Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff - Frank Zappa
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Court jails programmer for copyright theft
CHEN SHOUFU, developer of Coral QQ, a popular Chinese IM add-on, has been formally sentenced to three years in jail for copyright infringement.
Chen, a 28-year-old instructor at the Beijing Institute of Technology's computer centre, was arrested at the end of August 2007 for infringing on Tencent's - the dominant IM service in China - intellectual property.
Tencent had sued Chen for infringement when his company developed a patch called Coral QQ as part of a complete download package which included Tencent's software, allowing it to be downloaded from a website called Soff.net.
The original judgment forced Chen to pay 100,010 Yuan ($12,500), but was then delayed for two months after an argument broke out over the actual value of the IP infringed. Tencent had asked for half a million Yuan.
In March, Shenzhen Nanshan People's Court decided Chen should get a three-year prison sentence as well as a fine of 1.2 million Yuan and confiscation of all his illegal income, totaling 1.17 million Yuan. Chen appealed unsuccessfully, with the court’s decision now being made public.
Soff.net, which had been closed down for its role in the story, is now back up and running but minus the Coral QQ software. µ
L'Inq
China Tech News
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This happened in China, concerning a Chinese developer infringing on Chinese IP from another Chinese company.

In other words, don't expect the same thing to happen straight away if it's YOUR code that gets nicked.
Attacking the messenger or the law will not change it. Copyright laws exist to protect art. If you violate the law you can expect to be punished.
(Paul, ofcourse).

"These Fools" include Sony, Microsoft, Sega and just about every other software (and hardware) developer out there.

Have you missed all the legal cases so far this year?

The difference here is that the poor fella was in China, and not the US or UK. 

How many execs from the companies above are in prison for their copyright infringement? None!

So what exactly are you on about?
Maksym, I believe they facism.
someone doesn't understand sarcasm...
but anyways, 3 years is totally uncalled for.. and confiscating everything he has, what is this communism... oh wait.
Yes paul they should lock up half the software industry for stealing other peoples code, that would work well. Do you even know what a real criminal is? You will when you get f#$ked on
No court is going to support copyright theft. Time to get a heaping dose of reality. You steal, you go to jail. It's only going to get worse for those in denial. Time to buy a clue or you can share a prison cell with other people in denial about the laws of society.
Wow, mister "As it should be", you've really let us all know what an ignorant idiot you are. Thanks.
One more criminal in the slammer where they belong. You'd think these fools would know by now that they are not going to be allowed to steal copyright protected works. He knows now!