Top > Webmaster > 2006 > September > 2006-09-12

7 Years in Jail for Software Piracy

The 27-years-old Nathan Peterson from Los Angeles, an owner of a software piracy Web site, who sold copyrighted software at a huge discount, has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison. The FBI started investigating the site in 2003 and shut it down in February 2005.

U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III 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. According to Justice Department and industry officials, the case is one of the largest involving Internet software piracy ever prosecuted.

Last month Danny Ferrer, a Florida man who pleaded guilty to copyright charges in connection with multimillion-dollar sales of pirated software, was sentenced by the same judge 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.