Chinese court jails Windows pirates

A court in eastern China has sentenced four people to prison and ordered payment of about 11 million yuan in fines for distributing pirated versions of Microsoft's Windows XP and other software.

The Business Software Alliance, an industry trade group, lauded the court's decision as the first successful prosecution of large-scale, online software piracy in China. Microsoft likewise applauded the handling of the case.

"It shows the government is really taking action," Liu Fengming, vice president for the greater China region for Microsoft, said in a statement.

Hong Lei, said to be the chief developer of the pirated XP software, and Sun Xiansheng, who managed business promotion for "Tomato Garden," the website that provided it, were each sentenced to three and a half years in prison, said the director of the Huqin District People's Court in Suzhou, a city west of Shanghai.

Like many Chinese officials, he would only give his surname, Wang.

Hong and Sun were each fined 1 million yuan (NZ$216,100), while two others involved in the case received sentences of two years and fines of 100,000 yuan ($21,600) each, Wang confirmed.

The court also fined the Chengdu Share Software Net Co., which operated Tomato Garden, more than 8.7 million yuan ($1.88 million) and confiscated nearly 3 million yuan ($648,000) of its revenue.

Hong was detained in Aug. 2008 after authorities received complaints over widespread use of the pirated software, which Tomato Garden distributed for free, earning income on advertising only, according to the newspaper Shanghai Daily and other reports.

The reports said that more than 10 million people were thought to have downloaded pirated software from the website.

Authorities moved against Tomato Garden after receiving complaints from the Business Software Alliance, the reports said.

"The verdict of this case represents the end of China's largest online software piracy syndicate and marks a milestone in China's efforts to crack down on internet piracy," Business Software Alliance said in a statement.