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TWO MEN ACCUSED of operating a popular Android piracy website have pleaded guilty of distributing more than one million copies of copyrighted apps.
According to the US Department of Justice, the one million apps sold had a total retail value of $700,000 (€506,000), and it marked the first time the US Department of Justice had secured convictions for the illegal selling copies of copyrighted apps.
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Nicholas Anthony Narbone and Thomas Allen Dye pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. Both played a major role in Appbucket.net, an alternative online market which specialised in selling popular counterfeit Android apps.
The site was in service from August 2010 to August 2012 where it and two other sites, applanet.net and snappzmarket.com, were seized by the US Department of Justice for pirating copyright mobile apps.
The investigation was carried out by the FBI and both Dye and Narbone will be sentenced in June and July respectively, where they both face a five-year maximum prison sentence.
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Not much difference between selling counterfeit apps and the rampant copyright infringement of authentic apps. All the Flappy Bird imitations, Temple Run clones (don’t know if TR was the original for that style of game) and games like Candy Crush are basically doing the same thing by ripping off someone else’s concept. Copyright law is just a bit greyer than piracy law so they get away with it for the most part
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