The last defendant from the "Operation Higher Education" and "Operation Safehaven" anti-warez cases has pleased guilty in the U.S. District Court of Connecticut.
Greg Hurley, an Orlando, FL resident, pleaded guilty to criminal copyright infringement, and admitted he was a supplier for a warez network that offered thousands of illegal copies of software, digital music files, movies and video games.
Similar to 18 other defendants sentenced, Hurley will likely receive court supervised probation, and won't serve any jail time. He was a member of Fairlight, an online group that was first targeted more than five years ago. The U.S. Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) worked alongside the U.S. Justice Department and U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Connecticut.
Even though members were located across the country, prosecution took place in Connecticut.
After Hurley, and other "suppliers" got access to content, "crackers" were responsible for breaking digital copyright protections before "couriers" distributed the cracked content to FTP servers.
"I had access to numerous FTP sites where titles were stored and downloaded," Hurley wrote as part of his guiilty plea. "I also conspired with others that uploaded copywrited [sic] works to FTP sites that would otherwise be further accessed, reproduced, and distributed by other co-conspirators."
Hurley is scheduled to be sentenced sometime this spring.
U.S. authorities have taken a stronger stand against online piracy rings, with many pirates now serving federal jail time for their participation in organized piracy.
