Jail for "Robin Hoods" who cost Microsoft millions

LONDON - Four men have been jailed for being part of a global gang described as "Robin Hoods" who stole expensive software from rich companies and gave it away for free over the internet.

The group, described by prosecutors as "sad individuals" who spent their lives in front of computers, were said to have cost firms such as Microsoft millions of dollars in profit and enraged its chairman, Bill Gates.

Prosecutors told London's Old Bailey that the four men, motivated by a hatred of software companies, were the key players in an international ring called DrinkorDie.com, said to be one of the world's most sophisticated Web piracy groups.

The gang allowed internet surfers to download new software for free, often before it came on the market, including the Windows 95 operating system two weeks before it was released.

"They think of themselves like latter day Robin Hoods or sea pirates like Johnny Depp in the film 'Pirates of the Caribbean'," said prosecuting lawyer Bruce Houlder.

He said the gang - corporate executives, university administrators and IT managers - were just "plain thieves".

The prosecution followed what Houlder described as a groundbreaking crackdown on Web piracy and unprecedented cooperation between U.S and British authorities, which had led to 70 suspects in 12 countries being arrested.

Often 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 programmes.
"The cost of their activities run into very many millions in lost profit ... the losses are incalculable," Houlder said.

"But they also caused people to lose their jobs. They were not motivated by profit but by a dislike of the software industry and the kudos they received by being the first to offer new programs for free." 

London banker Alex Bell, 29, of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, was jailed for two-and-a-half years and Steven Dowd, 39, was given a two-year prison sentence.

Mark Vent, 31, a computer network administrator, was jailed for 18 months and Andrew Eardley, 35, a computer systems manager, was given an 18-month suspended prison sentence.

Dowd and Bell were found guilty. Eardley and Vent pleaded guilty.

"They see themselves as stars, night time tappers of keyboards," Houlder told 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."

- REUTERS