A 24-year-old member of DrinkOrDie, one of the oldest international
piracy groups on the Internet, has been sentenced to 33 months in
jail for conspiring to violate criminal copyright laws.
Christopher Tresco pleaded guilty in May to using his employer's
computers to distribute copyrighted material, including movies,
software, games and music.
Tresco faces up to five years in prison and $250,000 (£163,281) in
fines.
"Chris made an error in judgement in getting involved in this
activity and he has acknowledged to the court that he violated the
law," said Tresco's attorney Gary Crossen.
"He hopes others will learn from him the lesson to avoid computer
crimes and respect federal copyright laws."
Tresco is one of 40 people worldwide targeted by Operation
Buccaneer, a 14-month undercover investigation into copyright
violations in the US. One of Tresco's co-conspirators pleaded
guilty to conspiracy charges earlier this year and was sentenced to
46 months in prison.
Operation Buccaneer also netted members of other online piracy
groups, including RiSC, RAZOR1911, RiSCISO, and POPZ.
To date, 13 people have pleaded guilty to charges in connection
with Operation Buccaneer; 10 have already been sentenced. Federal
prosecutors said DrinkOrDie consisted of approximately 65 members
from more than a dozen countries including England, Australia,
Sweden, Norway and Finland.
Federal prosecutors said Tresco, known by his screen name "BigRar,"
took advantage of his job as systems administrator for the
economics department at MIT to install and operate a number of
DrinkOrDie file storage/transfer sites on the MIT system.
This included DrinkOrDie's "drop site," a computer connected
full-time to the Internet that served as the workstation and
initial distribution point for all the group's release work of
copyrighted material, according to prosecutors. The group would
defeat security features, then distribute the counterfeit titles
around the world.
Tresco also installed and operated a number of the group's FTP
"leach" sites containing tens of thousands of software, game, movie
and movie titles for copying and downloading by DrinkOrDie members.