Three men admit to biggest ever Warez charges

By Steve Malone

Posted on 10 Mar 2005 at 09:29

Three men have pleaded guilty in the US to making millions of dollars' worth of copyright material available over the internet. The men claim that they were not doing it for profit, but for fun.

The three men Seth Kleinberg, 26, from Los Angeles, Jeffrey Lerman, 20, and Albert Bryndza, 32, both from New York, each pleaded guilty to federal copyright charges. Amongst the material seized from the men are copyrighted computer software, games and movies.

Federal investigators say that these are the first convictions in its biggest ever crackdown targeting Warez sites known as Operation Higher Education. The three men were part of a number of illegal file-sharing networks including the giant `Fairlight` network. US authorities have targeted illegal warez sites several times in the past year including the Underground Network and Operation Fastlink.
The competitive `fun' element was revealed by Kleinberg who is reported to have said: `It's a competition of different groups racing to release pirated software over the internet`.

However, the authorities won't be amused at the apparent ease with which the men made the material available. It is alleged that Kleinberg, without a PhD in Computer Science - just a high school education and a normal PC, managed to crack the software protection whilst Lehman was good enough to fit the pirated software on a single CD and Bryndza managed the servers.

Prosecutors said Lerman edited the software so it could fit on a single compact disc, and Bryndza built servers that stored the software.
They were released without bail for sentencing in July. They reached plea bargains calling for sentences of about three to six years.