Man Who Sold $100 Million Worth of Pirated Software Gets 12 Years In Prison 304
An anonymous reader sends this quote from Bloomberg:
"A Chinese national was sentenced to 12 years in a U.S. prison for selling more than $100 million worth of software pirated from American companies, including Agilent Technologies Inc., from his home in China. Li and his wife, of Chengdu, China, were accused of running a website called 'Crack 99' that sold copies of software for which 'access-control mechanisms had been circumvented, the U.S. said in an unsealed 46-count indictment. The pair was charged with distributing more than 500 copyrighted works to more than 300 buyers in the U.S. and overseas from April 2008 to June 2011. The retail value of the products was more than $100 million, the government said. Li is the first Chinese citizen to be 'apprehended and prosecuted in the U.S. for cybercrimes he engaged in entirely from China,' prosecutors said in court filings."
Nuber not that impressive (Score:5, Informative)
500 copyrighted works to more than 300 buyers in the U.S. and overseas
The retail value of the products was more than $100 million, the government said.
In other words... on average ~$200,000 per product, and ~$333 thousand per buyer
This makes sense, when you are talking about companies like Agilent that sell overpriced products, that retail for probably approximately $500,000
That's why the "pirated $100 million in software" is neither impressive, nor indicating a particularly outrageous pirate.
The outrage, should be the pricing of Enterprise software, not the" inflated retail price " as some sort of metric of the pirate's activity.
Obviously, the buyers weren't willing to pay the price the maker wanted to sell the software at. Therefore, those sales by definition were not worth the retail price.
In simple economic terms... the high price places their product out of demand.
By definition, they're worth what the buyer was willing to pay the pirate for the procureent.
If you're selling a $500,000 software product; going after pirates is not a winning business strategy -- it's figuring out, why the heck you can't pitch your product to legal buyers, and make your desired revenue there. Either the pricing is all wrong, or your marketing or product targetting is all wrong.
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
He went to Saipan where he tried to sell software and data to US agents pretending to be business men. Isn't Saipan US territory? Perhaps you should try RTFA before sounding of like a dickhead.
Moral of the story... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good (Score:3, Informative)
You have no idea what entrapment is, do you? Entrapment by nature cannot be performed by undercover police pretending to be something else.
Entrapment is when a police officer *who identifies themselves as a police officer* orders or asks someone to do something illegal and the person complies *because they are a police officer*. They then proceed to arrest the person for committing a crime they told them to do. THAT is entrapment.
Police have the authority to direct you to do something illegal such as drive the wrong way down a one-way street, if the situation warrants. If they arrest you for doing what they said, they have entrapped you.
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
Depends where the servers were located, if they were in China, then the only one to blame are the US citizens that bought the goods.
It's the same if you go to a foreign country and buy drugs not allowed in your country. The seller there can't be persecuted.
Your argument makes good logical sense. Unfortunately, it is not the approach courts have taken to deciding questions of this kind. The courts have instead asked where the was customer when he made the purchase, and used this as the basis of deciding what laws apply to the sale. The original reason for this was to make things easier for consumers, who shouldn't be expected to have to know the laws of the countries of sellers they deal with (particularly as they may not even have any way of knowing where the seller is), but it has been extended since then into areas where this justification makes no sense.
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
Not entirely correct. Your description matches one of two tests, but is narrower.
from Wiki
A non-uniformed government agent can indeed entrap someone. Asking if you'll sell them pot isn't entrapment. Haranguing them until the finally agree to sell you pot is.
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
You have no idea what entrapment is, do you? Entrapment by nature cannot be performed by undercover police pretending to be something else.
That is simply not true. Current definition of entrapment is greatly influenced by John DeLorean's case (where he agreed to deal drugs because undercover FBI officers threatened his life and his family).
Re:Good (Score:2, Informative)
For China to agree to extradite without tit for tat would make them very stupid.
You mean just like the stupid UK ?
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
You are mistaken.
The legal definition of entrapment varies from country to country, but the basic definition is that entrapment occurs when a law enforcement agent induces a person to commit a crime that he or she otherwise would not have committed. Knowledge that the person is a law enforcement officer is not required. See, e.g. Jacobson v. United States, 503 U.S. 540 (1992). What is required is some form of but-for causation -- that but for the law enforcement officer's conduct, the defendant would not have committed the crime. Whether the defendant knows the officer is a law enforcement agent goes to objective / subjective state of mind standards regarding whether the defendant was likely to commit the crime -- i.e. inducement is harder to prove if the defendant did not know the facilitator was a figure of legal authority, because there is less of an indication of compulsion. In Jacobson, the government targeted the defendant with a child pornography mail subscription and arrested him upon his receipt and opening. The Supreme Court overturned his conviction on the grounds that the defendant did not have a predisposition towards purchasing child pornography (as no other child pornography was found in his home), and therefore but for the post office inspectors' actions, Jacobson would not have committed a crime.
What you may be referring to is entrapment by estoppel. That "applies when, acting with actual or apparent authority, a government official affirmatively assures the defendant that certain conduct is legal and the defendant reasonably believes that official." United States v. Howell 37 F.3d 1197, 1204 (7th Cir. 1994).
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
I think with all the drone strikes in the world you would realize the US has jurisdiction where ever it fucking feels like.
The US has less legal constants outside the US than inside it. The US can imprison, torture, or kill without legal comeback in most of the world, but can't even detain people without trail in the US. That's the reason Gitmo is in Cuba not Texas.
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
The US will arrest people on US territory or in international waters using whatever methods they can. For instance, in Operation Goldenrod [homestead.com] a suspect was lured onto a yacht, and then taken to international waters. He was interrogated aboard US Navy ships, and returned to the US via an aircraft carrier.
Additionally, under the Ker-Frisbie doctrine [wikipedia.org] people can be prosecuted regardless of the legality of the method of their extradition. For example, the DEA hired Trent Tompkins (a private citizen) to kidnap Alvarez-Machain [wikipedia.org] in Mexico and return him to the United States, where he was later tried over Mexico's objections.
Finally, state police can act outside of their home state to arrest someone and bring them to trial. In the case of Shirley Collins [historycommons.org], the accused was kidnapped in Chicago (illegally) by Michigan police, brought to trial and convicted.
Re:His mistake is obvious (Score:4, Informative)
Incorrect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_law_in_the_United_States#Countries_with_diplomatic_relations_but_no_extradition_treaty [wikipedia.org]
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
"The US... can't even detain people without trail in the US."
NDAA-2013, signed into law the first of this year, says otherwise.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/03/ndaa-obama-indefinite-detention_n_2402601.html [huffingtonpost.com]
Read the article.... (Score:5, Informative)
No Navy Seals or government conspiracies, just an old fashioned luring operation.
Re:Good (Score:2, Informative)
NO CARRIER (capitalized) is a text message transmitted from a modem to its attached device (typically a computer), indicating the modem is not (or no longer) connected to a remote system.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NO_CARRIER