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Jail sentences for warez gang

Christophe Guillemin, ZDNet France, and Karen Said, ZDNN ZDNet France

Published: 18 Feb 2002 17:00 GMT

Members of a French group that sold illegally copied software were fined 40,000 euros and sentenced to prison terms of up to six months. The charges involved crimes dating back to 1996.

Six French IT workers have been found guilty by a Parisian court of having organised the sale of pirated software over the Internet between 1996 and 2000, according to the AFP. They were ordered to pay a total fine of 40,000 euros to 19 software companies, in addition to being sentenced to prison terms.

A 29-year-old local government worker was given the most severe sentence of 6 months in prison. He had sold more than 4,000 pirated CD-ROMs to about 200 clients for a total of more than 12,000 euros (£7,300), according to the ruling.

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