Software pirates appear at Old Bailey
20 October 2004
Two men accused of copying computer programs reportedly saw themselves as "latter-day Robin Hoods", making expensive software freely available over the internet, a court has heard.
Bruce Houlder QC, prosecuting, told the Old Bailey that the pair were part of an international group known as the DrinkorDie warez network.
Steven Dowd, 39, from Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, and Alex Bell, 29, of Chafford Hundred, Essex, deny conspiracy to defraud.
The two men stand accused of being involvement in a multi-million-pound fraud involving illegally copying software and putting it on the internet. Hundreds of CDs and CD ROMs had been found at the homes of Mr Bell and Mr Dowd, the court heard.
DrinkorDie, a group of software pirates, is believed to have cracked hundreds of commercial programs. The network shot to prominence in the mid-1990s, when it released a cracked copy of Windows 95 onto the internet two weeks before Microsoft had officially launched the product.
"They may see themselves as latter-day Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich to give to the poor, but in reality it is a cover for fraud," said Mr Houlder QC. "Computers are their universe. They live and breathe a world of computer software."
The British Software Alliance, an industry body that fights software piracy, cites DrinkorDie as an example of the disregard that it claims many people have for copyright. The organisation recently published a report indicating that 44 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds in the UK possessed pirate or counterfeit goods.
The case continues.
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