Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Physical Pirate Pleads Guilty

There are many ways to obtain free software online. At its simplest, legitimate websites such as SourceForge.com or Download.com can generally supply an individual with a variety of free software. For those with larger shopping carts to fill, gray-market avenues such as The Pirate Bay have proven useful. Then there are flat out illegal operations, making no unclear distinctions between civil and criminal law.

This was the case for Danny Ferrer, owner and administrator of BuyUsa.com, who entered a guilty plea on Friday to one count of conspiracy and one count of criminal copyright infringement. The pirate software site, which began operations in September of 2002, set out with the determination to undersell the competition by any means necessary. Mr. Ferrer achieved this lofty goal, and by the end of the year was selling high demand software for a fraction of the manufacturer’s suggested price. Want Adobe PhotoShop but don’t have the $600.00? This conundrum was easily solved by Mr. Ferrer. For a price tag of about $99.99, Adobe’s premier application was shipped to any location world wide.


Full story

No comments: