The software producers operating in Romania lose more than $10 million a year to software piracy, but the authorities have their hands tied when it comes to punishing IT criminals. Is this a fact? Yes, just take a look at the example below.
Last year, the www.zona77.ro website, well known among Romanian IT criminals, was nonchalantly offering lists of dozens if not hundreds of CDs of software, music, games or movies, all of them cracked and for a price, of course.
They obviously came cheaper than the originals. Five large IT companies, whose products were illegally marketed by zona77.ro, alerted Business Software Alliance (BSA), the international organisation specialised in copyright defence.
The next step was pressing charges against Ion Catalin Austreanu, the "zona77" brain, identified after his phone number on the website, by BSA to the General Police Inspectorate on behalf of Microsoft, Adobe, Corel, Autodesk and Symantec. This caused the site, which was extremely popular among the IT pirates, to close down.
Nothing happened in the Romanian hackers' twilight zone for several months then, starting November last year when Ion Catalin Austreanu's house had been searched by the Police, until April this year.
Two months ago, a forum appeared on the www.zona77.ro, a forum where the old and potential clients of the pirate CDs "mill" would meet. A regular club for Romanian IT criminals.
Why has this website not been closed down yet, when the damages it caused to the software making companies amount to several dozen thousands dollars?
Because "the police investigation is still in progress" as the IGP told the BSA officials two months ago, nearly half a year after the start of the investigation. Subsequently, no trial against Austreanu is currently pending in any Romanian court.
Romanian National Computer Network (RNC), the web domains regulating authority, may close down a website only "under extreme circumstances or if the justice orders so."
"We close down a website only if there's no other way around it, so that we wouldn't hurt somebody's business," RNC manager Eugenie Staicut told Ziarul Financiar.
The RNC official claimed he was not aware of the activity of zona77.ro, as neither was he aware of the closing or reopening of this website, depending on how things stand in the Romanian web underground.
He also explained that under such circumstances it is necessary that someone would notify the justice and only then RNC could decide to "freeze" the domain in question based on a court order.
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