Grant Stanley, an elite torrent hacker that has just been sentenced for a total of ten months imprisonment and a $3,000 fine for his role in creating EliteTorrents. EliteTorrents was a BitTorrent tracker site that was one of the most visited sites in the world. EliteTorrents did not actually contain the illegal copies of software, movies, music and games. Instead, the site provided trackers leading to these materials. He will be spending half of this time in prison and the other half in home detention, and then he will be on supervised release for the next three years. This is not the first BitTorrent-related conviction in the United States. Two months earlier Scott McCausland pleaded guilty for criminal copyright infringement related to EliteTorrents.

Crimes involving piracy and illegal distribution has prompted Microsoft to require a mandatory antipiracy check of their productivity software. This means that users must prove that the software applications are 100% before gaining access to add-ons and updates from the software giant. Users who unknowingly received a counterfeit copy of Office may receive a complimentary copy of Microsoft Office after filling out a counterfeit report, provide proof of purchase, and sending in their counterfeit cds.

Prosecuting such cybercrimes have gained momentum over the years, aided by an increased cooperation between the police and the targetted victims. This week a Florida resident, John Bombard, was charged for establishing a bot network of compromised computers from which he launched a Denial of Service attack on servers managed by Akamai Technologies. If convicted, he will face up to two years’ imprisonment and a fine of several thousand dollars. Hopefully with the increased vigilance from organizations will lead to a cut down to these crimes.

[tags]news, bittorrents, crime, conviction[/tags]