A US software pirate has been sentenced to 18 months' jail by a Virginia court for punting illicit programmes via a pay-for-access website, Australian IT reports.

Over six months, Kishan Singh, 33 of Lanham, Maryland, sold thousands of cracked copies of Adobe, Autodesk, Macromedia, and Microsoft programmes with an estimated (presumably retail) value of between $70,000 and $120,000.

On 14 October Singh pleaded guilty to a charge of copyright infringement. The prosecution said: "Evidence revealed that thousands of pirated software programs were downloaded from Singh's website by users from around the world during the six-month period charged." ®

Related stories

One in five Brits 'buy software from spam'
Anti-piracy scrooges slammed for Red Cross threats
MS offers real Windows XP to users of counterfeit software
Ballmeromics: the hardware way to end software piracy