Tomato Garden Mastermind to Be in Prison for 3.5 Years

Huqiu District Court in Suzhou, Jiangsu, put Hong Lei, the creator of the downloadable "Tomato Garden Windows XP" software, behind bars for three and a half years (Hong already in custody for one year) and imposed one million yuan in fine. Sentences were also rendered to the other four defendants. A total fine of 11 million yuan was inflicted.

From December 2006, Hong created the Tomato Garden version of the Windows XP with a Chengdu firm, which crippled the program's authentication and certification barriers, and embedded plug-ins of multiple Internet companies. Millions of Internet users then had free access to the software on Hong's website tomatolei.com and redo.com.

In June last year, Microsoft, a member of the Business Software Alliance, complained to the National Copyright Administration of China and Ministry of Public Security about the piracy of Tomato Garden. The two agencies put the case on high agenda of their Internet enforcement actions. Hong and his colleagues were arrested from August in the year.