said: "Evidence revealed that thousands of pirated software programs were downloaded from Singh's website by users from around the world during the six-month period charged." ®

Related stories

One in five Brits 'buy software from spam' [2]
Anti-piracy scrooges slammed for Red Cross threats [3]
MS offers real Windows XP to users of counterfeit software [4]
Ballmeromics: the hardware way to end software piracy [5]

Links

1. http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,11899303%5E15409%5E%5Enbv%5E15306%2D15322,00.html
2. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/10/spam_buyers_survey_bsa/
3. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/22/letters_2212/
4. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/25/xp_countefeit_swapout/
5. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/21/ballmer_100_buck_pc_fix/