An American software internet piracy ring destroyed, and for once eBay is absent from the story. Two middle-aged brothers have been sent to prison for selling "massive amounts" of pirated software from Adobe, Autodesk and Macromedia, at huge discounts.

They sold software over the internet with a retail value of $5.6m for about a mil. Maurice Robberson, 48, was sent down for three years and told by the federal court in Alexandra, Virgina to pay $855,917 restitution - the entire amount he grossed from his flourishing ecommerce business. Thomas Robberson, 55, was sentenced to 30 months and told to pay back $151,488. They have agreed to forfeit the proceeds, presumably to avoid a longer spell in the slammer.

Two people who worked with Maurice were sentenced in January. They are Danny Ferrer, 39, imprisoned for six years for selling $4m in pirated software with a retail value of nearly $20m. His website was BUYUSA.com. Alton Lee Grooms, 56, who helped set up some of the illegal businesses and made $150,000, was rewarded for singing like a canary to the feds, with a sentence of a year and a day.

DoJ release ®