Three British men believed to have helped operate the former DrinkOrDie online global software piracy ring – notorious for stealing software from major players and distributing it free online – are going to jail for between 18 months and 2 1/2 years.
The ring was not composed of people who fit the stereotype of the hacking computer geek: They were corporate executives, university administrators, and information technology managers.
"They think of themselves like latter-day Robin Hoods or sea pirates like Johnny Depp in the film 'Pirates of the Caribbean,'" prosecuting lawyer Bruce Houlder was quoted as telling a British court, before the May 6 sentencing of Morgan Stanley bankers Alex Bell (two years) and Steve Dowd (two years), and computer network administrator Mark Vent (18 months).
A fourth British member of the group, computer systems manager Andrew Eardley, received a suspended 18-month sentence. Bell and Dowd were convicted while Vent and Eardley pleaded guilty in the case, according to several published reports.
American and British authorities believed the DrinkOrDie group cost the software industry billions in lost sales every year until a massive operation in 2002 shut them down. Their chief wares included pirated versions of Norton AntiVirus and Microsoft Word and Excel, and various game and design programs, sometimes using moles in large companies to get their wares, prosecutors said.
Using moles in large corporations, the group cracked security codes for Norton AntiVirus, Microsoft's Word and Excel products, and also pirated games and design programs. The British quartet was prosecuted after a crackdown on Internet piracy between U.S. and British authorities that landed a reported 70 suspects in 12 countries.
"They see themselves as stars, nighttime tappers of keyboards," Houlder was quoted as telling the court. "You might feel that their lives are rather sad, living as they do for very large parts of their days and nights in a virtual world, in front of a computer monitor, cocooned from existence."
