Petteri Pyyny
27 Feb 2002 11:40
28-year-old John Sankus, Jr pleaded guilty for running "notorious" piracy group DrinkOrDie and causing financial loss for software, music and movie copyright owners by doing so. He might end up serving time in prison time, and also faces fines of up to $250,000. Prosecutors said Sankus has agreed to cooperate with investigators as part of the plea.
"This plea is another significant step in our effort to eliminate intellectual property crime on the Internet and to make it safe for individuals and businesses to develop and use new software and technologies," U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty said in a statement announcing the plea. "John Sankus and his group knew what they were doing was illegal, and they took every technological step possible to conceal their identity."
DrinkOrDie was one of the oldest so-called "warez" groups and it was busted in December by FBI, U.S. Customs Service, U.S. Justice Department and national law enforcement agencies from various countries including Finland, UK and Australia. Group cracked software items, distributed illegal digital copies of movies and CDs, etc.
MPAA claimed that after DoD was busted in December, the number of illegal movies available on the Net decreased by 45 per cent. We think that this number is total b.s., just by taking a brief look at various IRC channels, P2P networks, newsgroups, etc you can see that all the latest titles are available from several groups in several formats, just like it used to be.