Press Release For Immediate Release
May 31, 2002
|
U.S. Department of Justice
Roscoe C. Howard, Jr.
United States Attorney
for the District of Columbia
Judiciary Center
555 Fourth St., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530
For information Contact Public Affairs
Channing Philips
(202) 514-6933
|
Washington, D.C. - United States Attorney Roscoe C. Howard, Jr. and Van
A. Harp, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBIs Washington Field
Office, announced that Yaroslav Suris, 27, of Brooklyn, New York, was
sentenced before U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Jackson for one felony
count of Criminal Infringement of a Copyright, in violation of 17 U.S.C.
§ 506(a)(1) and 18 U.S.C. § 2319(b)(1). Suris was sentenced
two months incarceration, followed by fourteen months home detention.
He was also ordered to pay $290,556 in restitution. In announcing the
plea, U.S. Attorney Howard recognized that the software industry loses
millions in revenue each year due to Internet software piracy, and emphasized
the importance of prosecuting copyright infringement.
This case arose from Yaroslav Suris actions infringing the copyrights
of numerous expensive software packages by making multiple copies of the
software, then selling them over the Internet at prices far below their
retail value. From February 2000 to April 2001, Suris advertised the following
copyrighted software for sale, at prices far below the listed retail price,
on the Yahoo! auction website:
Company |
Software |
Retail Price |
Alias-Wavefront |
Maya Unlimited 2.5 |
$16,000 |
Side Effects |
Houdini 4.0 |
$17,000 |
Adobe |
Acrobat 4.0 |
$ 249 |
Adobe |
Illustroto 8.0 |
$ 399 |
Adobe |
Page Mill 3.0 |
$ 99 |
Adobe |
Photoshop 6.0 |
$ 609 |
Corel |
Draw 9 |
$ 695 |
Macromedia |
Flash 9 |
$ 299 |
Macromedia |
Freehand 8.0 |
$ 399 |
Macromedia |
Autocad 2000 |
$ 3,750 |
Suris duplicated the software on equipment he maintained in his home.
He would negotiate a price with a customer over the Internet, then mail
the duplicated software on an unmarked CD. For example, Suris sold four
copies of Maya Unlimited 2.5, a graphics software package which retails
at approximately $16,000 per copy, for a total of $195.00. Customers paid
through PayPal, an online payment system, or by mailing checks or money
orders.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation contacted Suris under the guise of
a real customer, and made four undercover purchases from him of multiple
copies of the copyright protected software, for a total of $1310. The
retail value of the software sold in those four sales was approximately
$290,000.
In announcing the sentence, United States Attorney Howard and Assistant
Director in Charge Harp commended the investigative work of Federal Bureau
of Investigation Special Agent Christopher Hinkle, and the cooperation
of the Software & Information Industry Association. They also commended
Assistant U.S. Attorney Miriam Smolen who prosecuted the case.
###
|