p2pnet - rss feed: Aussie ‘pirate’ skips court
p2p news / p2pnet: A US District Court has issued a warrant for the arrest of 26-year-old Sean Patrick O’Toole from Perth, Australia, who’s facing a possible jail sentence for piracy, says The Age.
A pirate used to be, "One who robs at sea or plunders the land from the sea without commission from a sovereign nation," and/or, "A ship used for this purpose."
Nowadays, it more usually means someone who sells copies of copyrighted music, movies or software and O’Toole is, "the alleged mastermind of an international internet piracy ring" who failed to show up the US District Court in Chicago to face of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and copyright infringement charges. If he’s convicted, he could land in a US jail for eight years, says the story.
O’Toole is said to have been behind RISCISO, "an online ‘warez’ organization, founded in approximately 1993, dedicated to illegally distributing newly-released copyrighted software, games and movies," says LinuxElectrons.
It also points out that ‘RISC’ was an acronym for Rise in Superior Couriering, while ‘ISO’ referred to a file format commonly used for the storage and transfer of pirated software.
"RISCISO allegedly was a sophisticated warez ‘release’ group that operated until last summer as an original source for thousands of pirated works, with over 19,000 gigabytes (equivalent to more than 23,000 CD ROMs) uploaded and downloaded on one server alone via the Internet," says LinuxElectrons.
American authorities weren’t sure if O’Toole is in Australia, the US or another part of the world and were examining border records to check if he has entered the US, says The Age, adding, "O’Toole’s American lawyer, Mary Cay Marubio, said she did not know where he was and was as surprised as prosecutors when he did not appear in court."
O’Toole’s lawyer in Perth, Michael Bowden, said his client had left Australia.
Also See:
The Age - US seeks accused Aussie internet pirate, February 23, 2006
LinuxElectrons - 19 Indicted in $6.5 Million “RISCISO” Software Piracy Conspiracy, February 2, 2006
February 25th, 2006 at 9:30 am
Maybe if the Australian courts took piracy more seriously or at least imposed similar sentences to other countries the United States wouldn’t be extraditing their citizens.
May 24th, 2006 at 10:55 am
did anyone stop to think if this guy started this risciso setup in 1993 he would have been 13 yrs old. does the US government think a 13yr old could have done what they “”ALLEDGED he did”"?? How many millions of things are downloaded daily by millions of people around the world.????
Surely they have better things to do than to cover for the ripoffs of the big conglomerate businesses.
November 7th, 2006 at 2:08 am
another thing in the origional inditement everyone seems to be Ignoring. It stated this group of people used the software for Personal use and there was no incident mentioned of “SALE OF SOFTWARE ” which is the precident for the act of piracy, no financial gain was mentioned. so they go after the “catch all “of conspiracy to commit.
Why dont they go after the Chinese, or Thai, or Koreans who SELL billions of $ worth of copywrited items. Oh sorry, there is too much money to be lost in trade if they persue the big fish who actually SELL. So lets make an example of the people who cant afford to defend themselves in court because of the cost of lawyers. concerned that big business runs the government not the people??