A Bad Month for Software Pirates Named Gregory.

Did You Know:

The copyright laws apply on the Internet just as they apply to more traditional media. A person who downloads, uploads, distributes, transmits or otherwise copies or distributes software through the Internet without the express authority of the copyright owner is liable for copyright infringement. Penalties can be as high as $150,000 for each software title infringed. In cases of willful violation, criminal penalties may also be assessed.

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A Bad Month for Software Pirates Named Gregory.

Yesterday, Gregory Fair, a 46-year-old man from Falls Church, Virginia, was sentenced to three years and five months in federal prison and was ordered to pay $743,098 in restitution to Adobe for selling at least $1.4 million in pirated Adobe software on eBay. This past April Fair pled guilty to charges of criminal copyright infringement and mail fraud for selling the pirated software since 2001. In addition to restitution and jail time, Fair also had to forfeit a BMW, a Hummer, a Mercedes, a 1969 Pontiac GTO and $144,000 in cash seized from a safe deposit box, all of which were obtained from his sale of the pirated software.

The case was originally brought to the attention of federal authorities by SIIA-member Adobe in 2007. Once alerted to the problem, undercover U.S. postal inspectors made several "test" purchases of the pirated software from Fair. After verifying the illegal nature of the software, they then raided Fair's home where they found a CD burner and label printer that Fair was using to make copies of the illegal software. The case was prosecuted by federal prosecutors Marc Miller and Glenn Leon. Miller has been at the forefront of many of these eBay software piracy cases, including the case of Jeremiah Mondello, who comtinues to serve his four year prison term for selling pirated software on eBay.

About ten days prior to Fair's sentencing, another Gregory, Gregory Bambo, a 47 year-old-man from Richmond, California was also sentenced to prison for engaging in software piracy. Bambo pled guilty to selling pirated software online during a three-year period beginning in 2004 and was sentenced to prison for one year and one day. During the three years he engaged in the piracy, Bambo sold at least 1,400 cracked software programs having a combined retail value of just over a half million dollars.