[LINK] DrinkorDie warez leader jailed for 51 months

[Kim Holburn]

What a complicated story: a British National living in Australia gets  
extradited to the US for acts committed in Australia.  It's a bit sad  
to hear a US Attorney referring to copyright infringement as theft  
but since it appears that most of the US attorneys are compromised by  
the White House shenanigans I guess it's not so surprising.

<http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/06/23/ 
drink_or_die_ringleader_jailed/>

> DrinkorDie warez leader jailed for 51 months
> By Drew Cullen
> 23 Jun 2007 04:18
>
> It took a while, but US Customs today got their man: Hew Raymond  
> Griffiths, a ringleader of the infamous warez group DrinkorDie, was  
> sentenced today to 51 months in a US prison.
>
> To recap, Griffiths, a 44 year-old British national, specialised in  
> cracking software and distributing working versions over the  
> internet - for free. In 1999, he stupidly boasted to an online  
> publication that he controlled the world's 20 biggest warez servers  
> and that he would never be caught.
>
> Talk about red rag to a bull. US Customs set up three operations to  
> target groups swapping warez - illegal software - over the  
> internet, most especially DrinkorDie, the biggest and most  
> notorious of them all.
>
> Inevitably, in 2001, Griffiths was caught - like many other members  
> of DrinkorDie. He was sent to the US for trial, instead of facing  
> charges in Australia, where he lived when he committed his crimes.  
> The UK took a different view on jurisdiction. In 2005, two British  
> members of Drink or Die were sentenced to jail, after a court trial  
> in England, for their roles in distributing warez.
>
> Griffiths spent three years in detention in Australia, fighting  
> extradition. It is unclear if the time already spent in  
> imprisonment will be deducted from his sentence. We suspect not -  
> judging by the extreme lengths to which America is prepared to go  
> to stamp out copyright theft.
>
> "Whether committed with a gun or a keyboard - theft is theft," said  
> U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg, who led the prosecution against  
> Griffiths. If we were being charitable, we put this down to  
> rhetorical excess, the speechifying of an excitable man. But, alas,  
> he probably believes what he is saying, just like the rest of  
> America's copyright ayatollahs.
>
> What a topsy-turvy world we live in.

--
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
Ph: +39 06 855 4294  M: +39 3494957443
mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request

Democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny.
                           -- Lloyd Biggle, Jr. Analog, Apr 1961