4 Jailed From DrinkOrDie.com Warez Ring

9 May, 2005 at 10:29pm ET Article published in Tech

Four U.K. men who formed part of the global piracy ring known as DrinkOrDie.com have been found guilty of theft and sent to jail.

The trial was held in London’s Old Bailey, and the judge heard how the men were “sad individuals” likened to Robin Hood with their practice of stealing software from large corporations and giving it out freely to individuals via the Internet.

The sentences the four men received different prison sentences:
Alex Bell, a Morgan Stanley Dean Witter I.T. manager: 2.5 years for supplying software and credit card numbers
Steven Dowd: 2 years, for supplying software
Mark Vent, a computer network administrator: 18 months, for cracking and supplying software
Andrew Eardley, a computer systems manager: 18 months–suspended, for recruiting others to the piracy ring
The latter two pled guilty.

The prosecutions were made possible by a collaborative effort of law enforcement between the U.S. and U.K. Originally 70 individuals were taken into custody from 12 different countries due to the global nature of the piracy ring. The software the group was peddling included Windows operating systems (Windows 95 was available on DrinkOrDie two weeks before Microsoft made it public), Microsoft Word and Excel, Norton AntiVirus, and a range of games and design software.

The cost to companies such as Microsoft in revenue lost due to DrinkOrDie’s piracy is thought to be in the millions.

Source: GEEK.com

Comments

10 May 2005 ~ 1:45am TheSmJ Using Microsoft as an example of a company who lost "millions" is a bad idea, seeing as a few million is pocket change to them.
10 May 2005 ~ 3:47am Thrax

Yes, because that makes theft more acceptable.
10 May 2005 ~ 3:53am TheSmJ

Thrax wrote:

Yes, because that makes theft more acceptable.

I had a feeling someone would say that, and I should have known it would be you...

I never said it was right, I was just making a point that the alleged "millions" Microsoft lost is nothing in comparison to the company's net worth, never mind the money they already made in the past.
10 May 2005 ~ 1:33pm Private_Snoball I'm going to have to agree with Thrax here, if Microsoft just lost their "measly" few million every once in awhile it would really hurt them. Maybe that "nothing" was in their prediction for the annual income of the company, now that it is lost, they have to cut costs somewhere, and it usually starts with people. Just because Microsoft lost millions, doesn't mean the company lost money, maybe employees lost jobs to make up for it.
10 May 2005 ~ 4:51pm GrayFox I would like to see microsoft lose millions .... And as a last desprate act make there software opensource and start taking donations for there work. (Not to say that they would get many )
10 May 2005 ~ 6:21pm pX4ever anyone else see the windows 95 part. WTF
10 May 2005 ~ 11:52pm danball1976 That is odd, Windows 95 was made available in early 95, so I'm wondering how people had a fast enough connection in 1995, let alone a CD burner back then. Wasn't 95 on a few floppies back then?

Not only that, but how can a website like that go on for 10 years without being noticed?
11 May 2005 ~ 12:05am muddocktor Your question got my curiosity aroused, Danball. I looked around in my old software drawer and found a win95 upgrade disk, which is the original release code. The Win95 folder, which has all the cab files for installing the OS, is only 32 MB in size, so downloading it over a 28.8 modem was feasible back then.