I get emails almost daily about why things aren’t done with the llegal items being sold on sites like ioffer, and my response is always the same. One of these days you will see action taken against the sites and their users.

On Monday BSA filed complaint(s) in federal court in the Northern District of California and in the United Kingdom against alleged bootleg sellers.

“This investigation began as part of our overall effort to focus on certain Web sites as a front in the war against stolen software,” said BSA Vice President and General Counsel Neil MacBride. “As highlighted in our recent report, Online Software Scams, consumers who buy software from online auction sites and certain shopping sites face a significant risk of dealing with software pirates and exposing themselves to identity theft and other serious problems.”

According to reports, BSA setup an operation on behalf of member companies Adobe, Microsoft, Solidworks, Dassault and others. The BSA targeted mainly users with a high volume of sales.

Once the BSA purchased software, the sellers then sent CD Recordable media with no labels, and with key generators which were used to generate illegal keys which were then used to install the program. Some programs also included a trojan called “Hacktool” which according to Symantec, is used to allow attackers to break in and control the suspect computer.

The BSA purchased software with a retail value of over $42,000 for less then $1,000 from ioffer.

The following people are part of the complaint:

Matthew Miller, aka “mattymillz”

Jeremiah Hawkins, Hoang Minh Pham aka “Kevingo77”

John Rothwell, aka “magician9237”

Darwin Mieles, aka “DM42017”

Ruben Munguia and Loretta Morales, aka “metalmayhem”

A quick search found Jeremiah Hawkins & Hoang Minh Pham on another site, where he was commenting on a potential buyer accusing him of selling pirated software. His response?, “let me guess. u selling some too right? all people that got it from me was happy are u jealous?”

BSA is sending a clear message, they will go after people who infringe on their members copyright.  I am almost stuck between a rock and a hard place with this one as I am very proud of the BSA for this move, but maybe not so much for things in the past!

Kevin Cogill, a man who admitted in writing two times to the fbi that he in fact pirated, and distributed the unreleased guns n roses album titled “'Chinese Democracy” has plead not guilty in court earlier today.

Cogill was arrested in August at his Los Angeles home and released on bail the same day. He faces three years in federal prison if convicted, and five years if the court finds he posted the songs for commercial gain.

Kevin, who has support from many online who are helping pay for his defense fund (ref link removed), is now  able to fight in what most thought would be a quick ending to a ‘open and shut’ case. Originally Kevin was being represented by the federal public defender’s office but now has retained his own attorney, David Kaloyanides.

We reported earlier that Kevin not only admitted to the crime, but did it in writing, signed.  According to the United States (on behalf of the AUSA and FBI), Cogill on June 24th, 2008 signed a confession in which he admitted to posting the unreleased songs, and removed them because of the attention it got, causing the server running his website to crash because of the amount of traffic it generated.

You can read the original complaint here:

Guns N' Roses said in a statement at the time of the arrest that while it did not condone Coghill's actions, "our interest is in the original source" of the material. Mrozek declined to comment on whether there would be any additional arrests.