| August 25 , 2004 | New Orleans, LA |
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Internet Distributor of Pirated Software Sentenced for Criminal Copyright Infringement Jim Letten, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana and Paul J. McNulty, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, announced today that Montreal Fox, 31 of Avondale, Louisiana, was sentenced by the Honorable Mary Ann Vial Lemmon, United States District Judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana, for distributing pirated software over the Internet in violation of federal criminal copyright infringement laws. Montreal Fox previously pled guilty to a single count Bill of Information on May 19, 2004, charging him with infringement of a copyright, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §2319(c)(1) and 17 U.S.C. §506(a)(2). Judge Lemmon sentenced Fox to five months incarceration, five months home confinement, one year supervised release and ordered him to pay a $100 special assessment. Montreal Fox is one of nine individuals being prosecuted for distribution of pirated computer software after an eight month investigation by the FBI. The investigation, identified as "Operation Cybernet," targeted individuals nationwide for operating computer sites on the Internet that illegally distributed pirated copies of software, movies, games and music. These individuals advertised their computer sites in the Usenet newsgroup "alt.2600.warez" and various Internet relay chat channels dedicated to the trafficking of pirated software. Operation Cybernet culminated on July 24, 2001, with the simultaneous execution of nine search warrants in various parts of the country. The operation specifically targeted violators of the No Electronic Theft ("NET") Act, a 1997 law which makes it illegal to reproduce or distribute on a large scale copyrighted works, such as software programs, even if the defendant acts without a commercial purpose or for private financial gain. The NET Act was enacted by Congress to combat the growing threat of piracy over the Internet in light of the realization that a significant amount of online criminal copyright infringement involves the free downloading of pirated software, games, movies and music from warez sites. Defendant Montreal Fox admitted operating a warez FTP server from a personal computer located in Avondale, Louisiana, where he resided at the time of the investigation. The Cybernet investigation was conducted by the FBI's Washington Field
Office and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Scott J. Stein from
the Eastern District of Virginia, James Mann, from the Eastern District
of Louisiana and Clement McGovern from the Computer Crimes and Intellectual
Property Section of the Department of Justice. The defendant was originally
charged in the Eastern District of Virginia by way of a Criminal Complaint
filed on January 15, 2004 and, with the consent of the Eastern District
of Louisiana, the case was transferred pursuant to Rule 20 to the Eastern
District of Louisiana for disposition. |
