Software Pirate Found Guilty of Stealing $100 Million in Goods

[rantoc]

"U.S. agents worked undercover for 18 months in order to catch Li; they purchased thousands of dollars of software from him, which had an equivalent value of $150,000."

At what cost total? Good to see the taxpayers money go to companies that gladly evades tax ect...

 

[thecolorblue]

[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]Development effort required to create the software.You think programmers are cheap? Haha, sadly no.[/citation]
You missed the point completely.

 

[thecolorblue]

[citation][nom]jadedmonkey28[/nom]What a lot of people don't seem to get is that stealing 100million in software is the same as going in to best buy and stealing software off the shelf. Just because you commit the crime in cyberspace does not make it any less of a crime. Making fake goods is a very serious crime and is punished every day here. If we choose not to punish people who steal software like this then why is anyone punished for stealing anything.[/citation]
FAIL at logic.

just embarrassing and shamefully ignorant.

 

[thecolorblue]

[citation][nom]cmcghee358[/nom]Isn't anyone else concerned that the DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY is the one that led this investigation?[/citation]
YES.
game over

 

[thecolorblue]

[citation][nom]bystander[/nom]I seems so many people around here believe that companies should work for us for free. It's rather shocking that people actually believe that selling someone elses hard work should be legal.[/citation]
you're incorrectly reading between the lines with your straw man argument there.

there are several different discussions going on in this thread.
1) Is making a digital copy impinging on sales for a company. If said user would never have paid for the software then the company loses nothing. That's a point that CANNOT be disputed.

2) Is selling a digital copy of someone else's work impinging on sales for a company? Now that is a DIFFERENT QUESTION ENTIRELY. It's specific enough to address. There will be qualifications in the answer, it is not black and white.

3) 100 million dollars... Where on Earth does that number come from and is it justifiable. If the purchasers of said software would never have paid for the original software then the total value of "the case" would be... ZERO. If 10 users who would have bought the software at full-price paid half-price to the gentleman in question, then the value would be 10x the price of the software.

4)... i'll stop here, feel free to expand the list.

Precision is not something anybody should fear.
Don't expect to use inane straw-man arguments and have people take you seriously.

 

[SteelCity1981]

He would have been safe in North Korea.

 

[rantoc]

[citation][nom]fuzzion[/nom]This fella will get a big sentence and then get a deal from the CIA to work for them cracking chinese defense software.[/citation]

You might got a point there - Could be the sole reason U.S. Department of Homeland Security handled it which is odd in any other case.

 

[hoofhearted]

We should change the name of the country from "The United States of America" to "The United Corporations of America" and "Department of Homeland Security" to "Department of Corporate Security". No wonder so many other countries hate us. We are enforcing our laws in their countries in the name of corporate profits.

 

[x3style]

Lets fix the quote a bit

"Li thought he was safe from the long arm of U.S. Corporate Greed and Corrupted Laws enforcement, hiding halfway around the world in cyberspace anonymity. He was sorely mistaken," U.S. Corporate Greed and Corrupted Laws Enforcement's Director John Morton had said during 2012. "Whether in China or cyberspace, this arrest is proof that Corporate Greed and our partners at the Retarded Corrupted Laws Coordination Center are committed to identifying, infiltrating, disrupting and pushing U.S. legislations into these criminal enterprises alo known as non-U.S. countries wherever they exist."

There you go!I fixed it for you!

Although he had sold it for considerably less, prosecutors said the retail value of what Li stole equaled more than $100 million. U.S. agents worked undercover for 18 months in order to catch Li; they purchased thousands of dollars of software from him, which had an equivalent value of $150,000.

Yeah fictive imaginary damages we so love them these days!

 

[Pinhedd]

[citation][nom]thecolorblue[/nom]you're incorrectly reading between the lines with your straw man argument there.there are several different discussions going on in this thread.1) Is making a digital copy impinging on sales for a company. If said user would never have paid for the software then the company loses nothing. That's a point that CANNOT be disputed.2) Is selling a digital copy of someone else's work impinging on sales for a company? Now that is a DIFFERENT QUESTION ENTIRELY. It's specific enough to address. There will be qualifications in the answer, it is not black and white.3) 100 million dollars... Where on Earth does that number come from and is it justifiable. If the purchasers of said software would never have paid for the original software then the total value of "the case" would be... ZERO. If 10 users who would have bought the software at full-price paid half-price to the gentleman in question, then the value would be 10x the price of the software.4)... i'll stop here, feel free to expand the list. Precision is not something anybody should fear.Don't expect to use inane straw-man arguments and have people take you seriously.[/citation]

1. This is a logical fallacy. If someone would have never paid for the software in the first place than the software clearly has no value to them and they would have no reason to use it. If they have reason to use the software than by any definition it has value to them and they would be willing to pay for it under the right conditions. It is the owner's right to set the price of the first sale. If the customer finds that to be too high, too fucking bad.

2. Yes it is. The supply of software is infinite, volume sold is controlled by price. If someone copies and sells someone else's software then they must by definition sell it at a lower price. If they are able to sell it at a lower price then they effectively put a price floor on the whole product line. This cuts into the company's existing customers as well as their potential customers.

3. Enterprise and Engineering applications have very small and very specific markets. It's very easy for application builders to build in complex 'phone home' code which can be used to count unauthorized usage. It may not be worth it for Bethesda to track illicit usage of Skyrim because the game will eventually hit the bargain bin but it is most definitely worth it for Siemens to track illicit usage of Solid Edge. A lot of work goes into productivity software to make specific users more productive and as a result, the designers set the price very high.

4. There are easily acquirable academic versions of most of these products. The only reason to pirate them, much less pay for a pirated copy, is if one had a use case which required the full commercial version of the software.

 

[Guest]

Proper english aside, what this guy did was wrong. Also, it's not just the US that would do this. If someone from the US copied and sold a chinese companies software without that companies permission, then china would take action to put that person in jail.

 

[gm0n3y]

I was going to complain that the DOHS shouldn't be operating halfway around the world in a place like Saipan, but apparently it is a US held territory.

 

[GreaseMonkey_62]

Stealing implies it is lost and cannot be sold, copying leaves the original and makes a duplicate, I don't get how people find this so hard to understand. they can still sell their product, nobody is stopping you from buying it from them, they didn't lose any keys, they didn't lose any part of their code, they lost the money to use their code

Coping files and programs illegally IS stealing. If somebody buys the cracked copy of the program instead of the legtimate copy from the orginal company it's taking money away from the orginal company. COPING PROGRAMS WITHOUT PERMISSION IS STEALING. Just as plagarism is wrong, hacking and coping is wrong. Why can't YOU understand that?

 

[GreaseMonkey_62]

FAIL at logic.

just embarrassing and shamefully ignorant.

Are you speaking about yourself?

 

[bunz_of_steel]

Nothing to be said about the millions the CEO's and exec's from the bonuses they are getting. Want to make a change how bout changing or implementing some new corporate laws on high paying CEO's and execs? They get millions company tanks and take all their employees with them. But the millionaires are cover under legal contract, golden parachutes and not held liable. They get $$ employees get to post for positions outside of the company.

 

[mamailo]

If they re going to uphold the law in saipan they should start with million of products who carry the "made in the USA" tag but do not follow any of the consumer protection standards of the mainland, made by workers who do not have the same laboral rights.

In fact prostitution and modern slavery (up to 60% of the population are alien "workers") are rampant in the Marianas Islands and the Department of Homeland Security did not saw a thing ?

Kinda biased to me

 

[bystander]

If you guys think these companies are gouging you with high prices, don't purchase their software. If the new release, high budge games cost too much, why not make your own, or support indie developers? There is no god given right to use their software that they spent millions of dollars on to develop.

And just becomes a few CEO's in some of these large companies make millions, does not mean that most do.

 

[idisarmu]

That's like saying he had 10,000 $10k software packages... that's insane.

I realize that some software costs more than that- so lets say $50k per package. That's still 2000 different programs. What did he do, steal IP from all of the world's top universities?

 

[bystander]

[citation][nom]idisarmu[/nom]That's like saying he had 10,000 $10k software packages... that's insane.I realize that some software costs more than that- so lets say $50k per package. That's still 2000 different programs. What did he do, steal IP from all of the world's top universities?[/citation]
If you read the article, it said this:

The software, which was predominately utilized by defense, space, and engineering companies, belonged to several technology firms including Microsoft, Oracle, Rockwell Automation, Agilent Technologies, Siemens, among hundreds of others.

That means he was selling some very specific, low volume software. Since these types of software costs millions if not billions to develop and maintain, and they have few customers, yes, the packages are very expensive.