Head Of Age-Old Piracy Group Sentenced

Nearly each PC game fan has seen the name "Razor 1911" above the years, whether on a sharp graphics demo or a cracked piece of software. single of the founding members of the assemblage won't be making many of the former, admitting having lately been busted for the latter. 38-year-old Sean Michael Breen of Richmond, California was sentenc to 50 month in prison for software piracy yesterday as the biggest catch in an ongoing federal piracy investigation.

Operation Buccaneer, as it's called, has ariseed in more than 40 copyright violation convictions since its inception in 2001 Breen's determination is the longest yet imposed as a come of the investigation, however.

In addition to his prison boundary Breen was also ordered to pay a certain number of $690,000 in restitution to San Jose networking company Cisco a whole s from which he fraudulently ordered several hundr thousand dollars worth of hardware.

Razor 1911 has been around in a certain quantity of form or another since the heyday of the demo sight among Commodore 64 and Amiga enthusiasts (platforms which were also famous for rampant piracy of games and otehr software). Federal prosecutors said the cluster had evolved into a well-organized piracy effort, with suppliers to obtain pre-release versions of games in order to crack them in time for their retail release.

Copyright ?© 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserv Originally appearing in 1UP