The Business Software Alliance has hit 25 Internet Relay Chat chatters with a lawsuit for software piracy by way an IRC chat room - and it's caused something of a retreat among several other Warez channels as well.
IRC's warez4cable channel has been shut down in the wake of the lawsuit, and BSA says a preliminary investigation shows traffic in similar chat sites has been cut dramatically. "We have seen an immediate impact on piracy in IRC channels as a result of the lawsuit," says BSA vice president for enforcement Bob Kruger on the group's own Web site. "We will continue to fight piracy on the Internet to keep it a safe place for those who are engaging in legitimate commerce."
Warez is the term for commercially available software which has been pirated. warez4cable was an IRC forum for trafficking pirated software. BSA says that, with supervision from U.S. Marshals, it also carried out some unannounced inspections of computer equipment at homes in Sacramento and Downey, California, and in Troy and West Bloomfield, Michigan. All 25 defendants could be liable for damages up to $100,000 per infringed copyright under American law.
The suit names several software companies as plaintiffs, including Microsoft, Abode, Corel, Macromedia, and Symantec. The pirated software is said to include Adobe Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop, Freehand, Office2000, and Norton Antivirus, among others.
Standard software piracy is now said to cause about $11 billion a year worldwide and $2.8 billion in the United States, but Internet-based piracy might make that figure resemble pocket money in the near future, say observers and piracy watchdogs. Kruger says swapping stolen software through Internet chat is turning into the method of choice and fast.
"Because of the increased access to high-speed connections, piracy in [chat] channels is fast becoming one of the most popular ways to traffic in illegal software on the Internet," he says. "That is why BSA is taking immediate action against this aggressive form of piracy."
The suit came from a probe started in June by BSA's online investigative unit, says APBNews.com. They used a special subpoena under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act to identify the individuals named in the suit.
