Two men plead guilty in Internet piracy scheme

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Two members of a prominent cyberspace group who allegedly posted pirated software and other programs on the Internet have pleaded guilty to copyright infringement.

Prosecutors say 30-year-old Kentaga Kartadinata and 26-year-old Mike Nguyen, both of Los Angeles, were members of a gang known as DrinkorDie. They face between 27 and 33 months in prison, each, when they're sentenced at a later time.

Nguyen, a computer programmer at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), managed several of the group's file servers containing thousands of pirated software titles.

Authorities have seized more than 100 computers in five different countries allegedly used by members of the so-called Warez community, which served as an umbrella group for smaller cyberspace gangs such as DrinkorDie.

These groups remove security protections from programs, which enables them for distribution over the Internet.

Federal prosecutors say they expect to indict at least 50 other DrinkorDie members soon.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/interne....ap/index.html