Court punishes software pirate 
By Suzanne Galante
February 21, 1997, 12:45 p.m. PT 

                The Software Publishers Association today
                received a court judgment against software pirate
                Max Butler, which the industry group hopes will
                send a strong message to others who encourage
                software to be illegally copied. 

                The judgement bans Butler from future pirating and
                slapped him with a $60,000 fine.

                "Butler will be used as an example," said Peter
                Beruk, SPA director of domestic antipiracy. "He
                serves as an educational message because our role
                is to educate users as well as enforce the laws. If
                you don't listen to us and you do violate copyright
                laws, we are going to press charges against you."
                The SPA filed the suit against Butler last July on
                behalf of Cinco Networks, Symantec, and
                Traveling Software. 

                Under the allegations, Butler had placed his
                pirated software on ABWAM, a Colorado-based
                Internet access provider.

                ABWAM, through routine maintenance of its site,
                discovered its was experiencing exceedingly large
                file transfers, a significant volume of uploads, and
                receipt of directory names that contained filenames
                indicative of commercial software titles. These are
                all signals that software is being copied.

                Officials at ABWAM do not know the value of the
                software that Butler allowed to be copied,
                because once it is posted online, everyone has
                access as long as users know where to look.

                "On a Unix system you can hide a file by putting a
                dot in front of it, and unless you know to look for
                it, you won't see it," said Rachel Drummond,
                ABWAM systems administrator. "Most of the
                time, ISPs do not know that they are hosting these
                people."

                But this case sends a strong message to other
                pirates.

                "Some people do it as a game, like trading
                baseball cards. It is skirting the law and it's
                fun--like going 75 miles an hour in a 65-mile an
                hour zone," said Beruk.

                Members of the Internet community need to
                respect copyright and intellectual property rights in
                order to protect the integrity and future
                development of the Internet, Beruk added. 

                Drummond agreed, saying that the motivation for
                pirating software rarely has anything to do with
                money.

                "A number of people believe that software should
                be free or get just a kick out of doing illegal
                things," she said.