President Bill Clinton has signed a law allowing US courts to prosecute people who break software copyright, even if they do not profit from the piracy.

It closes a narrow loophole in the law that allowed people to give away software on the Internet without legal repercussions.

The Business Software Alliance estimated cost of this loophole to one US software company alone was $125 million.

The No Electronic Theft Act means Americans who copy software or other material worth more than $1,000 can be taken to the criminal courts.

Maximum punishments range from a one year jail sentence and a $100,000 fine for first offenders to six years in prison for a repeat offender.

The Act was passed in Congress in November with strong support from the software and entertainment industries that lose the most through illegal copying.

Software publishers and the entertainment industry see it as a means of curbing what they described as rampant pirating of computer programs, musical recordings and other materials on the Internet.

In 1994, an Massachusetts Institute of Technology student, David LaMacchia, operated a bulletin board which made available for free countless software products such as as Excel and WordPerfect .

The case against him was dismissed as a court held that criminal sanctions did not apply because there was no profit motive.

But a group of scientists called the Association for Computing, wrote to Mr Clinton last month asking him to veto the bill. They said it would stop legitimate scientific research.

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