Three white-collar software pirates have been convicted and sentenced to between 18 months suspended and two-and-a-half years.

Part of an international ring of piracy, known as DrinkorDie.com they had released new commercial code, including Windows 95 on the Internet before its official release.

The prosecution acknowledged that hatred of Microsoft and other large software firms, and not money was the motive.

Affected software included Microsoft Word, Norton Anti-Virus and Microsoft Excel.

The men included a banker, network administrator and a computer systems manager.

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