Two men have been convicted for piracy over peer-to-peer networks in the first case of its kind in the US. The pair, William Trowbridge from New York and Michael Chicoine of Texas, were running central hubs in a piracy community running over the Direct Connection P2P system. They had admitted infringing copyright by illegally sharing music, films and software.
Both men now face up to five years in jail and fines of up to $250,000. They were in charge of a group calling itself the Underground Network, Membership of the group, the US Department of Justice said, required sharing of anywhere between one and 100 gigabytes of files.
The two faced the charges following FBI raids last August, carried out as part of Operation Digital Gridlock, which is aimed at fighting copyright theft over P2P. The men are due to be sentenced on April 29.