Romanian Pirate Goes Behind Bars

Although it happens in various countries in the world, a Romanian pirate thought it could never happen to him: Kiss Adalbert Daniel, 28-year-old, was found guilty of possession with the purpose of distribution of pirated materials and received a sentence of five years and six months in jail. Beside that, the pirate has to pay huge fines, namely more than 50,000 euros to Microsoft and 77,000 euros to Autodesk Inc.

What's interesting is that the Romanian, based in Arad, was investigated by the local authorities a few years ago but, according to several Romanian publications, even if the police abandoned the investigations, he was still involved in illegal activities one year ago. Moreover, he also published a website which has been used for promoting pirated content with the purpose of selling. The website has been shut down. At the time of the arrest, the police also seized several hard disk drives which were analyzed in order to get more evidence.

The investigators managed to discover and identify the suspect through a file-sharing application using the Direct Connect protocol, the online version of the Romanian newspaper Cotidianul informs. In case copyrighted material is found on a suspect computer, the investigators attempt to connect to in order to get more details about it, such as IP address and the type of the material that is being shared.

After connecting to the user, the authorities go over to the ISP and demand private information about the client, which could be then used for further investigations.

Copyright holders and anti-piracy organizations around the world are deploying serious effort to fight against software pirates distributing illegal copies of their material. However, this is quite the first time when a Romanian resident is sent to prison and receives so high fines for the illegal activities he conducted.

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