back to article eBay pirates plead guilty to selling $6m software for pennies

Two Americans pleaded guilty today to selling $6m worth of counterfeit software over eBay. In 2003 and 2004 Robert Koster of Jonesboro, Arkansas auctioned more than $5m worth of counterfeit factory management software from Rockwell Automation, for a personal profit of $23,000. Also in 2003 and 2004 Yutaka Yamamoto of Pico …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Does eBay have to return final value fees on this?

    eBay makes a fee based on the value of goods sold. This seems like a nice chunk of change. Does eBay have to return it? If so, to whom? If not, isn't keeping the proceeds of illegal activity...err, illegal?

  2. Alex Daulby

    Ebay, refund, I doubt it.....

    I think you may have made an error by thinking that a big corporation has to abide by the same laws as us lowly consumers.

    I would have thought they would wriggle out of it by claiming that they do not take a percentage of the sale itself, but make a charge for their services based on the value of the item. If they where literarly taking x percent from a paypal transaction, then I guess they would be profiting directly from crime.

    Personally I prefer to buy my stolen goods from a Pete Docherty look-a-like in the pub, he did say he could could get "anyfink you wan't geezer" but I'm not sure he meant factory management software...

  3. Stuart Halliday

    Still alternatives

    Still Amazon is available if people are keen to get ripped off with dodgy 3rd party associates selling counterfeit goods. :-)

  4. Dillon Pyron

    And the others?

    Let's see, Rockwell automation is software is used by how many people? I can still get W2K OEM, all I have to do is buy a DIMM that may or may not work. There's certainly a lot of pirated MS software on eBay. Are they next in line?

    I wonder if there will become a "standard" court for software piracy, just like there is for patent disputes.

  5. James Pickett

    Rotten return

    Seems a poor scam that only makes $26k from $5m-worth of software (about 0.5%). How did they counterfeit it - write it out by hand?

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like