BOSTON (AP) -- A federal grand jury indicted an MIT student
Thursday on charges he ran a computer bulletin board that allowed
people to copy more than $1 million worth of copyrighted software
for free.
David LaMacchia, 20, a junior at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, was indicted on one felony count of conspiring to
commit wire fraud, said U.S. Attorney Donald K. Stern. An
arraignment date wasn't immediately scheduled.
LaMacchia, of Rockville, Md., used the computer aliases ``John
Gaunt'' and ``Grimjack,'' to operate the bulletin board at MIT from
Nov. 21 to Dec. 21, 1993, and from Jan. 3 to Jan. 5, the indictment
said.
The bulletin board, named Cynosure, allowed people on MIT's
computer network to copy business and entertainment software, the
indictment said.
Since MIT's system is part of the Internet, a super-network
using telephone lines to link educational, military and commercial
computer networks around the world, Internet users also were able
to illegally copy the software, Stern said.
``The pirating of business and entertainment software through
clandestine computer bulletin boards is tremendously costly to
software companies, and by extension to their employees and to the
economy,'' Stern said.
LaMacchia allegedly used MIT workstation computers to operate
the bulletin board and to store the software library, the
indictment said.
Many of the Cynosure users hid their identities by using an
Internet address in Finland that provided an anonymous forwarding
service for the pirated programs, according to the indictment.
As many as 180 people used the illegal software library over one
16-hour period, downloading hundreds of copyrighted commercial
programs, the indictment said.
MIT computer specialists discovered in December that a computer
in a student center was being used to distribute the software, MIT
spokesman Robert C. DiIorio said.