pirate

The leader of one of the oldest and most well known Internet software piracy groups, Hew Raymond Griffiths has pleaded guilty to criminal copyright infringement charges, in one of the first extraditions for an intellectual property offense. Griffiths, a British national living in Bateau Bay, Australia was extradited in February 2007 to face charges in U.S. District Court.

An Indiana man was sentenced to over two years in prison for selling over $700,000 worth of counterfeit software on eBay, the US Department of Justice announced. Courtney Smith, 36, of Anderson, Ind., was sentenced in US District Court to 27 months in prison, a two-year supervised release, and will face fines and restitution in excess of $7,000. That's a pretty stiff penalty considering he only made $4,000 from the sale of pirated Rockwell Automation software.

What's scarier than a Rosie O'Donnell pole dance? How about Rupert Murdoch with a subpoena? Twentieth Century Fox will test Google's privacy resolve in much the same way the federal government did this time last year by demanding a YouTube user who uploaded entire Fox TV shows be identified.

Google's only interest in pirates is keeping them out of Google Video, as it has opted out of Talk Like A Pirate Day, which comes every year on September 19.

A Missouri man has been indicted under provisions of the recently passed Family Entertainment and Copyright Act.

A 22-year-old Welsh man was made an example of by becoming the first to be convicted of modifying and selling copyrighted Xbox game consoles.