$1 Million Fine - Brothers' Piracy Lands Them Behind Bars

Catching the bad guys making a profit from selling pirated software is catching up with the rate of copyright infringing - sort of. Many arrests and convictions have been made over the past years, and at an increased pace, but truth be told, piracy has also grown considerably over the same period. With a wild shot in the dark, I dare say that with numbers comes stupidity of the schemes, but that has nothing to do with the Robberson brothers, that landed multi-year prison terms on Friday, as the DOJ announced.

The punishment did fit the crime, but looking at the periods each of the two will be spending behind bars, one clearly got a better deal than the other. As such, Maurice A. Robberson, 48, was sentenced to 3 years in prison and will be forced to pay a $855,917 restitution, while his brother, Thomas K. Robberson, got 30 months and a $151,488 restitution was set for him. The two pleaded guilty, but Maurice was charged with conspiracy and felony copyright infringement, while his brother was only faced a single count of felony copyright infringement.

They were operating sites selling software at a much lower price than the official vendors, and each of the two's earnings (roughly the amounts they are forced to pay as restitution) represented almost one fifth of the sum lost because of their actions by the companies producing the software. The black sites are Bestvalueshoppe.com, TheDealDepot.net for Thomas and CDsalesUSA.com and AMericanSoftwareSares.com for Maurice. The companies that suffered were Adobe Systems, Autodesk and Macromedia.

"People who steal the intellectual property of others for their personal financial gain, while defrauding consumers who think they are buying legitimate products, will be punished for their crimes, as today's sentences prove," Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher said in a statement.