Software pirate spared jail

A Rochdale man caught selling pirated computer software will not go to prison.

40-year old Waseem Malik, of Chadwick Street, was arrested at a computer fair in Leeds, where police and trading standards officers found 431 counterfeit disks.

The father-of-four was arrested in September last year after trying to sell the disks for between £5 and £10. The disks included copyrighted material from Microsoft, Adobe, Quark, Sage and Coral, believed to be worth in the region of £420,000.

Malik would have made a £6,000 profit on the items if he had sold them according to Prosecutor James Lake at Leeds Crown Court.

At Malik's Rochdale home police found a professional set-up for pirating the software, including disk copying machines, blank disks and master copies.

Malik was sentenced to a 12 week prison sentence, suspended for 12 months, and must complete 200 hours unpaid community work.