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Fed Raids Software Pirates in 27 Cities
akiaki007 was among many who wrote in to say: "Check out this article on the New York Times (free reg, blah blah) site. The Feds have raided 27 cities in 21 states. Raid sites include MIT, UCLA, Purdue, Duke, UofO. Their main target was the group DrinkOrDie. 'This is a new frontier for crime,' Kenneth W. Dam, deputy secretary of the Treasury, said at a news briefing. 'The costs are enormous to both industry and consumers.' I better hide my burned Linux CD's. They might think it's some weird hacking tool."
We are all doomed.
P.S. That was a joke. But it is disturbing indeed...
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
It's amazing what the government will do to protect M$.
GeneralKael -- Slacker Extraordinaire
We saw this in Britain. We see it in the US. *sigh*
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
Open source is great, and I love free software. But man, if you spend years working on something and sink it around a company, you want to get its value worth back. And I'll be the first to agree, Microsoft overcharges. And disabling software parts intentionaly is a load of crap. But this isn't the issue. The issue is being able to recieve something back for giving someone else the benefit of your risks taken and hard labor.
SIG: HUP
There's this Thinkgeek add on the top of my page now that reads something like: "CDs, great for ... pirated software (don't worry, we won't tell)." I always knew they were up to no good.
--
#nohup cat
Luckily they are only cracking down on people at expensive schools.. Should be quite a while before they get to state schools in the cornfields of illinois..
Why isn't this investigation being run by the software producers who are being ripped off? As if the Fed.Gov has some kind of monopoly on investigation?
Oh well, that's my only gripe in this one. I don't like many "big software companies" business practices, but that doesn't mean I'm going to try to make money by stealing their stuff.
The GPL'd, BSD'd and other widely available software is easier to get and better anyway.
Who would want to pirate WinXP anyway?
I hope they release the patch to correct the WinXP licensing code, however, so that legitimate users can upgrade their machines without falling into the "You're using a different machine, I won't run" bug.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
You would think after September 11th that they would have more important things to worry about. I've never heard of anyone dying (or even getting hurt) because of software piracy.
Reality has a liberal bias
Like I would have paid for XP?
I didn't see/hear about it at all on local news or in the Eugene Register-Guard.... hmmm....
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Blah blah sharing blah blah Open Source blah blah screwing the customers blah blah blah
It's one thing to let your friend install Office on his computer, but this is ridiculous.
The news from DOJ itself. DrinkOrDie is according to Yahoo famous for "claiming it released a copy of Microsoft Windows 95 two weeks before Microsoft began selling it."
MSNBC and Wired. Seems that no one was arrested (in the US, at least - 5 people were in England). One customs agent said each computer has an average of 1-2 terabytes of software (Wired article). Wow.
-David Ziegler
-
In other words, this effort that went into this coordinated 27-city raid (which took probably tens of thousands of manhours to prepare and execture) could not have been spent elsewhere?
Because I thought we were still at war with terrorism. I thought we were still living with the constant threat of terrorism. Every one of these FBI agents chasing down CD images is one less agent knocking on doors, interviewing potential suspects.
I swear, if there are any attacks or terrorist incidents tomorrow, or the next week, or hell, any time the first question I'll be writing my congressman will be "Where was the FBI?"
I almost hope something does happen. What's it going to take for the FBI to learn their FIRST AND PRIMARY responsability is to safeguard the lives of American citizens...NOT the PROFITS of American corporations.
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
I wonder how long it will take... Probably sometime today.. heh
I like how they say "billions in software." I wonder how much companies would really get from any of those people. Most people who pirate software can't aford it in the first place. I mean, who can afford to spend 500 on office and another 500 on Adobe programs just for a semi-intermediate user.
The target of the raids was the "Warez" group, a loosely affiliated network of software-piracy gangs that duplicate and reproduce copyrighted software over the Internet.
The "Warez" group eh? Where can I get my membership card?
Really, I can go earn some more money. What I can't do is go get some new rights and freedoms after market forces take them away from me.
But then again, people keep telling me that I have to get a life.
I actually read the article on ABCNews.com not the article on the NY Times, but the ABC article seemed to be devoid of any useful information. I attend Duke, one of the schools that was issued a search warrant, but I haven't been able to find any relevant information on campus. Anyone know anything else? Who exactly got raided? What they did? Etc?
-Matt
Duke '05
I'm not surprised by the responses we're seeing here. I just think it illustrates the unfortunate situation that a valuable concept like public domain or open source software has to be overly infested with thieves who believe that stealing software or pirating movies in the theaters "doesn't hurt anybody".
Say that when it's your own livelihood that's being stolen.
Hello... hello? Slashdot? Could this be the last slashdot story ever?
-Sean
Right... Because people pirate software, American companies are going to loose out to foreign companies, since software produced overseas is much harder to pirate. Oh yeah, and all those countries have more clout that the US government does when it comes to getting foreign governments to cooperate with enforcements efforts. Yep, American Leadership in Software Development is definatley at stake. Uh-huh. Yep.
Programmers wont be bilionares even if their software makes billions. This isnt about programmers and hard work, its about CEO bill gates not having enough money for his new mansion
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
This article is typical Muleshit. Call me when they Bust Razor or Fairlight... "Oh shit, my download just died"
What, me worry?
Get over it. Incidents like that are things we weren't prepared for, and realistically couldn't have been. Terrorism is a buzzword in America now. We've had one horrible incident and the world comes crashing down for us. And you can damn well bet that most of the stuff pushed through Congress was somebody's already planned agenda that just happened to be aided by the events of 9/11. Besides, they ARE after terrorists now. To make warez, you have to hack them. Hackers are now terrorists, remember?
SIG: HUP
Firstly.. my take on warez.....
here's the thing.
First.. these groups get busted. Okay. Well.. they *are* knowingly spreading massive amounts of copyrighted material, which IS illegal... sure.. we all do it.. but they can't say 'Oh gee, I didn't know'.
Second.. it IS rediculous to claim 'billions' in losses because of them. I've seen my fair share of warez groups.. they hoard software so they can be bigger & better than the next guy. Almost nothing actually gets USED by anyone, even those downloading it.
And of all the pirated software I've seen used by most people.. only a fraction actually comes from the warez scene.. lots are just directly burned CDs.
Warez kiddies hoard software like other kids hoard baseball cards, or pokemon, or whatever the new craze is. It's about who can hoard more.. it's not even about theft.
My immediate response was that this was US (and other) Law enforcement going too far. However, I realized that even if the law is wrong, it is still the law. If people break it in a public way (bragging about wares) some one is going to complain the they law enforcement authorities will have to take action.
I can't say I am against software liscencing. I theory, I'd love to do all open source software, and believe that I will be able to get to that place in the near future. In the interim, I work for a company that barely breaks even, and is only pable to pay programmers based on software licensing fees. We know people pirate our software (we get support calls from them and just turn them down) but don't go overboard chasing them down.Hell, we don't go after them at all.
Game makers, I would have to think, are the most at risk. As competitive as that industry is, the difference between people who would have bought the games but didn't 'cause they could get them for free, may actually be the difference between making money on the game or not.
Anybody have any numbers on this? Is this realy a victemless crime, or does it make a real difference
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
Perfectly working copies of Win95 existed many months before Win95 was officially released. The most intellegent move MS ever made, enlisting thousands of independent voluntary beta testers. The testers (I worked in such a company at the time) were sent updated CD's to "try, and file bug reports against." We just had to promise to destroy the disk upon official release.
So, someone alters the banner that says "Beta Build 451", makes lots of copies, and says in triumph "Look At Me! I Have Win95 Early!"
Lots of thieves get caught because their egos get too big, they get sloppy thinking they can't be caught.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
The numbers these groups throw around are bogus, and that needs to be repeated.
Note that these raids occured on a number of campuses.
Microsoft and law enforcement love to talk about the millions and billions lost to piracy.
When they bust down some students door and find things like Maya, 3DSMax, and Windows Datacenter Server they go, whoops, we're out $250,000.
But there is a fatel flaw in this argument. These are NOT lost sales. Students simply do not have the money to go out and buy a ton of high priced server software, though they may enjoy playing with it.
And the low priced stuff a campus almost always as a Campus Select Open agreement for.
The guy in China paying $5 for 200 programs worth $2 million? Same thing.
This needs to be repeated. These numbers are often bogus. Things like drugs have real street value, so that's more acceptable when they value drug busts, and they actually track street prices carefully. Microsoft numbers hype is a distortion of the system.
This reminds me of the $1 billion Microsoft offered to settle their private court cases. $800 million of it in their software. I doubt the marginal cost of supplying that software was $800 million (estimates are it would be around 20 or so) and they get a dream come true, take out apple their last competitor and drive their software into the education system to hook the next round of users.
DoD had some of the best people working with them and some of the cleanest releases, as I remember from back in the day.
Good luck to the group, try to keep it going for the little people out there.
Before anyone flames for the supporting of piracy, ask yourself this... if I could download a trial of a program and decide that I need it, would I buy it? My answer is yes, however there is so much crap and badly-designed software out there that it's damn near impossible to find something good. I for one support the software that I find as useful if I can afford it (note: will not pay $600 for Photoshop when GiMP is right there with it).
Let's see:
1. Bill Gates
2. Paul Allen
...
hmm...anybody else? Is Microsoft the only company to make billionaires out of programmers?
Get over it, Feds. Software piracy is a part of life. When you try to sell something that has no material component other than a CD which can pretty much be replicated at will, for outrageous prices and with EULA's so tight they make our balls ache, there's going to be piracy. Blame companies like Microsoft for setting their own prices. $300 for a piece of buggy, crashy software that we HAVE to buy to play many games, or use many popular aps is insane. Live on, pirates.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
You're right. All police activity that doesn't help fight terrorism should cease immediately and all freed resources should be redirected towards the War on Terrorism. We should only focus on one thing at a time.
Look, just because you don't like a law doesn't mean you won't face the consequences if you break it. That's what civil disobedience is all about, taking absurd responsibility for an unjust law. What these idiots were doing was breaking the law hoping to never face the consequences.
that's all I can say. there is something very wrong with this. the fact that it's being dealt with so harshly and so suddenly. it seems to be a trend in america recently.
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
Piracy has absolutely NO effect on programmers salaries.
The only effect it has, is on Bill Gates Salary. You must be a programmer. What? You think they will pay you more if piracy didnt exsist? Hell no, You'll make the exact same amount of money that you make now. The people who will get paid more are, Steve, Bill, and upper level management. NOT YOU!!!!!
This issue has absolutely no effect on you at all since you dont get paid on a per sale of software basis anyway, you get paid to produce the code.
If you ever heard of open source philosophy, programming is a service, the code is not a product, but information. Information is to be shared. Service is to be sold.
Sell your service to Microsoft. If Microsoft wants to try to get rich off of the information your service produces and somenoe pirates from Microsoft, Microsoft gets paid a few less million, so what.
I dont see this effecting the information producers, just the people who try to sell water in the desert it effects.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Here are some stats from the Business Software Alliance.
What I find interesting here is that while the total dollar losses are the highest in North America, the 'Piracy Rate' is the lowest. That means that the large majority of software users in the U.S. and Canada are properly licensed, law-abiding citizens.
Further, these stats say that piracy has gone down not up.
( Here's a current study with information by US region. )
Guvegrra?
The reason I buy my software, I don't want people stealing my work [they have before]. Coders, as a necessary evil, need to make a living.....K?
I have a good deal of experience with MIT and their network, and for some reason the administration there thinks that any and all network activites should be allowed and are for some reason granted under free speech (as evidenced by, among other things, fuck-the-skull-of-jesus.mit.edu), including piracy of software, music, and movies. I'm really not sure what's going through their heads or why they consistently look the other way (join MIT, pay to pirate all you want and we'll protect you!), but I've SERIOUSLY seen less piracy in a number of Asian cities selling "questionable" goods on recorded media. What a disgrace.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
We are. Violating the DMCA is now an act of terrorism.
I thought Drink or Die was a Russian group.
Or is this something like Dmitri Sklyarov?
So, where are all the sob stories? Where are the stats of companies going out of business due to piracy?
This is not trolling, I'm honestly interested in seeing any evidence to back up these oft-repeated assertions.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Wiping out warez can only be a good thing for Linux and Free/Open Software. If people actually have to pay $600*workstations for MSOffice, they won't. I only wish XP's activation wasn't so easy to circumvent.
A complete set of PC hardware goes for $250-$300 now... Windows XP + Office XP is $900. So you can have a new workstation for $300 running Linux, or, now that you can't pirate Microsoft's crap, the exact same machine, for $1200.
I wonder why they're focusing on educational institutions for illegal software users? If the sheer number of such users are more readily collected in such places, it makes me wonder about the environment. It's true that certain elements only survive under certain conditions. Is necessity a factor? Is the outrageous price for tuition and books driving the minds of our youth to justify downloading a cracked version of Microsft Word to finish a 400-page college paper due yesterday?
<side thought>
Oh wait, nobody worth their weight in RAM uses Word, what was I thinking? Open Office is so much better.
</side thought>
Anyhow, continuing with my rant: it seems to me that there is a consPIRACY going on.
Thank you for reading One Man's Opinion. No participation necessary. Offer void where deemed by law or PATRIOT Act.
Although he had to say:
This is not a sport, this is a crime," Mr. Bond said, adding that punishment could be "serious hard time" in prison.
What he really wanted to say was:
They're not going to some white collar resort prison. No, no, no! They're going to federal POUND ME IN THE ASS prison!"
Computers don't make mistakes. What they do, they do on purpose.
I was in NY recently and saw no less than 20 guys standing on the street selling movies that were still in the theater. Or what about the guy at Fry's buying 50 DVD burners with cash, gee that's not suspicious. But use a hack put the same copy of XP on two computers at home.... now you'll be serving some real time!
Americans could not be more self absorbed if they were made of equal parts water and paper towel. -Dennis Miller
I've said before on Slashdot and in other venues that the Intellectual Property system in the United States is cracking. With the advent of distributed internet Piracy of the type Napster made popular, it is completely inevitable that the system mutate to account for the fact that the primary source of IP theft is no longer commercial bandits, but rather the users themselves.
What this ultimately means is more of what you've seen. You'll see Federal agents descending on ordinary users, people who are just "innocently" making copies of software and music and sharing it with their friends. This activity has been illegal forever, but for the most part readily overlooked by the glaring eye of justice, largely because justice had bigger fish to fry.
But that's changing. The distributed and widely connected nature of the internet is enabling ordinary users to become first class pirates, with the push of a button distributing many thousands of illegal copies to any and all takers. This is turning those users into IP public enemy number one.
There is simply no alternative. The law is going to CRUSH the violators, with a variety of test cases being used to set harsh examples.
From past reactions here on Slashdot, I know that the Slashdot community is not ready to hear this message. Please don't forget, I'm only a messenger. The outcome I'm seeing is easily forseeable. Consider it yourselves: will the government sit idly by and allow the intellectual property system in the U.S. to go titsup.com? Hell, no. It's not going to happen.
That being the case, what's going to happen:
Examples will be made.
C//
For one, that snyde remark is off the deep end. Meant in fun, but too obviously you have a right to use the OS - however, Warez folks have gotten away with stealing software for a very long time, and stealing commericial software isn't a right or privilage, so I'm would hope to expect less negative response to this, like it's some civil liberty being taken away. I think the goal is to make people think twice about copying commercial software and then *distributing* it on the net. There will always be pirates, but the hope is to educate those that might take illegal commericial software re-distribution less seriously
Personally I use mostly free software on Linux and BSD, but the few commericial apps I actually find a need for (VMware, Music tools for Windows, Mac) I don't mind paying for. On a last note, I believe the argument that the price of software (such as Photoshop, etc) would go down if there was less privacy doesn't really hold water - it would just potentially make software companies richer.
Considering that 'They' see things thus, how can anyone be surprised?
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
An article is posted with the word 'Fed' in it and the Slashdot crowd is screaming the imminent doom and destruction of life as we know it.
They broke the law. People who break the law are punished. We're not talking about people's rights being violated, we're talking about groups who know that what they do is illegal and are getting caught.
If real life existed the way the /. crowd thinks it should be, we'd live in total anarchy.
From the DoJ site:
"Bandwidth, through the joint efforts of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), the Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General (EPA-OIG), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), supervised by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Nevada, created a 'warez' site, controlled and monitored by the undercover operation, as a means of attracting predicated targets involved with the distribution of pirated software. "
I can see the FBI and the DoJ being involved in this operation, but why the hell was the enviromental protection agency have to do with this? The piracy of corprate software has nothing to do plants or air pollution.
I'm sure the EPA was actually secretly dissolved by the Bush administration and was replaced by a DoJ brute squad using the same name.
'
'
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
So the US will spend millions on this investigation, and what to show for it? A few thousand in fines, and a few million more to jail a bunch of people for a few years. Wow, we have gotten so far ahead!
Execpt for the fact that a majority of the Government is in place to protect the profits of American corporations. Don't forget, the real reason we are bombing the hell out of Afganistan is to get another foothold in the region that is so rich with oil. Sure, toppling the Taliban and capturing bin Laden will be icing on the cake, but the oil interests of American Corporations are the real goal.
"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
looks like razor finally figured out a way to eliminate the competition
I have a friend who is big time into piracy. Every time we get together he wants to give me some new game he ripped. Then he emails me 5Meg cracks to the rips. Constantly. He whines if I won't take them.
So I offered to burn him a copy of Slackware. "Why would I want it?" he said, "It's already free. Duh!"
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I always thought it was spelled "37337."
how much is Microsoft's monopoly costing the economy?
How many billion dollar software businesses do you know out there that market their main products solely for the Microsoft platform.
Answer: I can't think of one that Microsoft hasn't bought, buried, or screwed with some manner of breakware.
I'd pay for front row seats the day our protectors in the FBI raid Microsoft HQ because their "activites are costing the economy billions of dollars".
Stories like this make me mad not because I think piracy is harmless, but because its pretty clear to me that FBI and DOJ have their priorities dead wrong.
"insert angry epithetes and swearing here" yes yes.. I know this has been said but I want to vent.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Its reports like this that make it so clear that there IS an undergroud, but its the most wide open, here-we-are-lookit-us underground I've ever known. Perhaps this is part of the digital divide those politicians are talking about... Only instead of haves and have-nots, its knows and know-nots.
Having said that, of course its illegal in this country, which makes it a Very Dumb thing to do within this country. "Is it right or not?"is the question though. It seems clear cut until you think about just how far supply and demand are bent through artificial scarcity. Myself, I can't tell you whether this is theft or improving the human condition. That is a personal answer.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
So not only did they use entrapment; but they were themselves accessory to over 12,000 incidents of software piracy!!!
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
It's not about CEOs getting millions of dollars a month because they happen to be at the top of the ladder. It's about the programmers themselves getting money for doing what they do during the day. For them it's a job, and your paying for what they create is how they get their food every damned day. This comment was in anticipation of the BS to come. And I've got the moderation on me to prove it.
SIG: HUP
heh, a geocities site ain't hard to /. is it
... will the feds start prosecuting REAL crimes?
They're spending all their time going after easy petty thieves which requires almost zero investigative work and zero effort. Then they beat their chests and toot their horns like it's some major accomplishment.
My guess is that the feds will spend 10x as much time, effort, and money prosecuting these teens than they would ever spend prosecuting murderers, rapists, or armed robbers.
And I predict they will get stiffer sentences than violent criminals too...
Wouldnt this time, money, effort, and manpower be better put to use chasing terrorists? Sheesh.
Philip Bond, the Commerce Department's under secretary for technological policy, said cyber-pirates steal an estimated $12 billion worth of technology and goods a year, according to the Business Software Alliance. American leadership in computers and software is "very much at stake" because of piracy, he said.
Is it just me, or does anyone else find statements like this incredibly misleading? Ever since I first got into computers (circa '93), warez has been pretty much a constant. Of course the BSA has also been making these kinds of unqualified statements for that long so it's not like anything has really changed.
It was also interesting to read how the NYT describes 'Warez' as a group of people ("Members of Warez..."). Don't they have any better writers in their technology section that they could have assigned this one to?
This is not flame bait, I seriously believe that Piracy is good and I support Piracy.
Now before you call the FBI on me, No i am not a pirate, I use linux.
I support OPEN source.
I support the right of free sharing of information.
Services should be sold, information should be free.
Transgaming sells its SERVICE. Redhat sells its SERIVCE. This is how it SHOULD be.
When you write software, you are providing a service, as a programmer and provider of a service, yes you should be paid for that service.
However when i buy your 1s and 0s and load it onto my computer, I expect and in my opinion have the RIGHT to OWN those 1s and 0s running through MY CPU!
The information is OWNED by me, once you produce it, and owned by everyone else. This is what Open source is all about.
People who complain that piracy hurts programmers are blind to the fact that even without piracy they'd be making the same amount of money, the only diffrence is bill and the company would be millions of dollars richer.
Your code does not directly pay your salary, they dont pay you for every copy of software sold, if they did the makers of MS windows would be as rich as bill gates.
You will always make 100k a year or below, you will never get rich like bill gates. So why the hell make bill gates richer off of your services than he already is?
Oh wait, you have shares in the company and want them to be successful, ok you may have shares, but why not let your company go out of business and put your shares into redhat or some company which is Open source?
This issue is going to be debated, i know it, so let me prepare myself to be listed as troll, flamebait, etc etc.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Even more, I wish the editors would NOTE PROPER SOURCES!!!!
This ain't no Times story; it came from Reuters, here it is no registration required.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
My first rant, they constantly talk about how millions, even billions of dollars have been lost to Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia, and more due to software piracy. Those numbers reflect if each and every person that stole a copy of that software or even used the copy of that software for 5 minutes and deleted it, would have actually purchased that software. They're working with phantom numbers and voodoo economics. I doubt even 1% of those people would have purchased that software. Software, like digital music, and anything else digital is data. It doesn't cost Microsoft money if I were to take their CD and copy it to another CD and give it to a friend. They haven't actually lost any money, especially if that friend weren't actually going to buy the product in the first place. I understand protecting intellectual property, and I am in no way saying what these people are doing is right, but what I'm saying is that you can't say the industry has lost billions of dollars to software pirates when half of the pirates and their users would have never purchased the software in the first place. Am I not allowed to purchase a lawnmower, mow my lawn, and allow my neighbor to use my lawn mower to mow his lawn?.. Hell all the people on my street use my lawn mower, in fact I could even charge for it, would anyone blink an eye at that? Would John Deere have the FBI do its dirty work and hunt me down for the sales it lost on all the people in my neighborhood?
Second rant, On par with most of the Slashdot posts, why the hell is the FBI worrying about this in the first place? Lets see last I remember we are all suppose to still be on a "high alert" state for possible terrorist attacks. Somehow though, the FBI has the time, manpower, and money to go hunt these so-called criminals. Yet still, we have absolutely NO LEADS ON WHO WAS DISTRIBUTING ANTHRAX? Seriously, whats the count, 5 or 6 people have died from anthrax in the mail thus far, and the FBI doesn't have a single clue? It's been almost 3 months! Someone needs to straighten out their priorities.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
Who says programmers must work for closed source companies like Microsoft? Programmers will always have jobs.
Government needs them, schools need them, people will always need programmers, and if software no longer sells people will make money via services.
Redhat has programmers and they all are making money. Dont forget Suse, and soon Mandrakesoft.
You dont have to sell the code, to make money, although selling the code sure makes it easier to make ALOT of money.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I'm not surprised by the responses we're seeing here. I just think it illustrates the unfortunate situation that a valuable concept like public domain or open source software has to be overly infested with thieves who believe that stealing software or pirating movies in the theaters "doesn't hurt anybody".
The problem is when they call it "pirating", as if they are some oversea rag-tag group that takes things away from other people. It's not taking away; it's making a copy. Most anti-pirate sources try to claim that every single copy is directly affected by the sales of the product. In fact, most pirates are just people who can't afford to buy the damn game anyway.
Say that when it's your own livelihood that's being stolen.
Please...I'd love for a product of mine to get pirated all over the place. Just look at id Software and Doom. More pirates = more popularity.
If you really want a comparison of numbers, try comparing the online games with serial numbers (which is a pretty effective anti-piracy agent right now) to the games without serial numbers. More or less, it's the same numbers.
Zodiac Survey
I better hide my burned Linux CD's. They might think it's some weird hacking tool.
It IS a weird hacking tool. Maybe you meant cracking?
On a side note...
:)
Stealing Monsters INC for example is totally lame, some movies aren't worth the C$8-10 entry fee, heck, they're not even worth the gas it would take me to drive to the theatre that is 10 miles from my home... But that movie ROCKED.
Anyone who downloads it to watch it for the first time on his PC or TV-out, unless he has a dolby surround system and a 60 inch plasma, is totally nuts and ruins his own viewing experience.
Heck, even if he has that, encoding screeners (VHS tapes) is FaR from the result you'll see at the theatre.
They shouldn't be arrested for piracy... but for major mental illness... We shouldn't let people with that kind of judgment wander off the streets
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
Do they really want to restart that ancient war in the middle of a real one? Get your priorities straight, stop fighting the Vietnam of the Internet and get that Bin Laden fucker.
Operation Bandwidth: ... On December 11, 2001, the longest-running of the undercover operations culminated ... This undercover operation, code-named 'Bandwidth,' was a two-year covert investigation established as a joint investigative effort to gather evidence to support identification and prosecution of entities and individuals involved with illegal access to computer systems and the piracy of proprietary software utilizing 'warez' storage sites on the Internet. ...
Bandwidth, through the joint efforts of the ...
Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General (EPA-OIG)
I just want to know why the EPA's money and time is being misused.
I said "investigation", not "punishment". Thousands of private investigators would love to know how they make their livings if I'm wrong.
Even prosecution is not a monopoly held by government, you can bring suit against anyone for anything. Examining trial records even show murder trials in which the plaintiff is't any government at all, but the family and friends of the deceased.
You can tell the BSA to go away, exactly the same way you can tell the cops to go away: unless they have a warrant. And the BSA gets a warrant the same way the cops do, on oath of affirmation of a crime being comitted, specifying the places to be searched and the property to be seized.
Do a little investigation yourself, look up "Special Police Power." You will discover that the one single "power" that the cops have that you as a private citizen does not, is the "power" to arrest someone for a misdemeanor. Yep, seriously.
The reason that it seems that police have all those neat powers like shooting people, marching into places and wrecking things, and getting away with it, is because they are not prosecuted.
A police officer only has to demonstrate, like the Rodney King 5 successfully did, that they were "following established procedures", and they are personally off the hook. You and I have no such procedural immunity. Remember that the district attorneys and the police work for the same branch of government, and get paid by the same people in the same way. One hand washes the other, and it takes fear of not getting re-elected before the hacks put pressure on anyone to actually "do something".
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Comment removed based on user account deletion
good. i'm glad.
the only thing i disagree with is that it costs companies money. i think microsoft in particular makes tons of money off people who initially get illegally copied software and then end up having to pay for it in later versions.
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The knee-jerk reaction is to rail against corporate greed, and stand up for the little guy. I propose we all stop and think about it for a while.
Tech corporations are going out of business left and right. Many of these corporations depend on sales of their software to stay in business. A non-trivial amount of software currently in use is pirated, meaning that the companies that developed it are not getting the income they need to stay afloat.
I'm not just talking about Microsoft, although they are they main target (likely because they produce the most commonly used software). ANY popular software, or even music and movies, that is pirated is money that should have gone into our economy.
The economy is in the toilet. Tech is the only thing that is likely to get us out of it. If we don't do something about the rather serious amoun of software piracy going on, then corporations will continue to find it unprofitable to continue operations.
How would you feel if your company folded and you lost your job, and thousands of users out there were using your company's product without paying for it? This is a serious issue, folks. The officials are not just wasting their time.
One reason is the amount of bandwidth that is available on the local LAN at the colleges. Also, students are more likely to meet people who have CD burners and such in this environment. And yes, college students don't have as much money to pay for software so they would rather steal it. What are some solutions to this?
You can often get student versions of software for much less than the commercial versions. You can usually find them in the book store of the college or through some websites. I've purchased quite a few products this way.
Some colleges are now requiring all students to pay a small fee ($100?) as part of their tuition and are then given a suite of Microsoft applications worth $1000. One thing I don't like about this is that it seems like they assume you are going to steal your software, so they charge you for something you may not even use or want.
I personally won't ever Warez because:
1. It's morally wrong (most important reason) and
2. I would be stealing from the industry I would be working for in the future.
That's what I thought at first, but then there was this other quote in the Wired article:
Doody said one computer held more than 5,000 individual movie titles.
Even if the movies are pretty heavily compressed, that's got to be hundreds of Gigs, at any rate.
-Mark
It will only fatten the wallets of the upper management of those companies, not the programmers.
But hey, thanks for playing. Moron.
Check yourself into a psyche ward. You obiously have problems. 1.) you use b/c far too often, and with a few extra characaters you could have an actual word. 2.) "fucking programmers" - 'nuff said. (Like most of them do that anyway)
Also, a programmer can make money without selling code.
ISPs learned they could make money without charging by the hour or charging you for email, for FTP, for newsgruops, for every little site you go to, for every little thing you do.
ISPs figured it out. You can charge people for the service of accessing the internet itself.
Software can work the SAME way. Software distributors would be a site like say www.download.com, and they can charge $10 a month to everyone who needs software to access the site.
And guess what, I think everyone here would pay $10 a month if they had to pay that to access all the newest software. I would do it.
Of course people will distribute on their own, but having a fast connection to reliable sites like that would make it easier.
You see selling services makes money. It works for the internet and it can work for software.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
A quick glance at a retailer-list of hard disks tells me that the biggest drive available is 160 GB (IDE100). You need between 7 (1,250 GB) an 13 (2,080 GB) of those. The biggest SCSI drives are 73.4 GB. You need between 14 (1,041 GB) and 28 (2,055 GB) of those.
That's one HELL of a hard drive rack!
Or maybe the customs official is speaking out of his ass, and the 1 - 2 terabytes are per person and NOT per computer.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
The article says that "corporate executives, computer-network administrators and students at major universities, government workers and employees of technology and computer firms" are being prosecuted as a result of the raids.
So those are the kind of people the US wants to put in prison! And they're saying it is to protect "American leadership in computers and software".
It sounds like these CS and IT professionals and students are just trying to challenge themselves (according to the article). I'm sorry, but locking up exceptional individuals is no way to preserve the US's leadership in technology.
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
I wonder how much of the FBI's new an terrorist power was and will be used to pursue this.
I hate e-commerce.
And guess which company is the most prominent member of the BSA ? (hint : it's a monopoly that milks the software industry)
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Could someone post the article for those of us who are just too plain lazy to sign up, or who are tired of having to sign up again everytime a NYT article is posted because we lose/forget our info?
On topic:
Its only really a matter of time before this warez-kidd13 network was busted wide open. No matter how stupid intellectual property laws are or how over-priced these lines of code are, they are still valued as such and the Fed has the obligation to punish the perpitrators.
I wouldn't worry too much about warez groups suddenly becoming the newest cyber-victims, since joe-jackass-average typically doesn't know what warez is and probably doesn't get their news beyond the MSNBC propaganda.
What is a threat here is that warez kiddies will be lumped into the ever greater 'hacker/cyberterrorist' groupings. Who knows, maybe the next time you crack winzip or nab a copy of photoshop 6 you'll be tried as a terrorist in a military tribunal (dripping with exaggeration, with a hint of truth).
A different kind of animal
You will always make 100k a year or below, you will never get rich like bill gates. So why the hell make bill gates richer off of your services than he already is? Have you ever heard of stock options?
Oh wait, you have shares in the company and want them to be successful, ok you may have shares, but why not let your company go out of business and put your shares into redhat or some company which is Open source?
Why would someone who works for a successful company and who has stock want their company to go out of business and then invest in a company that only sells a service? There are other companies besides Microsoft that sells and makes a living off of their software.
I can't quote any figures but most software development and hence programmer time, doesn't ever end up in a box on a shelf with a shrink wrap EULA.
Programmers solve the problems that need solving.
Millions of dollars are wasted on perceived need.
Not that much has really changed since I was using Wordperfect in Dos 3.3 or doing DTP in GEM or using Lotus 123.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Operation Bandwidth: On December 11, 2001, the longest-running of the undercover operations culminated with the execution of over 30 search warrants across the United States and Canada. This undercover operation, code-named Bandwidth,' was a two-year covert investigation established as a joint investigative effort to gather evidence to support identification and prosecution of entities and individuals involved with illegal access to computer systems and the piracy of proprietary software utilizing 'warez' storage sites on the Internet. Bandwidth, through the joint efforts of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), the Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General (EPA-OIG), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), supervised by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Nevada, created a 'warez' site, controlled and monitored by the undercover operation, as a means of attracting predicated targets involved with the distribution of pirated software. The undercover 'warez' site has been accessed to transfer over 100,000 files, including over 12,000 separate software programs, movies and games. Over 200 different individuals participated in the software pirating efforts. Those individuals were able to attain first-run movies, the latest computer games, and versions of notable software products even before they were publicly introduced. As a result of Operation Bandwidth, thousands of copies of pirated software are expected to be removed from circulation, as well as the seizure and forfeiture of the computer hardware and servers used to facilitate the crimes. -- Is it just me or did the DOJ just say that they conspired, along with quite a list of other government agencies (including the EPA of all people) to pirate massive quantities of software? Isn't that illegal? Should we all start our own "sting" operations? Then the software market would be completely dried up. I wonder how much these agencies now owe in fines for software piracy and how long the individual agents involved will spend in jail. Thanks for the free shit, though! .
That's one hell of a list! I've never seen that many warez sites before - and most even have all the good stuff.
.sib
I am of course refering to your
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Doesn't anyone in government ask themselves why some of our most productive citizens do this?
"Members of Warez includes corporate executives, computer-network administrators and students at major universities, government workers and employees of technology and computer firms, the Customs Service said today."
I mean, if all these people are doing this, should it even BE a crime?
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
Whether the need is percieved or not, don't you deserve to be paid for the work you've done anyway if that's what you decide to do for a LIVING?
SIG: HUP
Um, Afghanistan is well outside the oil rich middle east. All they have as far as natural resources go is jack and shit, and jack just got splattered across a mountainside by daisy-cutter bombs. There's plenty of high grade opium, though, but I don't think we're really after.
Seriously though, if you want to apply any "we're in it for the oil" conspiracy therories, think about the fact we haven't done anything since we helped repel the Soviets from there and allowed it to get as bad as it did.
Taking someones property against their will is theft, I don't care if it's taxes, or software piracy, or mugging, or even real on-the-ocean-using-ships-and-guns piracy.
Where does the money come from to PAY those programmers? From software sales. Reductions in those sales, because of theft of simply no one buying, means those programmers don't get paid.
It's amazing the otherwise intellegent people who think "money" grows on trees, or that they're obligated to receive a sallary. Wake up! Command economies don't work!
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Ah, once again everyone's content with hitting the suppliers without addressing the issue of demand; once again, there's a failure to realise that busts of this nature will do nothing but screw with the lives of a few kids who were just having a bit of fun.
The piracy 'scene' doesn't actually have all that much to do with the software; it's about friendship, competition, coding, learning to write perl or set up a firewall, and it's about a sense of community. And it's a community that isn't going to go away, irrespective of the number of busts or the citing of (oftentimes ludicrous) figures as to its costs.
I've found that many people who rail against software piracy will quite happily copy music from their friends, or tape videos from the tv and lend them out. I've also found that virtually everyone I've ever met is happy to ask for a copy of a piece of software when it suits their purposes. I've *also* found that most people involved in software piracy tend to buy a great number of computer games, and do genuinely subscribe to the scene's central tenet that if one enjoys the software, one should buy it.
What do busts like this achieve? They're a publicity stunt to demonstrate that *something*, anything, is being done. They're an example of pandering to big business, of ignoring what the public actually wants and believes. They're a triumph of bad accounting and spin over real-life facts as to software sales. And, ultimately, they don't change anything: the pirates will continue to pirate, and the end users will continue to download the stuff. And a few kids will find their lives becoming very difficult.
What we need is a little less hypocrisy. We need more people to admit that they copy games, that they lend cds to friends - and, hell, we need to question whether it's *really* the piracy that leads to the high prices, or whether in fact that's just traditional market forces at work. And pay attention: programmers are themselves very often pirates, at least in my experience. Perhaps I'm an evil man and live in an evil world. Or perhaps everybody's doing it, and a war on the supply is as fruitless as all of our other wars that fail to address the root of the problem.
Mr. Kruger is right : why isn't somebody doing something about these "kernel.org" and "gnu.org" people who make all that evil free software available to everybody ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Write the next apache and charge people a fee to download it from your website.
Dont sell the software, sell the service of distributing the software.
Control its distribution until you make a fair bit of money, and by this time other people will be distributing it and you can begin work on your next peice of software.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"This is not a sport, this is a crime," Mr. Bond said, adding that punishment could be "serious hard time
Hard time? Since when was prison fun?
Vote early. Vote often. Vote CowboyNeal.
Ever heard of stock options?
If the fatcats on wallstreet think that Microsoft isn't protecting their revenue stream, MSFT's stock price *will* reflect this. Now that these raids have taken place, investers can 'rest assured' that their money will be safe.
I know a couple programmers working for MSFT, and they are betting their [early] retirement on their MSFT stock. So... I would have to say that they care whether or not the software is stolen... and even moreso if the general public is concious of it.
Was there really any revenue lost to begin with? Surely not as much as they claim. People steal software typically wouldn't pay money for it anyway. Will the people that got caught and all their friends/relatives etc. think twice before they use unlicensed copies of MSFT software again? Probably. Better yet, maybe they'll move away from MSFT products altogether.
--SONET
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
The thing is, when reading that artical, I was reminded of Agent Vince Gill (i think thats the name...) in the movie Hackers.
Vince Gill is a country music star. Don't ask why I know that.
I somewhat agree with the you on the sentiment shown here. The introduction of high speed internet at home has really increased the waez scene. I've diluded myself into believing that I warez responsibly, and I believe that it has allowed me to support decent products. I work for a small, but highly technical company with a $250,000 IT budget. That may seem like an awful lot of money, but half of that goes to liscencing fees.
With half of my budget eaten up by software liscences, I simply don't have enough money to buy garbage software, and the demo's released by the companies are generally lacking. The last full product I bought without testing it fully was MS Project. One department direly needed it to work, and needed it yesterday. So I bought ten copies, installed it, then listened to the complaints of how it was a giant waste of time, it didn't work as easy as they wanted, or didn't do what they expected. Since that fateful day I am really picky about the products which I choose to purchase or upgrade. I download the full version off of morpheus at home, play around with it, and if it's a good product, I buy it. And yes, every copy is liscenced.
This way, I am rewarding the companies which release a good product, shunning the companies who release software with features nobody will use and expect you to upgrade, and am no longer spending my budget needlessly. I suggest everyone else do the same.
Clearly this should be in YRO. Our rights to pirate Microshit are being threatened!!!!!!!
You own the code, the information, and in my opinion you do have the right to modify the code.
As far as the GPL goes, releasing binaries is releasing a product, not releasing information.
if you are to follow the rules of freely sharing information, and having complete control over information, then yuo must release the code as well so that other people have free control and access to the information YOU provide.
Else you are taking all the information from everyone and keeping it to yourself.
Thats the problem with closed source.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
correction.... I personally would feel bad getting paid for my use of pirated software
What's it going to take for the FBI to learn their FIRST AND PRIMARY responsability is to safeguard the lives of American citizens...NOT the PROFITS of American corporations.
On FBI website you can find
mission:
The Mission of the FBI is to
uphold the law through the investigation of violations of federal
criminal law; to protect the United States from foreign intelligence
and terrorist activities; to provide leadership and law enforcement
assistance to federal, state, local, and international agencies;
and to perform these responsibilities in a manner that is responsive
to the needs of the public and is faithful to the Constitution
of the United States.
So, the first thing they say is that they have to uphold the law. That's what they did. Piracy (and therefore warez) are against the law.
What you say is basically the same as what so many traffic (parking, speed, etc) offenders say: "Don't you have some bad guys to arrest?"
That argument does not work. If there's one big goal to pursue (wether it's the end of terrorism or arresting all gangsters) should all other goals be set aside? I don't think so.
Thats about it. Those guys have always rocked hardcore on the h/p/c and even the demo scene.
I freely admit that I download pirated software. But if I get real use out of it, I buy it. I look at it as though it's a reward for a good job.
When emperor of dune came out, I tried out the
pirated version first. I then bought it when it
hit the stores because westwood did a good job and I wanted to support their effort. I bought
return to wolfenstein as well, and q3a.
Think about the return policies that most stores have with regards to software - "It it's opened, we won't take it back." Their reasoning is that you probably copied it. Those of you that played emperor of dune know what kind of resource hog it is. Can you imagine buying it when it first came out, only to discover that your machine was too weak to run it worth a crap and that you couldn't take your software back because it had been opened? Or that you couldn't even ebay it because of the eula? You're stuck with something that you can't run.
Better yet, everyone knows how incredibly unstable windows ME was. Can you imagine actually paying for that piece of crap, only to discover that it required reinstalling 4 times a month and ran things slower than nt does? And you can't take it back, or sell it. You just rewarded someone for writing crappy code.
As I said, I don't reward half-assed jobs.
Does anybody have any further information on this? Was DrinkOrDie the only group targeted? Was this primarily a raid on IRC-based "warez groups" - groups like Razor911, Class, Myth, Deviance, etc., that rip/crack/distribute warez, or was it a raid on professional-level mass-CD-duplication piracy rings?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Arguably, Microsoft's market dominance and the personal fortunes of its founders are the direct result of the success of Microsoft Basic and other earlier products. Gates and Allen did write code back in the "old days"...
-Mark
from article: "Members of _Warez_ includes corporate executives, computer-network administrators and students at major universities, government workers and employees of technology and computer firms,"
Members of Warez?
Bunch of idiots.
Man, makes you wonder how accurate all the other news stories we read are...
Hrmmmmm
My .sig shines through yet again.
Thanks for expanding on the thought, and I agree with your statements.
Thank you for reading One Man's Opinion. No participation necessary. Offer void where deemed by law or PATRIOT Act.
As I recall, Infocom, the venerable old text adventure game company (Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide, Enchanter, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, et al), credited software piracy for the reason for their going out of business way, way back when.
They had great games, everyone agreed, but so many people pirated them (I knew almost no one who had an original copy, myself included) that they couldn't make money.
Restrictions are prohibited. Be well, get better.
Do you suppose this story has anything to do with the Ask Slashdot story about backuping up massive amounts of data?
Its already working, how do you think redhat stays in business?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Didn't the Patriot act take care of that? As I understood it, they defined hacking as terrorism, so this was part of their war on terrorism.
Liquor
Sanity is a highly overrated commodity.
I think the FBI's doing a bang up job protecting the corporations. I applaud their efforts. So what if they miss a little terrorist here or there. Everyone knows those darn terrorists are just a bunch of whack jobs who will never be able to get it together enough to harm anyone right? And it doesn't really matter if they still haven't figured out where all that anthrax is coming from. That's no biggie. In fact, they should take all their guys off those hard cases like that and put them on piracy, because our corporations need those dollars to buy more pink paper so they can fire more employees.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I think we've found the author of the "Let me get this straight" trolls.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
My friend was selling CD-R GPL Red Hat and Debian 2.2 CDs for $10.00 each in his little computing shop -- customers would just come in and ask for the latest Linux CD and he'd burn it for them on the spot. When his bank found out [apparently some nosy busybody didn't understand about Linux], his merchant account was frozen without notice for "investigative and evidentiary purposes" and he could no longer accept credit cards!
The bank would NOT compromise and insisted that he stop comitting software piracy. He got a lawyer and tried to explain to the bank that the CD-R Linux CDs he was selling were GPL and that he was fully legal to distribute this way.
The bank told him that it gave the *appearance* of software piracy and that if he was willing to copy Linux, there was no reason for them to think he wasn't copying other software. His account is still frozen, with over $12,000 in limbo -- and they are still trying to work it out months later.
It's a proprietary software world, in case you ever doubted it.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
1) Trying to compare this to terrorist acts or similar is just not a fair comparison to make. Resources are divided up across many divisions in any type of organization. These divisions then each go after what they're created to... This is like telling a traffic cop, who is supposed to enforce traffic violations, "why aren't you out tracking down drug dealers?"...well, because he's not in the DEA, he's a traffic cop.
2) With regards to "losses", I HATE it when software companies claim a LOSS from piracy. How can it be a LOSS if they never had that money to begin with???
Isn't that essentially putting a fair amount of money around a retail store... on shelves, on the floor, under products, where-ever... and then following people back to their house when they pick it up and making them prove that all the money they have in their bank accounts and in their house is actually theirs?
As far as the way the individuals were found... i'm not sure how legal that is. Oh well... When do the laws apply when we're talking about the feds? Can anybody say WACO?
------------------------------
Ray Raspberry
raspberry@b3l33t.org
First they came for the pirate software firms
And I said nothing, because I didn't pirate software.
Then they came for the P2P MP3 users.
And I said nothing, as I had original CDs that I ripped my MP3s from.
Then they came for users without licensed software.
And they arrested me, because my open source software didn't have valid MSFT bar codes, so it must be illegal.
Now I'm in the Taliban jail cell, while Ashcroft and BillG gloat over my cowardice in fighting the software nazis early on.
And I'll die here.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Contribute your code, write documents, or if you have no way to contribute, then pay. Read my sig.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
And should be modded up for it:
Suppose these raids continue, and each newspaper or magazine article continues to make similar quotes about "free software" being a problem, being an issue, being ILLEGAL...
Ordinary people read these articles, and begin to equate "free software" = ILLEGAL.
Therein lies the problem, because if "free software" = ILLEGAL, then doesn't it follow that "Free Software" = ILLEGAL as well (in the mind of the common man)? That is a scary, but interesting thought to contemplate, that of the manipulation of the masses through words, by the BSA (which may or may not be a front organization for Microsoft - anybody got data to back that assertation up?), with the goal to ultimately cause Linux and other Free Software to be viewed as illegal, with the intention of destroying the movement.
Or maybe I am just overly paranoid, hmm...?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Their code sucks, you and I could write better programs.
They wrote some programs but they didnt write Windows.
They made money off of Microsoft Basic because there wasnt really anyone competiting with them at the time.
Windows they didnt write, they purchased dos, then hired the REAL programmers to copy apple.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
They (MS and Bill G.) are not evil. They are driven, smart and capable.
On the other hand L. Ellison (Oracle fame) is borderline insane from all accounts. Steve Jobs is not the boy most/any mother would want their daughter to bring home -- reality distortion field OR NOT.
Bush, Cheney, and all their wives and friends are laughing at how they fleeced the little guys and noone will serve a jail term for that, or lose the assets they pirated from the workers there, or the investors who bought it with "pro forma" accounting that hid the deals from the public eye.
... only the Friends Of Bush And Bill G win. Everyone else loses, and we all pay the software tax for Microsoft software which we are required to buy and sign away our digital rights for under UCITA.
So: lesson today is
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
So is Venezuela, and they're a member of OPEC.
Amen brother.
What is the FBI so afraid of?
Someone using Photoshop and Kai's power tools to distort the presidents face?
Oh the horror...oh, wait, maybe it'll improve President Mush^H^H^H^HBush...
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
A lot of software companies seem to almost enjoy piracy to some extent because it conditions these young users to use their product. That way, when they have graduated college, they can afford to buy the next version of the product for their personal use, but more importantly, recommend it to the company they are working for.
Why would this post be marked as Troll? It seems more like "Insightful 2" to me.
Using free software doesn't make you a computing god, nor does it make everyone else computer illiterate. Get a life you fucking nerd.
"Major Games costs 30-50$ each because there's not a lot of volume in sales, if there would be more sales, the price would go down dramatically"
h e-stuff kinda way. unfortunately there's not a "best way" for this that would suit both the employers and the prosecutors.
10 years later.. Major games, 30-50$... While the complexity and everything surrounding a game got more complex, the price tag is still the same.
Same goes with a lot of high-end software.
On another note,
There are 3 takes , 2 extreme, 1 middle.
Middle: extended kind of piracy (like trialware) or sometime students have to learn somehow, and school arent' always the best avenues, students can't afford Max, autocad, and blablabla, and when they find a job, the employer needs to buy a seat of that software that the student knows, so basically, in the end, the money gets pumped in the system. That theory is good IF the employer is legit and honnest. In that case, Govs needs to target companies (which are the one MAKING money out of the software) but not in a super-intrusive-will-take-3-days-to-go-thru-all-t
The other problem is sometimes cashflow (especially for startups) doesn't allow to blast the required "200,000$" in a single payment (run a software budget analisis for 10-15 employees, a server based on M$ and the basic tools required to do the job depending on what kind of company it is, and it runs up quite fast) Some people are honnest and try to catch up with the licenses (I knew 2 startups that weren't legal from the beginning and catched up over a year or 2 and became totally legit afterwards, ok of course I know also a lot of small companies that are producing off pirated software and that disgust me,
but there's ONE point that I saw that made me think: the argument for one was to ban all the M$ products and buy 1 license of every software they were using, not 5 like required for every seat, the argument was "if we buy everything needed, we go bankrupt, I'd rather not be fully legal and have a job than being legal and broke (and no, these weren't companies that had 50 employees and making gazillion cash) , besides (they added), you cut on the salary of the employees to give some extra $ to uncle Gates's pockets, which doesn't create anymore quality jobs than I do."
While I have mixed feeling about that, the conclusion we can get from this is: if there could be a leasing option or renting option and the system would be more flexible, maybe there would be less piracy and people would tend to be more legit.
The 2 other points of view are "*everything* should be free" which shows how immature and short-sighted some people can be, and "everyone stealing software should get shot, there's 0.00 reason for copying a software, even if it's to try, to get a snapshot, to do backup copies, whatever, there's NO reasons"... heh.. no need to comment on that.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
The real pirates reside on a street in Redmond Washington called One Microsoft Way. They are trying to make the government think that $1M worth of sofware is worth $800M.
Long live free software. Long live GNU!!!
It is almost never the case that a big agency or institution has only one, current, urgent project that supercedes everything else. FBI fighting terrorism, NASA with the ISS, EFF fighting the MPAA/RIAA...sure, they're important, but they're never "drop everything else and deal only with this". Besides, the effectiveness that could be gained by dropping all the other projects and working only on the one is minimal, in some cases actually negative.
Where the hell is "the Warez network", geez, i wish i could get on that...... whats the url www.warez.com or something? :)
This is how the corporate IP holders will maintain/regain control. You'll be able to download anything you want (for a price) but you won't be able to share it easily. Consumer priced internet connectivity will be COMPLETELY asynchronous. Us aDSL users are pretty much already there as are the satellite users, and AT&T is starting to block ports 80 & 21 (inbound) on their cable networks. The internet is turning into one giant pay-per-view network so enjoy it while you can. Maybe high-speed, affordable wireless (802.11a) will save the day but don't count on it.....
right you are. The government can only do ONE THING at a time, not two or three. That's right. Just one crime at a time...
idiot.
How do companies/BSA count the losses caused by software piracy?
If they estimate the amount/count of pirated software and multiply that with the number on the price tag, they are out in the woods I think.
Prize makes a difference. As I was in China back in '97 I picked up every pop CD on stock because they were so dam cheap (eh, wanted to get broad sample of that funny stuff). I wouldn't have done that with official prices.
PS-Ever heard the Lemon Tree in chinese?
Adobe, et. al. should allow demos, too. This sort of thing works very well for apps like CoolEdit.
Aside: how does one "demo" an OS?
Having said that, I fail to see how stealing software is any different from stealing a piece of hardware. You wouldn't steal a car, would you, if you were a poor college student and really needed one? You wouldn't steal a television, would you?
Software is just a manifestion of someone's hard work. The fact that the bill-of-materials is essentially zilch doesn't mean that it does not have value (after all, if it didn't have value, no one would bother stealing it...).
What I find amusing is that many /.ers consider themselves programmers. One would imagine that a programmer would WANT to ensure that his fellow programmer is compensated for his work!
Now, if you're an open-source/free-software programmer and you want to give away your work, fine -- you shouldn't expect everyone to feel the same way. Especially if they have a mortgage to pay.
Question: How come there is no good free/open-source CAD software? I'm thinking specifically PCB layout tools, electromagnetic and signal-integrity simulation tools, etc.
gates came from a wealthy family and his mother had personal connections within ibm. for the secret to success go here
-- john
The "flamey" part reads to me like "sarcasm." k thx.
If this isn't entrapment, and is legal, then what about Napster?
Its not like Naptster said, "hey come leech your MP3s here".
If the government is not liable for the stuff sitting on "their servers", then neither should Napter be liable. Right???
You're gonna believe a guy named "Doody?" Too easy...
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Great school, but in the middle of nowhere.
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
Your logic is flawed. You're equating something that costs nothing to duplicate with physical, tangible objects. Also, you're assuming that people who make the copies *would have* bought a copy if there was no other way, but they could forgo it as well. There's no law that says 'you must buy a copy of X'. Third, it's not an issue of ethics. If you think so, you've bought into the moronic BS spouted by those who profit the most from this whole copyright mess that we're in.
I would post something intelligent right now, but I am too damn angry. This is the kind of shit that makes me root for the terrorists.
The BSA was formed by Microsoft. You arrest the most intelligent people in our society at the most prestigious schools in the country for them?
We are all about 5 years away from getting a nuclear bomb planted on our front porch and your doing the NAZI 2-step? What the Fsck is wrong with you drones. Was this the "law" when Hitler was in charge too?
Dumb sons a bitches. Where's my damn passport.
I can't help but wonder if the added wire-tapping privilages given to law enforcement agencies and / or the new installations of carnivore contributed to this. To think that the timing is just too coincidental wouldn't be logical.
Here's a primer on how a government can attain total control of its citizens.
For each dissident or somehow threatening group, perform the following steps:
1. Turn the name of the group into a perjorative term. ("X")
2. Hold numerous press conferences on the dangers "X" poses to society or to the economy.
3. Create new laws to target some core activity of "X" that seems likely to be of no interest to non-X citizens.
4. More press conferences on the widespread problem of violators of the laws created in step 3, and proposing harsh new penalties for such violators.
5. Massive crackdown on violators of laws created in 3. For small and unimportant groups, all members may simply be thrown in an oubliette, or even executed. For larger groups, the threat of arrest may be used to compel individuals in whatever way is deemed necessary.
That's it. This model works quite smoothly, as demonstrated by Stalin (too many groups to count), Hitler (Jews are the best known victims, but many others as well), McCarthy ("Communists"), and the Inquisition ("Heretics", "infidels", and others).
Meet the New World Order. Same as the Old World Order.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
Or else it's a major company that DEFINES the software industry used by 99% of businesses today.
It's all in how you phrase it...
Piracy may be bad for huge coporations ( but as someone suggested, most of it is never used except as a proof that kiddie#1 is way more 31337 than kiddie#2 ), but doesn't it have a worst effect for the smaller competition ?
...
Many ppls i know use pirated software(mostly os and graphic software) because the said soft is widely used and cheap ( therefore over-evaluated, many things become attractive when they are free -let's say a beer-), one noticeable consequence being that they never ever take the time to evaluate other solutions (smaller buisness,open source etc...).
So, piracy may in fact have a worst effect on oss and the competition than on the big buisness.
Therefore, stoping piracy may very well help the little guy way more than the big buisness as people will ihmo start to evaluate the other solutions as well when they where blindly pirating the most known prog.
my 2 cents
- Commerce is all about *consent*. Consent involves an exchange acceptable to both sides, not just the consumer.
I'm glad you mentioned that! Because it is about concent, and nobody forces you to write something and release it to anyone, but once it leaves your hand and you wish to restrict everyone elses hand, then it is about coercion. These people have made no personal agreement with you, they have not deprived you of your original copy or anything else.
It's your right to offer software with no restrictions. It's also your right -- or mine -- to offer software with conditions, and the user gets to decide whether he'll accept the software, and along with them the restrictions (within certain limits, such as you can't request somebody's firstborn as a slave).
I'm glad you mentioned slave here, because that argument sounds very familiar to the one - if you don't like slavery, then don't own slaves and shut up. It too was bull because slavery too by it's nature coerced on everyone.
Well, if you're going to put it that way, I'd rather have a War on Terrorism than a War on Drugs. ;-)
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
If software companys came out with software that was actually WORTH buying, I would buy it. I may pirate software, but if I like it, I buy it. If I think it is a piece of shit, I won't buy it, and just delete it. Consider it like test driving a car.
Most programs (games in particular) have lasted approximately 1 hour before being deleted from my hard drive. There have been WAYYYYY too many C&C: Tiberian Sun type shit games lately.
i cant wait until the feds have to lower interest rates a 12th time this year. stalin must be rofl his ao.
IMNERHO, this is the right way to enforce copyright law, not the DMCA. punish those who steal, not those who create tools that could be used by someone who steals.
You may or may not agree with copyright law, but as long as it exists and must be enforced, I greatly prefer enforcement that targets the actual offenders. If copyright is not abandoned (which is highly unlikely), then we will have to either accept individual enforcement or laws like the DMCA.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
What's all this griping about? Why does everyone seem so seriously angry that a bigtime pirate organization got nailed for stealing software & movies in gross quantities? If it was your software they were ripping off, you'd probably be singing a different tune (and no, I'm not referring to free software).
These weren't Joe Home User making copies of a buddy's software for personal use. These were dudes copying thousands of software and movie titles and distributing them. And it's not all Big Corporations that get nailed by these guys. I know a guy who writes shareware for a living, and mostly does okay. But fully 80% of the customer support requests he gets are from users with cracked copies of his software. What, should he just give away his work and live in an alley, all in the name of free beer? Or should he give it away and support himself by working for M$ or some other company? He almost has to anyway to support himself as it is.
I have another friend that makes a fairly popular shareware app. The only difference between the "registered" and "unregistered" versions of his software is that the registered version says "registered" in the "about" window. That's it. It's essentially freeware with a request for money to support his efforts. And still the crackers produce cracked versions of his software within hours of a new release. That, in my mind, perfectly well illustrates the mentality of the typical cracker. There's no great social or political statement being made by them. It's all a matter of machismo, pumping up their ego by breaking software and showing the world how big their penises are.
In any case, the assertion that the Feds are doing this to protect M$ is asinine. Sure, M$ was one of the victims here, but I'd hazard a guess that all those ripped off movies were not produced by M$. Nor were the majority of the software titles either.
Maybe we need a new business paradigm for software or other digital wares, I agree. I don't think wholesale piracy is the way to go about making it happen, however. Besides the faulty ethics, it hurts the little guy more than the big evil guy.
"This is not a sport, this is a crime," Mr. Bond said
Fuck karma.
I particularly liked the comment about these guys thinking they're like Robin Hood - such a crazy attitude!
After all, no one is stealing from the rich here (the rich certainly don't lose anything when someone "aquires" something they wouldn't buy anyway). And then of course, the common peasants (err...unpaying public) shouldn't be allowed to hunt in the forests (or is that "use these programs"?) - that's the whole point of copyright law! If we can't make it so people aren't allowed to use programs, then people can't make money! Of course, persecuting them does seem to follow the lines of Robin Hood...Should we expect a daring rescue attempt to free the imprisoned harddrives?
Thank god for open source. While I use Windoze now, I will never again have to upgrade. Or "steal".
LWM
Suse is breaking even, Transgaming just started.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Great, so this probably sounds like a troll (moderators sure don't like those with a counter opinion), but tell me how this is different from this scenario:
In other words when our local bank is being robbed, we should send *every police officer in the entire city* over to the bank to help ensure that our robbers are caught and don't escape.
No, this doesn't work because we all know that another group of Bad Guys (tm) will be working on other banks around town, or maybe breaking into homes or even pirating software.
Stealing is stealing and I'm sure that the people who spent the last several years tracking down people like this wanted to finish their work. If the FBI was crying for more agents to work on terrorism, then I'd agree that it is rediculous to be working on something that (I agree) is trivial in comparison. However, as long as the FBI is comfortable with the coverage on the terrorism front, we need to keep working on other cases.
-- "Nothing very good or very bad lasts very long."
I don't know about other universities but Purdue implements a policy that they do not give out personal information to entities that complain about students who cause trouble using university resources. I know of several cases where students were contacted by the Dean of Students and informed of their wrong doing but that their information was not given out to whoever complained. There are however exceptions to the rule for what I would assume are extreme cases. For instance several students were arrested in connection with a child pornography case. Anybody else know of policies like this at other universities and what the exact guidelines are?
That's why companies release Demos and shareware. Why do you believe you need to steal the full version of the software when the software developer usually gives you access to a copy that you can use for evaluation? "Try before you buy" is just another excuse warezers use to justify their immoral behavior.
I would say that billions in losses is correct considering how little they actually do enforce copyright law. If they didn't bother to enforce copyright laws at all than software companies would not make any money and would definitely loose billions. This is why they have to continue enforcing the anti-piracy laws even if it is mostly symbolic.
In regards to someone's post with the piracy information. It says that piracy is at the one of the lowest percentages in North America, yet the highest losses for corperations are also in North America. Has anyone considered that the reason the programs are pirated is because the prices are so outrageous people realize it's not worth what the corperation is asking for?
Geeze, I wish those in government would use that thing between their ears every once in a while. Although I am assuming there's something there, perhaps that's a mistake.
Its not like piracy causes programmers to forfeit paychecks. The company that the programmer works for is required to pay that him/her for as long as they are employed by the company. Your boss couldn't just walk up to you and say "Well, sorry Joe, but some guys just pirated our software and we were going to use the revenue to pay you with. Looks like you'll have to be broke until people stop pirating".
"This is not a sport," Commerce undersecretary Phil Bond said. "This is a serious crime. These people should do some hard time."
Oh my god. They have the NERVE to do crap like this right now? Aren't these people supposed to be helping trace down terrorists, instead of arresting teenagers in their bedrooms because they can't afford $500 worth of photo editing software and movies? The BSA must have bribed a LOT of people.
This is slowly becoming my favorite sentence: Animals don't belong in cages, politicans do.
-vmalloc
why did they wimp out on the Microsoft case?
As is going on strike if you're a teacher in Michigan.
The language is what I find scary, it all sounds as if some sort of physical theft had taken place.
Copying is not stealing, though I don't see why it should not be illegal.
How can there be finacial losses when nothing was invested?
Funny, I actually read the story, and it was definetely by a Times writer. Sure, a lot of the information came from Reuters, but Reuters is newswire service--its designed as a resource for journalists. It is perfectly proper to attribute the story to the Times
Purdue University has an Agreement with Microsoft which enable us to recive original, lisenced versions of original Microsft Software for 5$. u can check out the detaile here> http://www.purdue.edu/MSCA/.
We get all software right from Windows Xp to office to the full 6cd pack of Visual Studio 6 for only 5 dollars.
Every student is entitle to a copy and there are no limitations.
Futhermore, Purdue's Computer society host and Ftp mirror for almost all the possible Linux ditro's thereby not even needing us to use up extra bandwidth to download from outside.
Very recently i belive there has even been agreement to let the Computer Science Majors to download all of the Microsoft software free of charge from a web server starting from even the arabic version of Windows 3.11 up till windows Xp.
And ALL this this is being done legally. therefore i see no reason for there to be Software piracy at Purdue University. The article just mentions there had been raid and i think this is just to Defame Purdue Univsity. It does not even say that any thing was confiscated at purdue university - Just another Angry purdue Student :)
Vikas
Probable going back a few to many years but I am sure DOD were from russia.
"My wage packet has more deductions then a Sherlock holmes novel"
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
If you are doing illegal stuff, never deal with people that you haven't met or reccommended by someone you know well. And if you run a webserver, block all blocks of IP addresses that are owned by Federal, State, and Local governments, and the military. Boom, you have instantly kept the desk jockeys and beauraucrats out of your webspace.
Warez is one giant group? Since when?
If warez is a gang, then how come are there no gang wars and people being shot in drive-by shootings?
As well, if the warez gang is a gang, could they charged for being in a gang?
It wasn't too long ago that Microsoft was pushing for it's products to get translated into Chinese and distributed to the country. It wasn't too hard to see the prospects of the software getting pirated; for every ten copies of software used in China, there is one sale. Actually, Steve Ballmer said: "If you're going to get pirated, you want them to priate your stuff, not your competitiors' stuff. In developing countries, it is important to have a high share of the piracy software."
Guess what China is? That's right. A developing country. And once it hits "Free World" status, here comes the profits for Microsoft in a country that is already used to and dependent on it's software. Up until that point, Microsoft isn't really losing anything. Programmers for Microsoft aren't losing their jobs because of this, since the demand is still there, even if the supply is being sought out for free.
Of course, this doesn't mean I'm supporting piracy, merely presenting an opinion.
Another thing: I see you guys specifically referning Microsoft in alot of your comments, another idea on them... if your major software competition offers their products for free... isn't it a good idea to be able to reach the "customers" who are only going to get their Operating Systems for free anyway? That way, you trap 'em in either one of these ways...
Further down the road, you increase piracy prevention so much that it's damn difficult to pirate your software. Microsoft-Using-Pirates now find themselves in a tough situation, either adapt to software you haven't used before, or actually buy the software.
Or, how about the fact that Microsoft makes so many things besides the OS. Most people are bound to pay for some of their products... and that's where they'll make their profit.
This 'crack down' is consistent with this administration's policies. I am a Republican and I voted for Bush, but at reelection, I will vote for whatever Democrat contender there is because I absolutely oppose any such policies.
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
Members of Warez includes corporate executives, computer-network administrators and students at major universities...
Hey, I'm a student at a major university. Can I join "Warez?" How do I sign up? Is there a membership fee? Why didn't someone tell me they'd organized it into an actual group?
And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the proper conjugation "Members of Warez include corporate execs blah blah blah?" Mr Stout there obviously doesn't know shit about computers, the least he could do is use correct English. (I admit my English may not be perfect but then I'm not wrting for the Times...)
Things like this really make me wonder. If you're going to be in the warez dump or just generally hoarding or distributing any amount of "illegal" stuff, why wouldn't you set up some sort of last resort protection?
It was what, a few years ago, some feds raided another pirate group, much smaller scale, 5 siezures I think. One of the 5 had time to sledge-hammer his CD rack and hard drives. He got away scott free if memory serves.
Something along these lines isn't hard to set up. Ok, a big hammer might not be the way to go if feds come barging in, but you could easily set up some sort of more practical means of destruction. An electromegnet around your hard drives is a no brainer. flip a switch and they're clean as a whistle. Some sort of incendiary cage around your physical media shouldn't be too hard to set up. Heck, it could be as easy as sprinkling gas and lighting a match or I'm sure someone could set up an entire torching system.
Remember that movie Conspiracy Theory? The conspiracy nut hit's a switch when "They" finally come to get him and his apartment goes up in smoke. Seems like a good idea to me. A couple of well placed charges or canisters of fuel connected all connected to a big red button with "EMERGENCY" written on it and you're good to go. Cops or federal agents come knocking or break down your door, you hit your big red button and they can confiscate the rubble and fragged hd.
Seems like a good deal to me. I mean seriously, do your Divx movies, or copies of Playboy Pinball, or your own personal music store, or whatever the hell you want to collect really mean that much to you that you'd rather go to jail?
IANAL
I am BelDion's
When I get a copy of a game from my friends, it's because, quite frankly, I'm not impressed enough with it to buy it on my own. In fact, more often then not I'm just installing it so we can all play it at a LAN Party. When the party is over, I never touch it again.
The companies have lost NO money from me. If my friends hadn't had the game, I just wouldn't have played the game. I DEFINATELY wouldn't have spent any money on it. This "$1 billion" or whatever they're claiming to be their lost sales may be greatly inflated for the simple reason that many (maybe even most) of the people who copied these games wouldn't have spent money on them anyways. (Or at least, they wouldn't have paid the shelf price for it--maybe they would have bought them if they cost less.)
Now, don't get me wrong: I DO spend money on computer games, and I've bought about 90% of the games that I've actually played for more than just a couple hours of "dabbling" (for the last 10% I had physically borrowed the CDs). My tastes generally go towards games with novel ideas such as Afterlife and Strife, which are usually conveniently lying in the $15 bin since nobody else likes them. :-) I get MUCH more satisfaction from these games then I do from Quake 3 at $30-40 or so.
Copying a game, to me, is akin to "borrowing" a book from a friend, minus the physical inconvenience of having to physically give it back to him. He tells me its interesting, so I try it out for a bit. If I really like it enough, I might even spend some money on it. (Like I have on many books that I own.)
In fact, "borrowing" this game while allowing my friend to keep the original (i.e. copying it) should even theoretically be legal in this scenerio: Assume for a moment that only one of us is actually playing it at a given time. What's the difference between us swapping it back and forth and us maintaining two copies of it then? None--if you believe that people have a right to transfer their license to play the software to others. It's just that the transfer of the license in this case does not require an actual "physical" transfer of the software.
Yeah, yeah, I know you're all going to reply and tell me that some programmer out there is starving because I didn't give him any money for his game. That's just not true. If he's starving, it's because his game simply wasn't worth spending any money on--at least, to me.
Oh, and if he were to stop making games because he couldn't make a living off of them, I wouldn't feel agony over it. I'd just shrug my shoulders and find something better to do. Again, it's not as if I spend that much of my life playing games anyways.
Now, having said that...
Puts on flame gear and runs away from angry horde of starving programmers.
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
GPL is different, because you have to agree to the license (usually) before you get the source.
Buying software is different. You don't get to see the license until after you purchased it. But the license would only be valid (technically) if it was presented before purchase. Therefore sales doctrine applies, irregardless what the license says.
Its like this. I sell you a Jack-In-The-Box, for 25 cents, so you can give your kid a christmas present. When you turn the handle and the thing pops out, there is a note tacked on the clown's head saying, "By purchasing and opening this box you hereby agree to pay the original owner of this box $25,000.000"
Don't think that will fly...
Ah, but you're only saying that so you can whinge about pointless wastes of time and money and invasion of privacy when the FBI agent knocks on your door tomorrow, because they've already knocked on the doors of all the likely suspects.
(assuming you're not one of them already, of course)
I got raided - 2:30am this morning. 6 Australian Federal Police agents came in, woke everyone up, and proceeded to flash around the warrant.
It was regarding my collection of 300-400 DivX dvdrip movies.. They had FTP logs, asked me where most of it was..
They took 3 of my machines - my windows box, my linux fileserver, and my laptop, which I managed to get back at 6am as I needed it for work. They also took a collection of around 40 old HDDs, I keep around for occasional use, or ripping the earth magnets out of. Most were SCSI - SCA even, would be funny to see what they try and do with them..
They are imaging the drives and sending off copies to the US - where it will be sifted through for the next 6 months.. I was told it would be about that long until I will hear news about me being prosecuted.
I had my interview - lasted around 2 hours, and then had a informal chat to them regarding what was going on, the scene etc, as they were just ordinary cops, not specialists in computers.
I think they thought I was a lot bigger player than I am - I just download it, I dont sell it, distribute it, crack or release it - just burn it for my own archives. Hopefully that fact should keep me out of jail.
My friend in Sydney also got done - he had an FBI agent though at his raid - they imported one especially for this..
Ahh well have to see how things go..
You're a moron.
[Posted anonymously because I don't feel like explaining it to you.]
Was that if it wasn't for the hordes of people pirating Windows, windows would not have such market dominance that it does now.
Think of it this way... Go to a university. Ask the students what they run. Most likely a pirated version of Windows, with a pirated version of Office, etc etc. When they graduate, what are they familiar with, so what are they going to use? With most products this would be different, but because this is an OS, everything depends on the OS. Other companies can make products that add value, so long as they know the platform they are targeting is readily available. In this case windows...
An administrative judge in the Department of Home Security has just recently ruled that Linux, beacuse it can load Windows partitions without the operating system running can be used to circumvent copyprotection mechanisms built into the Windows operating system. Therefore, under the ruling, Linux operating system installations must be immediately upgraded, or the user exposes themselves to law suit under the DMCA. The attorney on the side of the government said: "This is a great day for freedom and commerce; soon all copies of the hacker's favorite tool, Linux, will be removed from shelves and forbidden from download sites."
Shouldn't the FBI be out arresting murderers, kidnappers, and terrorists instead of warez kiddies?
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
I can relate warez to mp3s.. People hacking and cracking the software never intended on purchasing the software in the first place, so how can they claim a loss in profits? It's not like the CTO of some large corporation says "Hey Joe, before you go out and purchase Microsoft SQL Server, why don't you check #warez950 on EFNet first..."
But if we should put *the whole* FBI into safeguarding lives, the FBI wouldn't be able to support itself nearly as well, and would have to seriously cut back (or congress would have to give them more money).
Bust first, a view disregarding economics: Law enforcement is there to enforce the law. If it ignores too many counts of people breaking the law, breaking the law becomes the norm, law enforcement finds that it can no longer enforce the law to any pointful degree, and we have anarchy. I'm not mentioning specific crimes, since it's easily debatable over whether they're right or not (and that's for the courts to decide, or law enforcement in the case that they choose not to enforce it, i.e. playing checkers on the corner on sunday in some towns in Alabama/Mississippi or riding a bike on a sidewalk in many states), law enforcement must make itself known or there will be anarchy.
Now, say the FBI can auction off confiscated stuff that they found on crime scenes and used as evidence. Say $5,000 - a few nice computers, etc. That's $450,000 income (not to even mention what they would recover from software piracy fines!)... Now, add the max criminal fine from the SPA's web site ($250k; in reality most likely a lot less, but still a fair amount), and that's a TON of money that the FBI could use to support itself. And the terrorist investigations.
Also, just to put the terrorist thing into perspective: 5000 people died, and we should NEVER forget that. But it's simply not reasonable to run around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to kill them all without thinking of why they acted. They did it because (as Osama Bin Laden stated in his Fatwah) we were, and increasingly are, killing their people by the thousands, occupying (and even attacking them from) their most holy lands, and taking away their freedoms and culture. They only acted because we pushed them into a corner and they could do nothing else to strike back at us for it, simply because we are the gorilla of world politics and firepower.
Looks like i'll be sharpening my hatchet so i can hack up my puter when i see the FBI vans rolling into my driveway.
Did Carnivore or Magic Lantern play a part in this? Is this the first use of the "expanded government powers" that Ashcroft needed to help find bin Laden? I really want to know the answer to this one.
/., maybe even the AC's.
No matter your opinion of the rightness or wrongness of trading (note I refuse to call it "pirating" and you should too) movies and software you have to wonder what methods were used to pursue the investigation. Then realize what will happen if the FBI actually manages to stop all such activity. What, or who will they focus on next? They may just be compiling a list of people who read
Personally, I'm comforted knowing that there is a level of "crime" that is just to difficult to prosecute. I want the Fed's to have some real, solid, you can touch it, limitations to they're capabilities. Think about it. If they know everything, pretty soon no one will get away with ANYTHING, but to justify their existence they'll just keep changing the rules to give them someone to go after. Maybe you.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Splitting legal hairs over the distinction between theft and copyright violation marks you as a vapid thinker. Of course it isnt strictly theft, but WHO FUCKING CARES, you utter, utter moron? If you pirate software, it is true that you havent broken into the copyright office and *stolen* a piece of paper identifying that software's copyright holder, but you absolutely are taking away the author's livelihood (and therefore labor) such as it depends on the legal guarantee that you do not violate copyright. Guess what? All commerce requires legal guarantees. Just because software can be reproduced at no cost doesnt mean people write it with the expectation that you *will* reproduce it without permission.
Duh.
Considering I just plead guilty for a similar case under the NET act I would beware. The DOJ/FBI is very heavily investigating this. Most likely they are reading this very post. The case I was involved with was a sting operation in which the FBI operated a pirate site for 7 months. Several terabytes of pirated was transferred to and from this site. That's right the FBI ran the site!!! The site was involved with a group known as "Fastlane" and nine people where indicted. Since this is public knowledge I take some comfort in disclosing some details here. I am still awaiting sentencing and some of the others indicted have not gone to trial, and I respect the courts and there privacy.
But if you are involved in one of these groups or considering it, one word of advice!! Don't!!. The legal fees and damage this has done to me personally has been enormous. Granted pirate or "warez" sites and groups are illegal, and I guess have to be dealt with. However, I never profited or gained finically from simply "trading" warez. Regardless I face years of probation, house arrest, and a strong possibility of jail time.
We can all argue the legal and moral standards of the FBI being the owner and system admin of what was one of the largest US warez sites affiliated with the internet group knows as "Fastlane".
And pray this little exercise of my freedom of speech does not come back to haunt me...
Hmmm. Are the FBI *THAT* bored to go after warez kiddies than the REAL threats of the country? Have they caught all of the morons sending anthrax around?
Take care of the pirates after our REAL threats are neutralized. Is it just me, or is a group of 15-20 year old guys that pirate M$ Word less of a threat than an Osama Bin Laden follower with 5 bars of C4 strapped to his waste?
Slashdot records lowest traffic since inception.. Not really, but it would be interesting to find out how many /.ers were involved...I've already seen one.
Warez is illegal as it is. I don't feel that the government needs to make things up to convince people that it is evil. No one is making any considerable amount of money on distributing warez.
I don't think I know anyone who doesn't have at least one piece of illegal software on their computer. And I don't think I know anyone who doesn't KNOW it's illegal. IMHO, this kind of crap just loses the government credibility in my book, and does little or nothing for their public image.
BTW: Anyone notice the similarity between this article and those discussing the Taliban? Warez is a "loosely affiliated group" with "units" acting all over the world. *snort*
Bah!
Justin
"Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
Now, I may be naive and all, but doesn't that pretty clearly imply "buy our service and pirate the shit out of the entertainment industry"? Makes me wonder when the government will go after these guys.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I saw the story.. the thing is, that although
technically illegal, in some cases, I dont really see software piracy (or music either for that matter) as unethical any longer, even though it might be (technically) illegal.
Though for small/honest software companies, buying software to support the creators, is important.. but in other cases, it is not so clear..
Some cases in point:
Microsoft: is an outright illegal monopoly, that basically got away with it, by giving money and greasing the wheels of the right players in the US govt. There is nothing legal about the way they do business, and it surprises me still, that foreign govts havent yet legalized the copying of their software since the monopoly is itself, illegal. Though maybe they forgot to think of that when they drew up the WTO regulations.. So I find it a real strech to think of copying M$ software as even being remotely unethical (in fact, it would be worse to give them the money, that they can then spend on lobbyists and politicians to flout our monopoly laws even further!)
RIAA/Record labels: pretty much every musician you talk to (famous or not) says the same thing.. Record contracts are designed to rob artists, who do not get compensated for their work. In fact, most artists say they want their work copied, because that way they get famous, and then can do concerts, which is the only way most artists *can* make money in the record business.
There is no protection for artists as similar RIAA record company lobbyist money was also used to buy and grease the wheels of politicians to take away artists rights over time, trample copyright principles...yada...yada.. forming, yet another cartel/monopoly.
Do unto them as they do unto you seems fair enough to me... I am not even sure why there is a debate about the ethics of software/music copying anymore, as the companies themselves sure arent showing any example of what ethical behavior even remotely looks like..
Comment removed based on user account deletion
hmm and i suppose gates cant afford to pay his programmers because of all that money he loses in piracy,,, yea ok i buy that.. (thats why i goto any credible news source to see his billions getting bigger) gates gets no sympathy from me and if his programmers dont make enough thats not the worlds problems its gates problem if he wants to be a flippin asshole then let him but i cant feel sorry for his poor programmers if they openly promote his bullshit. If they want to get paid microsoft only cares about thier billions the top of the ladder just gets richer the grunt labor doesnt get shit. All the government is doing is helping gates. is this about programmers getting paid or microsoft? iam having trouble telling. well i agree programmers deserve payment but Gates is no programmer hes a glutton so i certainly wouldnt be caught defending him.
Piracy has absolutely NO effect on programmers salaries.
Wrong. Both directly and indirectly. You see, usually I get a bonus. I say usually, because some quarters my company does really well. Other quarters... not as well. Now, if everyone thought like you and figured the only person they were sticking it to was Bill G. when they stole software, well I doubt I'd be getting a bonus for a very long time.
Indirectly, my company likes to hire what on my planet we refer to as "people". These "people" are sustained, indirectly mind you, on a substance called "money". Now take away the money. You see where I'm going here?
I hate responding to trolls, but DAMN the temptation is too great!
I don't think your model really works.
Most of Hitler's victims were never accussed of violating any law. Stalin comes a bit closer, although 'counter-revolution' was already illegal before he took power. He just extended it into witch hunts. McCarthy's smear tatics damaged the careers and lives of many people before he was brought down. But again, he passed no new laws. The Communist activities that he targeted were treason and espionage. He didn't 'attain total control' because most American Communists were not in fact guilty of this. Oh, and the Inquisition's main target was "Secret Jews." But other than that, I guess that actually does follow the model, with lists of "Jewish" practices like bathing widely distributed.
Your attempt to extend the analogy to software theft is equally sketchy. The sites that were raided had activities that were illegal long before the DMCA--this is just good old fashioned theft. And I don't really see the 'harsh new penalties either'.
Wait, what was that, warez is an immoral behaviour? Now, I think if anyone had a fast connection and a burner, they'd burn software if they could. But, they wouldn't go steal stuff from an old lady. Now, listen close, because it's illegal doesn't mean it's immoral, it's the other way around. Most people wouldn't steal, because it just doesn't 'feel' right, but everyone would pirate, I gaurantee, there's nothing about it to feel 'wrong'. You didn't take the poor old ladies car, you made an exact copy of her car when she wasn't looking, she doesn't know or care.
I can understand the copyright issue, if I tried to sell it as mine, but if I just copy and use it at home, I don't get it. It's like if I bought a nice wooden chair, and disasembled it and made a second wooden chair just like it, that perfectly legal for me to use in my house. If I sell it and say look at the cool chair I designed, that'd be illegal.
As for try-before-you-buy, I think this is no where near an excuse. The demos are nothing like the real thing. What you need is something more creative, like Quake 3. You get a copy of it, play it on a lan and realize how great it is, but wish you had a CD key, so you buy the game. This comes back to the idea of a service or liscense, that's the way the software devolopers should go.
SquirrelS
I wonder if this is the first real "acid test" of the USA Patriot Act for the Fed? Did they tap phone lines, hack computers, and gather all the "facts" to incriminate the Warez groups first.. then move in to bust them? Previously this kind of behaviour would have gotten their case dismissed from court quicker than you can say "keygen".
But, now that the USA Patriot act is in effect all this stuff in now admissible in court. Look out! First it's going to be blatent shit like Warez groups. Then, they'll start going for movie and MP3 traders. Maybe someday they'll try to stamp out free software.
Who knows... maybe the grand finale will be that in the future everyone who uses a computer has to have a license. Then, they can run around and arrest people who operate "unlicenced computers".
Is it really that far fetched ?!?!?!
Ahh, so the bodycounts are expected to be equal now? You know, if Palestinians didn't keep attacking Israel, they wouldn't lose so many people or so much land.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
So is posting stupid posts like you just did.
Why is it that whenever there is a raid (for drugs, copyright, whatever), property is always seized. Only agencies that participate in the raid get a cut of the profits from this. This is why seemingly simple raids always have a dozen miscelanious agencies participating: the DEA, FBI, Customs, BATF, state and local law enforcement, postal inspectors, and even the EPA, why not? They all get a cut.
"Officials said pirates of the ilk who were the targets of today's operation are not teen-age hackers but rather highly skilled computer professionals motivated more by challenge than greed."
So I guess that these "computer professionals" work at UCLA, MIT, Purdue University, Duke University and the University of Oregon where the raids took place?
> What is the FBI so afraid of? Someone using Photoshop and Kai's power tools to distort the presidents face?
No, they're afraid of someone using Photoshop to make a picture with a stern looking Bert peering over his shoulder.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
MS wants to dominate the market right? So how do they get their OS into homes where a teens parents won't fork over hundreds of dollars? Put it on the net. They have nothing to lose because the people who have the cash to buy it probably will. Putting it out on the net captures a whole new market of Windows users. Every now and then they raise a big stink about piracy and profit loss because this adds to the appeal for this target market. Nothing a rebelious teen loves more than illegal software right? Point is now everyone has MS Windows on their computer and MS wins. MS never loses a dime, in fact they make money off other, lessor priced offerings and/or subsequent sales of OEM preinstalled software. If you use something long enough to get used to it, you'll probably buy it again and reccommend it to others. It's all part of the plan.
When the time comes, will our government go to these kind of lengths to protect Free Software licenses? Would the FBI raid a proprietary software company if they were found to be abusing the GPL? This is basically the same issue.
...like an RIAA guy once said:
"We're going for the guys who steal a truckload, not those who steal a trunkload..."
+++ath0
Compare apples to oranges much?
Shoplifting doesn't kill anybody. Neither does kidnapping, creating computer virii, playing an augmented fourth [1] at 273 decibels at a very high frequency at 12:00 am, or punching random people in the face.
Hmm, when was the last time there was a "shoplifting crackdown", where police went around to people who boasted about shoplifting, and arrested them? Or a "punching random people in the face" crackdown?
All of the incidents you describe are against the law, but the government doesn't go out of it's way to stop them. If nobody complains about it, nothing is done.
This is entirely different. The FBI went out of their way to enforce a law that (arguably) has no victim.
And incidentally, creating computer virii is not illegal. (Intentionally distributing a virus IS illegal, however.) I'd love to see a virus researcher working for Symantec or Computer Associates hauled off to jail for doing their job.
Nice try, but no dice.
Infocom died the 'management death'. They did not "die" because of software piracy. They had a product called Cornerstone (a non-game product) that essentially cratered the company. On top of that, they had an Infocom-hostile management type running the show when Activision aquired them.
See http://www.infocom-if.org/company/company.html
for a quick summary, or do a yahoo search on Infocom. Piracy did NOT kill them.
> In other words when our local bank is being robbed, we should send *every police officer in the entire city* over to the bank to help ensure that our robbers are caught and don't escape.
OT, but maybe kinda funny...
I once lived in an apartment complex in a smallish town. One day my neighbor called the police over a suspected wife beating in progress in the next unit down. They told him it would be an hour before anyone could come check it out, because all the local cops were currently tied up on afternoon school-crossing duty.
We decided that if we ever robbed a bank we'd do it right when school let out, so we'd have an hour's start on our getaway.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Actually, from what I've seen RIT is far worse. A couple of my friends who go to school in lower ny and pa actually have people tell them if they need warez to port scan RIT's ip range. OC3 connection and some of the best warez sites on the planet
Yeah, Afganistan doesn't have any oil, but it is always nice to institute friendly governments in parts of the world that are close to countries that are rich in oil.
"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
They are assuming that everyone who pirated the software would have bought it had they been unable to pirate. From my personal experience, and my friends experience, it's usually the opposite. As such, this figure is wildly innacurate.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
My sister is an engineer at VA Tech, and they have one of these deals with MS. If you attend the college, you pay the "Bill bill" and have to purchase Win2k, Office, and a long list of other software. You have to have a machine with certain specs. Part of your money goes to keep some consulting group on campus to do Windows tech support.
.doc, but if you run into one, you need to be able to handle it.
.NET workshop, and the professor who okayed them coming was told by the dean to cancel it and apologize to a number of people offended by bringing MS onto campus.
.PDF files". CMU's Computing Services officially supports (some variants) of Linux. All the network people are UNIX folks. All of the for-majors CS classes are taught on UNIXes. My intro to systems class was taught on a cluster of high-end Linux boxes donated by Intel, and operating systems class on Solaris. While most classes accept a Windows format (Prof. Rudich, who teaches a fantastic CS theory class, said on the first day of class "You *can* use MS Equation Editor, but things are going to be painful for you. I recommend LaTeX"), they generally lean toward UNIX. The compilers used are gcc (or sometimes cc, in the case of Solaris). gdb is the debugger of choice. Just about every CS major uses emacs.
Frankly, I strongly prefer CMU. CMU's approach is that you can use whatever you want to as long as you get the work done. They try not to use things like
BTW, if you're thinking about college and like ECE or CS, go to CMU. Seriously. Most colleges are pretty much MS camps...CMU had a bunch of CS faculty hired away a few years ago by MS and is still pissed off about it. As a result, the college is fairly anti-MS. There's an even breakdown in Macs/Win/Solaris boxes in campus clusters, possibly somewhat in favor of Solaris (and a few Linux clusters) because of all the engineering types. Recently, MS wanted to give a
In a game theory class I have, the professor distributed documents as Word files. I thought about asking him to change, then just shrugged and fired up AbiWord. The next day in class, the professor said "due to popular demand, future documents will be distributed as
In a day when many colleges have a computer science curriculum that pretty much amounts to job training in Visual Basic and Visual C++, it's a nice change.
Anyway, if you don't want to put up with Windows, Windows, Windows, MS, blah, blah, blah all the way through college and want some cool professors, keep CMU in mind.
Cool UNIX CMU stuff includes Festival, *the* UNIX speech synth program,
Coda and AFS, the only good distributed filing systems out there (unless you count InterMezzo, also a CMU project)...it goes on and on and on. CERT has a home at CMU. The guy that was one of the designers of grep's algorithms will lecture to you on it, right after you hear about SML from the guy that was one of its creators. If you like CS research on distributed stuff, computer vision, AI, graphics, you name it, it's probably here.
-- A happy student
But I agree Gates makes way too much.
Go do your homework.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Wow... The net suddenly got so quiet after the warez busts.
http://www.internettrafficreport.com/#graphs
Warez are great for starving artists. My buddy is pretty good at flash and 3d studio max now, thanks to warez. He's made some pretty cool stuff with those tools. One of these days when open source catches up with closed source in the multimedia area, this won't matter any more to me. But until then, long live the warez. I know that some would argue that some distros ship with good multimedia stuff, so if you know of a good equivalent to sound forge and 3d studio max, please let me know!! (john@eh.net)
I wasn't comparing the acts as far as legality.. just the mentality of the collector. I did NOT buy all my Magic: The Gathering cards in order to 'support' wizards of the coast.. I bought them, traded for them, gambled for them so I could posess a good collection, better than my peers.. period. The fact that I paid for them with money was merely a convenience.
With warez.. its' MUCH MUCH more convenient to copy the stuff than it is to try to order it, yes?
A warez kiddie *will* pay for the equipment/bandwidth/media he needs, and invest tons of time into building his hoard. He just won't buy the software (because he actually doesn't want it.. he just wants to say he HAS it.)
If my woodcrafts are shoplifted then I'm indeed out my carvings. If my software is "stolen" then I'm without my copy....oh wait.....
Copyright violation is indeed a failure to pay for something but words like "steal", "shoplift", and most definitely "piracy" do nothing to promote your point of view. Another poster pointed out that "losses" due to piracy (in the BILLIONS) are not reported to shareholders. Apparently the accountants at software companies understand the difference.
A key phrase in most EULAs is "This software is licenced not sold." A better analogy would be that I run a movie theatre and some people are sneaking in and watching the movies without paying. It is necessary to make an example of those few or nobody will pay to watch the movies and soon there would be no movie theatre. Come to think of it, the movie theatre doesn't own the movies either. Warez kiddies make it more difficult to charge for what is in reality a service. They aren't (physically) stealing anything.
As long as industries that rely on copyrights use emotional and overblown terms like piracy "arr mateys I have a rich trove of Photoshop and hacked XP! arrrr!" then they are going to be less than convincing.
If copyright holders tone it down a little and call a shovel a shovel and a spade a spade then they might find a little more sympathy for their cause.
That's why companies release Demos and shareware. Why do you believe you need to steal the full version of the software when the software developer usually gives you access to a copy that you can use for evaluation?
I tried the NFS: Porsche Unleashed demo on my machine, and it worked fine. The full version crashes my machine whenever I try to race...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
That's a bad analogy. What about "taking a copy of a porche for a joy-ride"? The original user still has his porche, but now you have one too. It's against the law, yes. But not all laws are made in the interest of protecting people. These kinds of laws are made to protect a market from the inevitable. How can you sell binary data in the Information Age? It's like an eskimo trying to sell snow to another eskimo. But he can if it's illegal to just pick up the snow without buying a license from a certified snow dealer! When I made a copy of a friends CD to tape, did I steal anything? (Back to that old napster argument.) And besides, with things like FreeNet being developed, this is all going to be moot someday. Eventually, it will just *be there*, and you can take it if you want, and there'll be no one to point the finger at except for that faceless person who uploaded it in the first place. Copying is NOT stealing.
the day i walked through the door he gave me root and told me to admin the groups computers. i've been fairly happy ever sense. with respect to latex: if you are writing any thing of substance, meaning anything with alot of imbedded figures and several chapters, then LaTeX is the way to go. It's great for equations, but i've found that complicated documents really dont lend them selves well to word processors... unless you have 1/2 a gig of ram and dont want to run anything else while you write the document.
-- john
Wow, I didn't know Alan Greenspan opposed warez this strongly.
Didn't DoD have a reputation for releases that didn't work right? Maybe that's why the BSA is going after them: "You're making our software look bad, dammit!"
-Legion
"There are 1,500 warez members nationwide, officials estimate, and eight to 10 major groups."
- wired article
does that mean we have to pay dues now?
sig - .
They also tried to create a business software package. A database of some sort if I remember correctly. They spent the bulk of their development resources on it and the software flopped. No doubt the warezing of their games didn't help matters much but it doesn't appear to be the primary cause of their demise.
What is it with all Slashdot posters seeming to think they can see the future with perfect clarity. You may be correct, but if I were you I'd try not to sound so sure of myself. That way you don't put your foot in your mouth as bad if you're proven wrong.
Personally, I think you're dead wrong. What you and many others seem to forget is that the US is still a republic. Now I realise that could change and we could become a dictatorship, but I find that highly unlikely. At any rate, so long as we are still a republic, that means the people are ultimately in control. It may not seem like it at times, but it is the truth. Generally big companies, special intrest groups, etc get what they want because they are the ones that whine to the politicians. However, when a large percentage of the population decides they want something, they get it. Right now J. R. Public doesn't really care about the IP battles going on, none of it has effected them. However, if the authorities start locking up everyone that tapes a copy of Survivor, you will hear a mass outcry. Voters will tell the politicians "change the law, or we give your job to someone that will".
Again, something like this doesn't happen much, most of the time there aren't enough people that care on one issue, but it DOES happen. And I bet you if the FBI starts locking up normal people over things they've been doing for years, people will speak up, and with a loud voice.
The funniest thing is seen these LAN kids walking around with 120 space CD cases. They will come over to while you are in the middle of a tournament and start thumbing through your CDs and then ask, "Hey, can I copy this? We can trade if you want."
The stuff they have is never tested or used and really isn't current. Ask them for a new driver or something useful and you'll get blank stares or handed a copy of the drivers that came with daddy's desktop. Ask them for some obscure copy of some unreleased version of MS-DOS and they are your man.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
Do you want to pay $10 a month and OWN the code.
Or do you want to pay $10 a month to RENT a product that you'll never own by paying Microsoft, or in some cases not even have the choice and be forced to pay a tax via Microsoft.
I think $10 a month is worth it to pay for the SERVICE of producing code, if the code isnt as good as you'd like, then modify it and sell your service of producing MODIFIED code.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
However I'm not going to be a Bill Gates type, I'll be using a "nice" license, and the API's will be as open as I can make them. I hope that's enough to console the rest of the /.'ers, but I'm sorry I need to eat and live. :-)
Do you want to rent the internet, only be able to use it for a specific amount of hours per month, only be able to download certain things on a list, and not be able to modify the OS in any way?
Or do you want to be able to have total freedom on the internet?
The same applies to software.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The sig is supporting the programmers who produce the code.
This isnt about software its about information, CODE I'm paying for their service of producing code.
This is not paying mandrake for "free" as in beer software, its paying for the service of producing code free of restrictions, and giving them what they deserve for putting in the time and effort.
Read Gnu.org Free software isnt free as in beer, but free as in freedom of information.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Stop sidestepping the question with LAME, LAME, LAME pokings at Microsoft. If I work for MS, or any other company, I deserve to get paid, and so does Bill.
Even if DoD is knocked out completely, every application and every game will still be cracked and distributed within 48 hours of release.
Do you believe in life after death? - No, I believe in death after life.
We don't live in a democracy, we live in a republic, those who represent us (to some small degree...) get to push the federal government agencies in the direction they want. The FBI is no exception. They fight the federal government fires first.
The real problem with this is the "elitist" representatives are passing laws to quiet the public. 70 percent of our government representatives are millionaires, they don't represent the average American.
There is no Political Equality in the USA.
HEH!
Thanks, I needed a chuckle...
Moose.
.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
>They're studying the economics of the 0-cost model!
Don't you mean the 0-day model?
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html
GNU.ORG Founders of Open Source
How Owners Justify Their Power
Those who benefit from the current system where programs are property offer two arguments in support of their claims to own programs: the emotional argument and the economic argument.
The emotional argument goes like this: ``I put my sweat, my heart, my soul into this program. It comes from me, it's mine!''
This argument does not require serious refutation. The feeling of attachment is one that programmers can cultivate when it suits them; it is not inevitable. Consider, for example, how willingly the same programmers usually sign over all rights to a large corporation for a salary; the emotional attachment mysteriously vanishes. By contrast, consider the great artists and artisans of medieval times, who didn't even sign their names to their work. To them, the name of the artist was not important. What mattered was that the work was done--and the purpose it would serve. This view prevailed for hundreds of years.
The economic argument goes like this: ``I want to get rich (usually described inaccurately as `making a living'), and if you don't allow me to get rich by programming, then I won't program. Everyone else is like me, so nobody will ever program. And then you'll be stuck with no programs at all!'' This threat is usually veiled as friendly advice from the wise.
I'll explain later why this threat is a bluff. First I want to address an implicit assumption that is more visible in another formulation of the argument.
This formulation starts by comparing the social utility of a proprietary program with that of no program, and then concludes that proprietary software development is, on the whole, beneficial, and should be encouraged. The fallacy here is in comparing only two outcomes--proprietary software vs. no software--and assuming there are no other possibilities.
Given a system of intellectual property, software development is usually linked with the existence of an owner who controls the software's use. As long as this linkage exists, we are often faced with the choice of proprietary software or none. However, this linkage is not inherent or inevitable; it is a consequence of the specific social/legal policy decision that we are questioning: the decision to have owners. To formulate the choice as between proprietary software vs. no software is begging the question.
The Argument against Having Owners
The question at hand is, ``Should development of software be linked with having owners to restrict the use of it?''
In order to decide this, we have to judge the effect on society of each of those two activities independently: the effect of developing the software (regardless of its terms of distribution), and the effect of restricting its use (assuming the software has been developed). If one of these activities is helpful and the other is harmful, we would be better off dropping the linkage and doing only the helpful one.
To put it another way, if restricting the distribution of a program already developed is harmful to society overall, then an ethical software developer will reject the option of doing so.
To determine the effect of restricting sharing, we need to compare the value to society of a restricted (i.e., proprietary) program with that of the same program, available to everyone. This means comparing two possible worlds.
This analysis also addresses the simple counterargument sometimes made that ``the benefit to the neighbor of giving him or her a copy of a program is cancelled by the harm done to the owner.'' This counterargument assumes that the harm and the benefit are equal in magnitude. The analysis involves comparing these magnitudes, and shows that the benefit is much greater.
To elucidate this argument, let's apply it in another area: road construction.
It would be possible to fund the construction of all roads with tolls. This would entail having toll booths at all street corners. Such a system would provide a great incentive to improve roads. It would also have the virtue of causing the users of any given road to pay for that road. However, a toll booth is an artificial obstruction to smooth driving--artificial, because it is not a consequence of how roads or cars work.
Comparing free roads and toll roads by their usefulness, we find that (all else being equal) roads without toll booths are cheaper to construct, cheaper to run, safer, and more efficient to use.(2) In a poor country, tolls may make the roads unavailable to many citizens. The roads without toll booths thus offer more benefit to society at less cost; they are preferable for society. Therefore, society should choose to fund roads in another way, not by means of toll booths. Use of roads, once built, should be free.
When the advocates of toll booths propose them as merely a way of raising funds, they distort the choice that is available. Toll booths do raise funds, but they do something else as well: in effect, they degrade the road. The toll road is not as good as the free road; giving us more or technically superior roads may not be an improvement if this means substituting toll roads for free roads.
Of course, the construction of a free road does cost money, which the public must somehow pay. However, this does not imply the inevitability of toll booths. We who must in either case pay will get more value for our money by buying a free road.
I am not saying that a toll road is worse than no road at all. That would be true if the toll were so great that hardly anyone used the road--but this is an unlikely policy for a toll collector. However, as long as the toll booths cause significant waste and inconvenience, it is better to raise the funds in a less obstructive fashion.
To apply the same argument to software development, I will now show that having ``toll booths'' for useful software programs costs society dearly: it makes the programs more expensive to construct, more expensive to distribute, and less satisfying and efficient to use. It will follow that program construction should be encouraged in some other way. Then I will go on to explain other methods of encouraging and (to the extent actually necessary) funding software development.
The Harm Done by Obstructing Software
Consider for a moment that a program has been developed, and any necessary payments for its development have been made; now society must choose either to make it proprietary or allow free sharing and use. Assume that the existence of the program and its availability is a desirable thing.(3)
Restrictions on the distribution and modification of the program cannot facilitate its use. They can only interfere. So the effect can only be negative. But how much? And what kind?
Three different levels of material harm come from such obstruction:
* Fewer people use the program.
* None of the users can adapt or fix the program.
* Other developers cannot learn from the program, or base new work on it.
Each level of material harm has a concomitant form of psychosocial harm. This refers to the effect that people's decisions have on their subsequent feelings, attitudes and predispositions. These changes in people's ways of thinking will then have a further effect on their relationships with their fellow citizens, and can have material consequences.
The three levels of material harm waste part of the value that the program could contribute, but they cannot reduce it to zero. If they waste nearly all the value of the program, then writing the program harms society by at most the effort that went into writing the program. Arguably a program that is profitable to sell must provide some net direct material benefit.
However, taking account of the concomitant psychosocial harm, there is no limit to the harm that proprietary software development can do.
Obstructing Use of Programs
The first level of harm impedes the simple use of a program. A copy of a program has nearly zero marginal cost (and you can pay this cost by doing the work yourself), so in a free market, it would have nearly zero price. A license fee is a significant disincentive to use the program. If a widely-useful program is proprietary, far fewer people will use it.
It is easy to show that the total contribution of a program to society is reduced by assigning an owner to it. Each potential user of the program, faced with the need to pay to use it, may choose to pay, or may forego use of the program. When a user chooses to pay, this is a zero-sum transfer of wealth between two parties. But each time someone chooses to forego use of the program, this harms that person without benefitting anyone. The sum of negative numbers and zeros must be negative.
But this does not reduce the amount of work it takes to develop the program. As a result, the efficiency of the whole process, in delivered user satisfaction per hour of work, is reduced.
This reflects a crucial difference between copies of programs and cars, chairs, or sandwiches. There is no copying machine for material objects outside of science fiction. But programs are easy to copy; anyone can produce as many copies as are wanted, with very little effort. This isn't true for material objects because matter is conserved: each new copy has to be built from raw materials in the same way that the first copy was built.
With material objects, a disincentive to use them makes sense, because fewer objects bought means less raw materials and work needed to make them. It's true that there is usually also a startup cost, a development cost, which is spread over the production run. But as long as the marginal cost of production is significant, adding a share of the development cost does not make a qualitative difference. And it does not require restrictions on the freedom of ordinary users.
However, imposing a price on something that would otherwise be free is a qualitative change. A centrally-imposed fee for software distribution becomes a powerful disincentive.
What's more, central production as now practiced is inefficient even as a means of delivering copies of software. This system involves enclosing physical disks or tapes in superfluous packaging, shipping large numbers of them around the world, and storing them for sale. This cost is presented as an expense of doing business; in truth, it is part of the waste caused by having owners.
Damaging Social Cohesion
Suppose that both you and your neighbor would find it useful to run a certain program. In ethical concern for your neighbor, you should feel that proper handling of the situation will enable both of you to use it. A proposal to permit only one of you to use the program, while restraining the other, is divisive; neither you nor your neighbor should find it acceptable.
Signing a typical software license agreement means betraying your neighbor: ``I promise to deprive my neighbor of this program so that I can have a copy for myself.'' People who make such choices feel internal psychological pressure to justify them, by downgrading the importance of helping one's neighbors--thus public spirit suffers. This is psychosocial harm associated with the material harm of discouraging use of the program.
Many users unconsciously recognize the wrong of refusing to share, so they decide to ignore the licenses and laws, and share programs anyway. But they often feel guilty about doing so. They know that they must break the laws in order to be good neighbors, but they still consider the laws authoritative, and they conclude that being a good neighbor (which they are) is naughty or shameful. That is also a kind of psychosocial harm, but one can escape it by deciding that these licenses and laws have no moral force.
Programmers also suffer psychosocial harm knowing that many users will not be allowed to use their work. This leads to an attitude of cynicism or denial. A programmer may describe enthusiastically the work that he finds technically exciting; then when asked, ``Will I be permitted to use it?'', his face falls, and he admits the answer is no. To avoid feeling discouraged, he either ignores this fact most of the time or adopts a cynical stance designed to minimize the importance of it.
Since the age of Reagan, the greatest scarcity in the United States is not technical innovation, but rather the willingness to work together for the public good. It makes no sense to encourage the former at the expense of the latter.
Obstructing Custom Adaptation of Programs
The second level of material harm is the inability to adapt programs. The ease of modification of software is one of its great advantages over older technology. But most commercially available software isn't available for modification, even after you buy it. It's available for you to take it or leave it, as a black box--that is all.
A program that you can run consists of a series of numbers whose meaning is obscure. No one, not even a good programmer, can easily change the numbers to make the program do something different.
Programmers normally work with the ``source code'' for a program, which is written in a programming language such as Fortran or C. It uses names to designate the data being used and the parts of the program, and it represents operations with symbols such as `+' for addition and `-' for subtraction. It is designed to help programmers read and change programs. Here is an example; a program to calculate the distance between two points in a plane:
float
distance (p0, p1)
struct point p0, p1;
{
float xdist = p1.x - p0.x;
float ydist = p1.y - p0.y;
return sqrt (xdist * xdist + ydist * ydist);
}
Here is the same program in executable form, on the computer I normally use:
1314258944 -232267772 -231844864 1634862
1411907592 -231844736 2159150 1420296208
-234880989 -234879837 -234879966 -232295424
1644167167 -3214848 1090581031 1962942495
572518958 -803143692 1314803317
Source code is useful (at least potentially) to every user of a program. But most users are not allowed to have copies of the source code. Usually the source code for a proprietary program is kept secret by the owner, lest anybody else learn something from it. Users receive only the files of incomprehensible numbers that the computer will execute. This means that only the program's owner can change the program.
A friend once told me of working as a programmer in a bank for about six months, writing a program similar to something that was commercially available. She believed that if she could have gotten source code for that commercially available program, it could easily have been adapted to their needs. The bank was willing to pay for this, but was not permitted to--the source code was a secret. So she had to do six months of make-work, work that counts in the GNP but was actually waste.
The MIT Artificial Intelligence lab (AI lab) received a graphics printer as a gift from Xerox around 1977. It was run by free software to which we added many convenient features. For example, the software would notify a user immediately on completion of a print job. Whenever the printer had trouble, such as a paper jam or running out of paper, the software would immediately notify all users who had print jobs queued. These features facilitated smooth operation.
Later Xerox gave the AI lab a newer, faster printer, one of the first laser printers. It was driven by proprietary software that ran in a separate dedicated computer, so we couldn't add any of our favorite features. We could arrange to send a notification when a print job was sent to the dedicated computer, but not when the job was actually printed (and the delay was usually considerable). There was no way to find out when the job was actually printed; you could only guess. And no one was informed when there was a paper jam, so the printer often went for an hour without being fixed.
The system programmers at the AI lab were capable of fixing such problems, probably as capable as the original authors of the program. Xerox was uninterested in fixing them, and chose to prevent us, so we were forced to accept the problems. They were never fixed.
Most good programmers have experienced this frustration. The bank could afford to solve the problem by writing a new program from scratch, but a typical user, no matter how skilled, can only give up.
Giving up causes psychosocial harm--to the spirit of self-reliance. It is demoralizing to live in a house that you cannot rearrange to suit your needs. It leads to resignation and discouragement, which can spread to affect other aspects of one's life. People who feel this way are unhappy and do not do good work.
Imagine what it would be like if recipes were hoarded in the same fashion as software. You might say, ``How do I change this recipe to take out the salt?'', and the great chef would respond, ``How dare you insult my recipe, the child of my brain and my palate, by trying to tamper with it? You don't have the judgment to change my recipe and make it work right!''
``But my doctor says I'm not supposed to eat salt! What can I do? Will you take out the salt for me?''
``I would be glad to do that; my fee is only $50,000.'' Since the owner has a monopoly on changes, the fee tends to be large. ``However, right now I don't have time. I am busy with a commission to design a new recipe for ship's biscuit for the Navy Department. I might get around to you in about two years.''
Obstructing Software Development
The third level of material harm affects software development. Software development used to be an evolutionary process, where a person would take an existing program and rewrite parts of it for one new feature, and then another person would rewrite parts to add another feature; in some cases, this continued over a period of twenty years. Meanwhile, parts of the program would be ``cannibalized'' to form the beginnings of other programs.
The existence of owners prevents this kind of evolution, making it necessary to start from scratch when developing a program. It also prevents new practitioners from studying existing programs to learn useful techniques or even how large programs can be structured.
Owners also obstruct education. I have met bright students in computer science who have never seen the source code of a large program. They may be good at writing small programs, but they can't begin to learn the different skills of writing large ones if they can't see how others have done it.
In any intellectual field, one can reach greater heights by standing on the shoulders of others. But that is no longer generally allowed in the software field--you can only stand on the shoulders of the other people in your own company.
The associated psychosocial harm affects the spirit of scientific cooperation, which used to be so strong that scientists would cooperate even when their countries were at war. In this spirit, Japanese oceanographers abandoning their lab on an island in the Pacific carefully preserved their work for the invading U.S. Marines, and left a note asking them to take good care of it.
Conflict for profit has destroyed what international conflict spared. Nowadays scientists in many fields don't publish enough in their papers to enable others to replicate the experiment. They publish only enough to let readers marvel at how much they were able to do. This is certainly true in computer science, where the source code for the programs reported on is usually secret.
It Does Not Matter How Sharing Is Restricted
I have been discussing the effects of preventing people from copying, changing and building on a program. I have not specified how this obstruction is carried out, because that doesn't affect the conclusion. Whether it is done by copy protection, or copyright, or licenses, or encryption, or ROM cards, or hardware serial numbers, if it succeeds in preventing use, it does harm.
Users do consider some of these methods more obnoxious than others. I suggest that the methods most hated are those that accomplish their objective.
Software Should be Free
I have shown how ownership of a program--the power to restrict changing or copying it--is obstructive. Its negative effects are widespread and important. It follows that society shouldn't have owners for programs.
Another way to understand this is that what society needs is free software, and proprietary software is a poor substitute. Encouraging the substitute is not a rational way to get what we need.
Vaclav Havel has advised us to ``Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.'' A business making proprietary software stands a chance of success in its own narrow terms, but it is not what is good for society.
Why People Will Develop Software
If we eliminate intellectual property as a means of encouraging people to develop software, at first less software will be developed, but that software will be more useful. It is not clear whether the overall delivered user satisfaction will be less; but if it is, or if we wish to increase it anyway, there are other ways to encourage development, just as there are ways besides toll booths to raise money for streets. Before I talk about how that can be done, first I want to question how much artificial encouragement is truly necessary.
Programming is Fun
There are some lines of work that few will enter except for money; road construction, for example. There are other fields of study and art in which there is little chance to become rich, which people enter for their fascination or their perceived value to society. Examples include mathematical logic, classical music, and archaeology; and political organizing among working people. People compete, more sadly than bitterly, for the few funded positions available, none of which is funded very well. They may even pay for the chance to work in the field, if they can afford to.
Such a field can transform itself overnight if it begins to offer the possibility of getting rich. When one worker gets rich, others demand the same opportunity. Soon all may demand large sums of money for doing what they used to do for pleasure. When another couple of years go by, everyone connected with the field will deride the idea that work would be done in the field without large financial returns. They will advise social planners to ensure that these returns are possible, prescribing special privileges, powers and monopolies as necessary to do so.
This change happened in the field of computer programming in the past decade. Fifteen years ago, there were articles on ``computer addiction'': users were ``onlining'' and had hundred-dollar-a-week habits. It was generally understood that people frequently loved programming enough to break up their marriages. Today, it is generally understood that no one would program except for a high rate of pay. People have forgotten what they knew fifteen years ago.
When it is true at a given time that most people will work in a certain field only for high pay, it need not remain true. The dynamic of change can run in reverse, if society provides an impetus. If we take away the possibility of great wealth, then after a while, when the people have readjusted their attitudes, they will once again be eager to work in the field for the joy of accomplishment.
The question, ``How can we pay programmers?'', becomes an easier question when we realize that it's not a matter of paying them a fortune. A mere living is easier to raise.
Funding Free Software
Institutions that pay programmers do not have to be software houses. Many other institutions already exist which can do this.
Hardware manufacturers find it essential to support software development even if they cannot control the use of the software. In 1970, much of their software was free because they did not consider restricting it. Today, their increasing willingness to join consortiums shows their realization that owning the software is not what is really important for them.
Universities conduct many programming projects. Today, they often sell the results, but in the 1970s, they did not. Is there any doubt that universities would develop free software if they were not allowed to sell software? These projects could be supported by the same government contracts and grants which now support proprietary software development.
It is common today for university researchers to get grants to develop a system, develop it nearly to the point of completion and call that ``finished'', and then start companies where they really finish the project and make it usable. Sometimes they declare the unfinished version ``free''; if they are thoroughly corrupt, they instead get an exclusive license from the university. This is not a secret; it is openly admitted by everyone concerned. Yet if the researchers were not exposed to the temptation to do these things, they would still do their research.
Programmers writing free software can make their living by selling services related to the software. I have been hired to port the GNU C compiler to new hardware, and to make user-interface extensions to GNU Emacs. (I offer these improvements to the public once they are done.) I also teach classes for which I am paid.
I am not alone in working this way; there is now a successful, growing corporation which does no other kind of work. Several other companies also provide commercial support for the free software of the GNU system. This is the beginning of the independent software support industry--an industry that could become quite large if free software becomes prevalent. It provides users with an option generally unavailable for proprietary software, except to the very wealthy.
New institutions such as the Free Software Foundation can also fund programmers. Most of the foundation's funds come from users buying tapes through the mail. The software on the tapes is free, which means that every user has the freedom to copy it and change it, but many nonetheless pay to get copies. (Recall that ``free software'' refers to freedom, not to price.) Some users order tapes who already have a copy, as a way of making a contribution they feel we deserve. The Foundation also receives sizable donations from computer manufacturers.
The Free Software Foundation is a charity, and its income is spent on hiring as many programmers as possible. If it had been set up as a business, distributing the same free software to the public for the same fee, it would now provide a very good living for its founder.
Because the Foundation is a charity, programmers often work for the Foundation for half of what they could make elsewhere. They do this because we are free of bureaucracy, and because they feel satisfaction in knowing that their work will not be obstructed from use. Most of all, they do it because programming is fun. In addition, volunteers have written many useful programs for us. (Recently even technical writers have begun to volunteer.)
This confirms that programming is among the most fascinating of all fields, along with music and art. We don't have to fear that no one will want to program.
What Do Users Owe to Developers?
There is a good reason for users of software to feel a moral obligation to contribute to its support. Developers of free software are contributing to the users' activities, and it is both fair and in the long term interest of the users to give them funds to continue.
However, this does not apply to proprietary software developers, since obstructionism deserves a punishment rather than a reward.
We thus have a paradox: the developer of useful software is entitled to the support of the users, but any attempt to turn this moral obligation into a requirement destroys the basis for the obligation. A developer can either deserve a reward or demand it, but not both.
I believe that an ethical developer faced with this paradox must act so as to deserve the reward, but should also entreat the users for voluntary donations. Eventually the users will learn to support developers without coercion, just as they have learned to support public radio and television stations.
What Is Software Productivity?
If software were free, there would still be programmers, but perhaps fewer of them. Would this be bad for society?
Not necessarily. Today the advanced nations have fewer farmers than in 1900, but we do not think this is bad for society, because the few deliver more food to the consumers than the many used to do. We call this improved productivity. Free software would require far fewer programmers to satisfy the demand, because of increased software productivity at all levels:
* Wider use of each program that is developed.
* The ability to adapt existing programs for customization instead of starting from scratch.
* Better education of programmers.
* The elimination of duplicate development effort.
Those who object to cooperation because it would result in the employment of fewer programmers, are actually objecting to increased productivity. Yet these people usually accept the widely-held belief that the software industry needs increased productivity. How is this?
``Software productivity'' can mean two different things: the overall productivity of all software development, or the productivity of individual projects. Overall productivity is what society would like to improve, and the most straightforward way to do this is to eliminate the artificial obstacles to cooperation which reduce it. But researchers who study the field of ``software productivity'' focus only on the second, limited, sense of the term, where improvement requires difficult technological advances.
Is Competition Inevitable?
Is it inevitable that people will try to compete, to surpass their rivals in society? Perhaps it is. But competition itself is not harmful; the harmful thing is combat.
There are many ways to compete. Competition can consist of trying to achieve ever more, to outdo what others have done. For example, in the old days, there was competition among programming wizards--competition for who could make the computer do the most amazing thing, or for who could make the shortest or fastest program for a given task. This kind of competition can benefit everyone, as long as the spirit of good sportsmanship is maintained.
Constructive competition is enough competition to motivate people to great efforts. A number of people are competing to be the first to have visited all the countries on Earth; some even spend fortunes trying to do this. But they do not bribe ship captains to strand their rivals on desert islands. They are content to let the best person win.
Competition becomes combat when the competitors begin trying to impede each other instead of advancing themselves--when ``Let the best person win'' gives way to ``Let me win, best or not.'' Proprietary software is harmful, not because it is a form of competition, but because it is a form of combat among the citizens of our society.
Competition in business is not necessarily combat. For example, when two grocery stores compete, their entire effort is to improve their own operations, not to sabotage the rival. But this does not demonstrate a special commitment to business ethics; rather, there is little scope for combat in this line of business short of physical violence. Not all areas of business share this characteristic. Withholding information that could help everyone advance is a form of combat.
Business ideology does not prepare people to resist the temptation to combat the competition. Some forms of combat have been made banned with anti-trust laws, truth in advertising laws, and so on, but rather than generalizing this to a principled rejection of combat in general, executives invent other forms of combat which are not specifically prohibited. Society's resources are squandered on the economic equivalent of factional civil war.
``Why Don't You Move to Russia?''
In the United States, any advocate of other than the most extreme form of laissez-faire selfishness has often heard this accusation. For example, it is leveled against the supporters of a national health care system, such as is found in all the other industrialized nations of the free world. It is leveled against the advocates of public support for the arts, also universal in advanced nations. The idea that citizens have any obligation to the public good is identified in America with Communism. But how similar are these ideas?
Communism as was practiced in the Soviet Union was a system of central control where all activity was regimented, supposedly for the common good, but actually for the sake of the members of the Communist party. And where copying equipment was closely guarded to prevent illegal copying.
The American system of intellectual property exercises central control over distribution of a program, and guards copying equipment with automatic copying protection schemes to prevent illegal copying.
By contrast, I am working to build a system where people are free to decide their own actions; in particular, free to help their neighbors, and free to alter and improve the tools which they use in their daily lives. A system based on voluntary cooperation, and decentralization.
Thus, if we are to judge views by their resemblance to Russian Communism, it is the software owners who are the Communists.
The Question of Premises
I make the assumption in this paper that a user of software is no less important than an author, or even an author's employer. In other words, their interests and needs have equal weight, when we decide which course of action is best.
This premise is not universally accepted. Many maintain that an author's employer is fundamentally more important than anyone else. They say, for example, that the purpose of having owners of software is to give the author's employer the advantage he deserves--regardless of how this may affect the public.
It is no use trying to prove or disprove these premises. Proof requires shared premises. So most of what I have to say is addressed only to those who share the premises I use, or at least are interested in what their consequences are. For those who believe that the owners are more important than everyone else, this paper is simply irrelevant.
But why would a large number of Americans accept a premise which elevates certain people in importance above everyone else? Partly because of the belief that this premise is part of the legal traditions of American society. Some people feel that doubting the premise means challenging the basis of society.
It is important for these people to know that this premise is not part of our legal tradition. It never has been.
Thus, the Constitution says that the purpose of copyright is to ``promote the progress of science and the useful arts.'' The Supreme Court has elaborated on this, stating in `Fox Film vs. Doyal' that ``The sole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferring the [copyright] monopoly lie in the general benefits derived by the public from the labors of authors.''
We are not required to agree with the Constitution or the Supreme Court. (At one time, they both condoned slavery.) So their positions do not disprove the owner supremacy premise. But I hope that the awareness that this is a radical right-wing assumption rather than a traditionally recognized one will weaken its appeal.
Conclusion
We like to think that our society encourages helping your neighbor; but each time we reward someone for obstructionism, or admire them for the wealth they have gained in this way, we are sending the opposite message.
Software hoarding is one form of our general willingness to disregard the welfare of society for personal gain. We can trace this disregard from Ronald Reagan to Jim Bakker, from Ivan Boesky to Exxon, from failing banks to failing schools. We can measure it with the size of the homeless population and the prison population. The antisocial spirit feeds on itself, because the more we see that other people will not help us, the more it seems futile to help them. Thus society decays into a jungle.
If we don't want to live in a jungle, we must change our attitudes. We must start sending the message that a good citizen is one who cooperates when appropriate, not one who is successful at taking from others. I hope that the free software movement will contribute to this: at least in one area, we will replace the jungle with a more efficient system which encourages and runs on voluntary cooperation.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
OK, the article says "cyber piracy" costs US$12 Billion annually according to Some Group.
Total garbage. I formed an opinion many years ago that software pricing is totally arbitrary. Don't believe me?? Look at Apple's recent dealings with the Mac OS 10.1 "upgrade": The full version of Mac OS X cost ~$200, but an "upgrade" disk cost $20 - which, as it turns out, has the whole OS on it anyway, with a quickie "installation detector"!!
Also, until shown otherwise, I think that $12 B number is gained by assuming all software products of all software makers are sold at full retail price. This doesn't happen. Corporate discounts, student discounts, special incentives, etc. mean a great many people don't pay anywhere near "full price".
So, basically, I think software pricing is a pure marketing construct, with no basis in reality. After all, it's all bits on a hard drive somewhere waiting to be burned on to a CD. An oversimplification, yes, but that's the nutshell of selling "software".
Glenn
At first I thought you might have been a little twisted in your thoughts and views, then I read the remainder of your argument. You know what? You'll get no argument from me! Especially when it pertains to the music industry. The music industry, as a whole or individually, makes M$ look innocent. Never was there a robbing of peoples own works, right out from under them. Maybe the musicians that startup will have enough computer savvy to invest in a CD-RW Stack (Expensive, true.) but then they'd be able to sell their own CD's. (Unless, that is, the record industry has managed to get the politicians against individuals selling their own music, and thus, the police out policing these hard core criminals.)
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times." Bill Hicks
Mandrake has a programmer on the kernel team?
Did you know Mandrake has a developer working on KDE?
Did you know Mandrake offers FREE services to teach linux to newbies? Mandrake Forum, Mandrake Expert, etc etc
Did you know Mandrake developers millions of lines of source code all which get contributed back into the community? I assume you arent a programmer and dont know the VALUE of good source code.
Did you know Redhat brought Linux to the mainstream by donating millions in making good software?
Did you know Redhat created RPM which you most likely use?
Did you know Redhat has developers on the kernel team?
Did you know Redhat has developers on the Mozilla Team?
Redhat and Mandrake do not profit off of their software, their free websites, hell this site Slashdot is only up because a certain Linux company is hosting it.
And if you dont respect the code redhat and mandrake has contributed to OUR favorite OS, if they were to take it all back, your hardware drivers suddenly wouldnt work, your kernel would be buggy and messed up and at version 2.2 or somewhere, you wouldnt have a nice KDE, you'd be stuck with an ugly interface, you wouldnt have the ability to play games, Linux would get no support when going up against Microsoft and others.
Redhat has done alot, what have you done? You havent contributed code, they have, you dont contribute money, you are a leech. Now go home.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
In other news, one of the suspected pirates was reported as saying: "OK, you've caught me. How about you punish me by making me provide $1b of M$ software to America's poorest school districts?"
http://www.razor1911.com/
I downloaded this really cool OS called Slackware. I use it on almost all of my computers and I swear by it. It has every great feature an operating should have, and it is extremely stable. I downloaded the CD image off of a college FTP site, and I even set up a mirror of my own. I hope that no one catches me.
There's just something about buying and owning your own software that makes me feel better about myself than when I get it pirated. I feel like such a dick aftre thinking about the app I have and how hard they are to make... I can't help but erase them off my drive after a friend has passed them on to me from no doubt some other pirate... If it came directly to me from the company, that would be different.. case in point, I got a free copy of office 2000 when selling software for TigerDirect. (Hry it's microsoft... a billionare's software should come free anyway... Have a heart Bill!) Another case where a gray line was drawn was the first time Macromedia sent me a copy of there apps... back when Flash3 was out... I got ALL of the software they made on one disk... WITHOUT demo mode... the full apps. Still I felt bad and dropped the cd in the trash and erased the apps off my drive... It had to be a mistake! When photoshop 7 comes out, I'll be buying it in full version since I don't have a real copy of my own. The problem will be this, my friend will want a piece of it. The first defense is that it will be on my Mac, not my win machine since most of the world uses windows, and my second defense will be not telling anybody. Sorry.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
By offering my software up for the taking the software thieves are, at least some of the time, depriving me of a sale, so yes, they are depriving me of something.
Also, there are things other than personal agreements that people in a modern society are expected to adhere to, for example, laws. In this case, the copyright laws.
So what about high school/college students who are interested in Oracle, SQL Server, Photoshop, Visual Studio, etc.? Even at the "discounted" educational price, most apps are way out of budget for most folks (In high school, I was lucky to have enough for a night of playing pool...College was worse).
Don't ignore the fact that many of these apps cost so much money they make it near impossible for anyone to just "learn the tool." Once they've pirated a copy, they aren't using it to make money, they're learning it so they can get jobs. When they get those jobs, they bring the product to company they work for, and those companies purchase the product and pay up tons of $$ in licensing fees.
Was that pirated copy worth it to the company? Damn right it was.
Was that pirated copy worth it to O'Reily and WROX Press? Damn right it was.
I wonder how many game 3D designers went out and bought Alias or Maya just to see if they had the knack for it? I can't see any of them forking over a few grand just to see, "What does it look like?" That would be a big, resounding, "No."
Sometimes a short-term loss can mean big bucks in the long run.
I gave myself to Jesus, but now he never calls
Amen to that
Also, none of these companies seem to mind that their software gained a hedgemonic hold on its particular market (e.g. MS Office, Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator) due to widespread piracy by students and their ilk. "got any job skills after that ethnomusicology degree, son?".
Meanwhile, on the desktop, companies will only invest in 'industry standard' software i.e. "what do our competition/clients use?" In the case of the advertising industry Photoshop is endemic, yet not a single freelance designer has purchased a licence, some have even been _given_ copies by adobe. Adobe know well that if the designers use photoshop, then the agencies/clients/printers will all be buying copies so they can use these guys work. In fact, i don't know a designer that didn't spend their college years photoshopping minor cleb nudes and making them 'dance' in flash, all in flagrant violation of whatever intellectual property laws that were neccesary.
I have in the past _paid money_ for a version (3.0) of Microsoft Word, but have had to steal on the occasion of every subsequent release, as every damn fool still sends me contract.doc, order.doc, specifications.doc and i guess my primitive software does not have all the incredible new features that let the clients type and tab said documents. I can't say no 'send it in another format', because the clients are quite frankly too stupid to. Anyway that would be bad for business and whats bad for business is, well, illegal, isn't it?
if the software they are peddling is as essential/epochal/compelling/mandatory as they tell us it is, then surely they will gain so much more if the first hit is free. (esp if you hand it out outside the school gates, right?)
Well simply undefine it or
delete [] piracy;
Naw, that's way too simple. Better way?
[beating a dead horse]
Know what's enclosed in the back of every $34.95 "Linux for Idiots" book? A complete, fully functional distro of Red Hat Linux. I'm pretty sure the "For Idiots" company pays a tithe to Red Hat, don't they?
If M$ "gave away" their most basic product, the OS itself, in the form of a flashy "Learn how to use Windows XP!" manual with the full program enclosed, and charge no more than the price of a "For Idiots" book, then people will say "Why would I want to pirate XP when I can get it for free in the back of this book?" and cheerfully pay for it. Then sell a home/small business version of Office XP in the form of another flashy book. They needn't even open-source their software. Then they can charge the normal price for all the programming environments, games, customer service, etc.
But it seems that Linux companies are the only ones to figure out how to make a profit off of "free" software this way.
[/beating a dead horse]
I bought the educational version of Flash 3 for $100 bucks in college (A huge hit to the budget). I'd never even seen it, this was before it was available on every warez site on the net.
Three months later version 4 came out, and I get a nice letter from Macromedia informing me that I could purchase the newer version for another $60 bucks.
Now I must thank Raybiez for all of those wonderful cracks.
"Up yours Macromedia," he added.
So I have to wonder the real cost/benefit analysis about these sorts of things. I mean from a REAL in dependant source.
Anyway, I hope everyone chanting 'Good. I'm glad they were busted' will smile the next time you see all the taxes taken out of your paycheck. Yep you paid for it. I bet you all feel real good about yourself now that you paid for some multinational entertainment/software conglomerate's problem.
I sleep better at night knowing that kids who aren't old enough to drink are going to be bullied around by the big business and the DOJ while there is real crime in the world. But I suppose it's much more glamorous to be fighting 'cyber-terrorists' than real ones with bombs.
Oh wait I'm criticizing the government, I am a terrorist now according to Derr Fuhrer. Ashcroft's SS will be at the doorstep in the morning I am sure.
The underlying difference here is, if I took the recipe of the McDonalds Big Mac and began selling a new sandwich, yes, it is going to hurt McDonalds, whether they have "1 billion burgers served" or not.
However, if I used the McDonalds recipe to make myself a burger, and saved myself a couple bucks, has McDonalds really lost anything?.
Same for software, if I were to take a software title, and turn around and sell it, I am financially profitting off someone else's code.
However, If I get software, and use it for myself, I am profitting in terms of enjoyment. You can't put a price on that... This illustration (if anyone understood it) is making me hungry.
The problem is it is not even possible for us to know all the laws. We all could be civil disobedient. When I went to Trenton, the capital of my state, and I saw a room full of laws! There is no way anyone will remember all that shit, except for the elephant man who remembers everything he reads. If I was him, I would not waste my time reading a room of laws, it would be so boring to take a lifetime.
Could you please explain what is broken in win95 that win98SE fixed? Yes, they changed the way it works, added support for newer stuff that was out, but I am unaware of anything in Win95 that was flat out broken that was fixed in 98.
plus MS has more money and tenacity than the DOJ.
Did anyone read the press release sent out by the Libertarian party last week?
Libertarian homepage
700,000 people were arrested last year for marijuana offenses... An even larger waste of resources than this raid.
it's good to know that they have their efforts focused on important issues
9/11 was no big deal.. this is where resources should be dedicated
the MPAA and RIAA really know how to spend their $$$
and there's a fire sale on the US gov't..
Piracy is bad
so says the S.B.A group
remember Linux is FREE
Copy that Floppy
Bill Gates needs no more money
think Blue Screen of Death
stealing this software
putting it up on Kazaa
FEDs talking to Mom!
M.I.T. and Duke
Homes to the Drink or Die Crew
How bout cracking books!
Leet Warez Kiddies rule!
I Have all the zero day wares
Never kissed a girl.
when they ban enctryption only criminals wi$21*J *#JF$%!@#$':
The OSFS (Oh Shit! File System) (TM)
The next step in preventing data recovery is the Oh Shit! filesystem. This is a CFS used solely for the storage of 'temporary data', where the key is randomly generated at boot time. If the system is shutdown, crashes, or loses power, all data is lost... irrecovably.
For the really paranoid, I've got friends working on the encryption of off-core memory, so the key only ever exists inside the CPU and on-chip cache.
As to why people don't torch their warez collection when the Feds are kicking in the door, perhaps because that is a criminal act in of itself :-)
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I don't know who was smoking so much crack that decided to raid colleges -- that was plain stupid.
1) It's not lost revenue because the college students would not have bought the stuff if they hadn't pirated it -- most of them just like to play.
2) College administration gets scared stupid and to avoid the embarassment of another public raid they tack on the cost of MS Windows to tuition and hand out a mandatory copy to every student so that NO ONE can be acused of piracy (I know of at least one university that has done this).
3) Every college student gets stuck paying for a copy of Windows whether they like it or not (notre that it's the private colleges that are more likely to do this -- and it was private colleges that were raided -- I smell a pay-off here).
The only thing this helps is software companies sell more software. It does not re-gain revenue they would have lost. College kids probably would not have bought the software (they just wanted to play with it), but the administration gats scared and makes everyone pay for a copy of it now.
The only thing that I hope (and would be a benefit to Linux) is that the college kids get sick of the bull and decide to stay away from non-Open Source stuff as much as possible when they start their careers.
I don't know why the FBI and the American public is sticking it to colleges for this -- I think the college types are now stereotyped as 31337 haX0r5 and people want them eradicated as a result. Shoot ourselves in the foot some more, huh?
Err, Oracle?
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
It is about time the Feds started cracking down on this stuff. Warez is bad and only hurts the economy and free software. I just had a fight with my finacee' the other day because she was pirating Windows ME. I told her that she won't be pirating software in my house, or music for that matter.
There was once a time, that not only did I pirate software.. but I was also a trader, back when a 28.8 modem was cool. I have turned around and no longer pirate any software, and I feel much better for it. It really is nuts to even consider pirating software, why would I? Everything I need is available in a free (gpl or bsd) version; Why would I ever have to pirate? Especially when it is wrong.
Feed the starving developers or better yet, use free software; You know it is better anyway.
that market their main products solely for the Microsoft platform
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
-schussat
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
>I am unaware of anything in Win95 that was flat out broken that was fixed in 98.
TCP/IP stack leaks are the first thing to come to mind.
The original Windows 95 would blow its stack after a few hours of TCP/IP operations.
If that isn't serious, hell, I don't know what is!
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
"ISPs learned they could make money "
Okay, all you who have had to change providers due to your existing one going belly up, raise your hand.
Now all you who were with @HOME, raise your hand.
Now, all you... oh wait, there's no one left.
Let's not be using ISP's as a model for business plans, eh?
...trust me, there's was piracy taking place every day when I went there, and I'm sure there still is now. (seeing as I have friends who are still there.)
Do you think that Purdue students who buy those copies don't turn around and burn them for others? Serve them off of ResNet or off-campus DSL connections? How about non-MS software?
So the software giants go out and claim that N dollars are lost because these people have obtained their software in a fashion not endorsed by these proprietors. This deems the obtaining and posession illegal. If one is intending on further distributing this software, it is even more serious. And perhaps there is a small margin of people that now won't pay for something they got for "free". But I am of the opinion that most of these people would end up buying the software anyway because they like the fuzzy feeling of doing the right thing. The others simply either do not have the money, or don't think it's worth paying for. So the N dollars lost is nothing that was a revenue stream in the first place. Hence not such a big loss.
But what these software giants DON'T say is how much business they gained from having people obtain their software illegally. Imagine this 17 year old kid who started with Windows 2000 when it started hitting the warez scene. What if he wouldn't have been able to do this? How much less exposure - and addiction - to this product would he sustain as a result? Probably lots. Much of the corporate usage of products such as the various productivity suites and tools is due to the exposure people get to a certain piece of software.
Did you ever meet some guy/girl who maintains that Lotus WordPro or Corel WordPerfect is superior, or simply that that's what they use? Sure you have, even though they aren't that vast in numbers. These people are most likely honest customers from the very start. They bought a computer and got the software bundled, or they bought the software in the store. And they kept with it because that's what they know. But again, they are few. Now look at all the attention Microsoft has on their Office suite. Is there a coincidence that this particular piece of software seems to be far more trafficked than competitive products?
Also pay attention to the fact that when a Microsoft OS is in beta stages, these builds seem to fly around on the Internet like crazy. Even "secret" or "leaked" builds do. And people collect and probably install them and use them. Because they want to be the first kid on their block with Windows XL or whatever the next version will be called. Microsoft seems to do nothing about the spread of this software. However, once it is released and stores charge for the software, it's another ballgame.
I would put more credibility in the reports if they were accredited an estimate on how much sales increased just because of piracy. Of course I am just speculating, but to me it makes sense.
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
All around piracy is taking profits from software creators that deserve their money. Regardless of what excuse the pirate thinks of to justify what he/she does, it is still wrong.
Piracy shouldn't become an issue to law enforcement until certain big things happen. One thing would be a person selling pirated software for profit, which is clearly not fair. This might also include a banner website. I'm sure I could examples of other things if I sat here longer.
Officials should not be allowed to go wherever they want, but if somebody is being way too obvious or getting money from somebody else's work, then they deserve to be busted.
A "Big Brother" government doesn't need to become more powerful, nor does it need an excuse to.
You really should get your news from someplace other than slashdot or the register.
stop justifying your illegal behaviour because you want it to be "morally acceptable". Either you steal because you want to steal, or you don't. Period, end of story. Stop whining about how it makes your pussy hurt when you're not allowed to "try" photoshop before you "buy" it.
My friend just informed me of this...
http://www.internettrafficreport.com/#graphs
Look at the first graph. Internet traffic has dropped over 50% since the raids.
--------------------------------------
58.0% slashdot corrupt
"First they came for the hackers.
But I never did anything illegal with my computer,
so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the pornographers.
But I thought there was too much smut on the Internet anyway,
so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the anonymous remailers.
But a lot of nasty stuff gets sent from anon.penet.fi,
so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the encryption users.
But I could never figure out how to work PGP anyway,
so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for me.
And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
-- Unknown
More like that: http://www.samsimpson.com/cquotes.php
>The distributed and widely connected nature of the internet is enabling ordinary users to become first class pirates, with the push of a button distributing many thousands of illegal copies to any and all takers.
Forgive me for asking, but if the users are the pirates, and the users in DC have high speed, doesn't that mean they'll "repair" the laws in a way that benefits them?
ie: Make them weaker?
...Because rape and murder don't hurt big corporations' bottom lines.
I'm just thankful this is a transition phase before the next revolution...
Afganistan is an overland coniuit for oil pipelines leading from the Caspian to the Indian Ocean and waiting American Tankers. That's what your "War against terroisim" is about. The Taliban proved to be unreliable partners, so they had to go. The new hand picked "coalition" regiem had better co-operate or else. Any one who knows anything, knows that the Taliban were a Pakistani/Saudi/US creation, their brutal ways were of no concern to US policy makers until the the oil traders got frustrated with their inability to come to terms on the deal. Then... 9/11. Now the US has a new Horse. So now the US is betting on The Northern Gangsters, various factions of which were being ridden by the Russians, Chinese and Iranians. With all these guys jumping in and out of bed (to ride another analogy) somebody's gonna ketch the clap. Don't delude your self, OIL ie. $$$$ looms large here, just as it does with everything the US Gov and it's Corporate masters does on the world stage. Well at least people can fly kites again...
Is it just me, or does the internet seem fast now?
I don't see why they are going after people who contribute to piracy of business apps...those companies will make money anyways. Games and consumer applications are where piracy actually hurts.
For business applications, the software publisher markets the software for the businesses. They also know that those businesses can pay a lot of money for it too. That's why prices for Photoshop and some of Microsoft's business apps are so high - businesses will pay for it. Businesses won't pirate the applications because if they do, they are at risk for a pricey BSA audit. The audits are designed to cost the business as much money as possible, so thats the last thing they want, so they'll usually pay up.
Consumers really can't afford those applications, but it doesn't really matter since the software publisher doesn't expect them to buy it anyways. So consumer pirating of costly business applications costs software publishers nearly nothing. It may even help the publishers by having more people trained into using their product.
Consumer applications, however, are another matter. Businesses rarely buy those titles, so they can't hike the costs up - they need to make it easy for their target audience to buy (usally around $50). By pirating consumer applications, it will hurt the publishers. Thats why you see so many anti-piracy measures on games and other consumer apps. Some of Microsoft's decisions regarding Windows (such as forcing bundling, XP's activation, and no CDs with new systems) reflects this as well.
In the end, the people who pirate the games and consumer applications they love are hurting themselves. There wouldn't be a Quake III unless people had bought Quake I and Quake II. If you like to try out products, fine. But if you like it, pay the companies who created them.
(It's a nasty one coming...)
Told you not to vote for the dumb creedy bastard. From Microsoft to RIAA to MPAA to BSA and we'll see more of that DCMA...
And in the end, when our dumb greedy extreme conservative president choose 3 of like-minded conservative supreme court judges to completely dominate the supreme court, we will see even more of these damn laws.
Ironically, those politician who interfere with the technology world the most are the complete technological retards. Sometimes I wonder if there's a special reason why these people don't they go out and arrest those who make sweet love with farm animals?
But we can't critisize the presendent of the U.S, remember? It would be unAmierican, or even terroristic. Geeez! One down, three more years to go!
All these for some seven hundred questioned votes in Florida? It's a shame. It's an embarrasement.
(P.S. if I remember correctly, for almost a decade now, DoD- drink or die- has always been based in Russia, and DoD is a rather small release group. This can't be just DoD that's busted.)
But your opinion doesn't matter because you haven't changed your sig in a year, and its still as dumb as it was in the first place.
Moron, Snot-head, Shit-for-brains...
Geez. Can't you people be a little more tolerant? Not everyone thinks exactly like you. Didn't your mother ever tell you to keep your mouth shut if all you can do is insult people?
Duct tape, XML, democracy: Not doing the job? Use more.
shut the fuck up, it's called a joke!!! and i found it quite amusing at that. It's not POSSIBLE to not offend one of you oversensitive trolls looking to pick fights.
"Warez" pirates accused of breaking the law get their computers seized, publically criminalized before a trial when Commerce undersecretary Phil Bond said, "This is a serious crime. These people should do some hard time." because their accused activities are supposedly causing billions of dollars of damage and putting companies out of business.
Yet Microsoft has been found guilty in two courts for anti-competitive behavior, and stealing billions from it's consumers and competitors, and putting several of their competitors out of business; and they have never had a single computer seized and will only get a slap on the wrist as opposed to this "hard time" that Mr. Bond talks about.
I am tired of the cops chasing the relatively innocent masses, of major corporations developing good software and then charging an arm/leg/tit for it, of linux geeks touting their out dated and difficult junk as the answer, and of the whole "oh my god, its warez, shoot him" rally going on.
Having *yes I have time on my hands apparently* read through most of the posted links to the various advocacy groups posted in these threads, I can find no solid shred of evidence that the average joe US citizen who downloads Photoshop is bankrupting the economy, the industry, or adobe. When you have major companies in Asia and the Middle East or Europe using thousands of copies of a program without license, and they are making money, that's bad. When joe schmoo from home tries out photoshop after downloading it off BearShare or IRC, who gives a bleeding crap... as long as he is not making money off of it. It's not like he would shell out 300+ bucks for it anyway, so it's not a lost sale.
The DOJ and all these advocacy groups need to screw their heads on straight and go after the folks who don't pay and make money from it... leave the rest alone. Sure, technically it's illegal, but if they are not making money from it, who cares and who does it hurt (based on the no sale is not a lost sale principal). Typical number twisting by the industry that is looking for any out on taxes and insurance.
One more thing... all OSs should be free for the individual, non-business user. Its not like MS would loose much on it anyway, and their standards penetration would smother and delete Apple and all various *nix flavors in the home market.
Also check out Yahoo, the DOJ and Quote.com for more articles that don't need a registration
An absolute joke. First off, the stories that they're putting out are ludicrious. "4 Tiers, billions of dollars, hard criminals... blah blah blah". Weren't we at War?
I'm sure glad the US government is sinking undoubtedly billions in to this.. (I'm exagerating? Perhaps, but isn't this exactly what the government is doing when they inflate the "BILLIONS OF DOLLARS PROBABLY LOST"?) Nobody killed anyone in the name of piracy. No nations were brought to the ground by this. No corporations have gone bankrupt. NOTHING HAS HAPPENED.
Yet, the governments of the world insist on fighting this element that doesn't kill anyone and doesn't make anyone starve out on the street and this is something that probably NEVER will end.
From the government standpoint, this can't look much better for them. They get to tell you who the bad guy is and what wrong things they're doing, AND they get to say "LOOK! We caught them too!". They also get paid, they get to keep all the hardware they've confinsacted (whether it was involved in "wrong doing" or not), and it looks like they've gotten off their lazy asses and done something.
The FBI and other federal agents are the one's stealing, they've stolen hardware and alot of it. They've stolen taxpayer money wasting time on this instead of going after drug dealers and murderers. They've also stolen many people's time.
The authorities are no different than some other people that recently "struck" on a Tuesday as well. If you get what I mean.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Storys such as this makes me want to take down the software industry and say "screw it" not that I could. why is the goverment going after software pirets when drugs, killers, robers and the like still exist? The time and mony could be better spent cracking down on some real crime that actuly hurts people. I donno like gun sales?
:-)
As others before me have posted I can't see how componys lose mony. I have XP. No I would never buy it/need it. So microsoft does not lose mony.
I think this is only the start of it. Soon the FBI will be raiding houses for the software somone created because it is similer to some stupid patent that is too broad to begin with.
The worst thing about this is that Joe User does not know what is going on. They see 11 billion and think thay are sometype of Organized Crimering with guns and everything.
This type of actions inferiate[sic] me. I wish more and more I lived in a place that has no DMCA and expodetion[sic] treaty. Mybe I can buy a small island that is neer a transpacific fiber link
Island of the geeks. sounds like a bad sci-fi movie.
Sorry about the rant.
I keep forgeting is it "for the people by the people" or "for the corporations bu the corporations"
By offering my software up for the taking the software thieves are, at least some of the time, depriving me of a sale, so yes, they are depriving me of something. Also, there are things other than personal agreements that people in a modern society are expected to adhere to, for example, laws. In this case, the copyright laws.
That's the problem, this has nothing to do with the right to controll your work, it has to do with the "right" to controll market share. But that is not a right, and every other company in America has to deal with it.
You are correct about the law, but there is another law in the US called the Bill of Rights. In the information age, copying and free expression are becomming inseperable, you can't deny this without being left behind and you can't accept this without choosing between loosing copyrights or loosing freedom of speech. Checkmate!
Cavedog is most assuredly out of business. So is Sir-Tech, by the way. Microprose was not bought by Infocom -- Infocom was actually purchased by Activision many years ago.
It's easy to lok at a problem from the outside and talk about optimization, but once you get inside and take a good hard look at it, you often find that the situation is closer to optimal than you had thought, For instance, put yourself int the FBI's shoes, criticizing optimization of effort in the OSS community. The FBI could just as well complain that too many people program window managers and create themes (the most common complaint I hear) and that more OSS programmers should work on WINE, Bochs, Plex86, LIDS, OpenOffice, etc. The truth is that many wm programmers would not work on any project but a wm. (Therefore, they work most efficiently on wms.) Furthermore, if the wm projects were abolished, and their programmers went on to those other projects, they would lose time due to self-training and would not write as well or as quickly as if they were writing window managers. Many people also assume that window managers are a solved problem, and then they complain about Linux being behind Windows in the usability game.
In short, just becuase things don't look optimal to you doesn't mean that they are not close to a local optimum. (Perhapse that local optimum is far from the global optimum, but that transition is a whole other ball of wax, especially when the global optimum shifts rapidly. It's really difficult once you throw in the time variable and unpredictable variables.) If the FBI followed the shifting of the sands too rapidly, it would be an unstable organization, never able to set down long-term goals.
Also, the term "software piracy" is a propaganda trick to cause a mental association with more serious crimes. These people didn't hijack ships via digital means, they coppied CDs. Encourage your friends to call it copyright infringement as well.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
Bravo, brother...
People just don't realize that games are a lot of hard work, over a long period of time, by very talented people. We don't work for free.
People like him think their arguments are better if they say things like "Bzzt wrong" and such. But they only make themselves look like the arrogant unreasonable snobs that they are.
My conscience is quite clean.
...this doesn't mean you're not retarded, though. What you, and "many, many other people" fail to realize is that software is produced by people who would like to be compensated for spending 40+ hours of their week writing software. Pirating software means that their employer will have no money to pay their employees, so then the employees will be forced to riot and go steal your TVs and VCRs, since you're a fucking clueless hippy who'd be first against the wall when your "revolution" came about, anyway.
Then why hasn't congress passed any worthwhile laws recently? I mean, why do we still have SPAM, and those ads that spawn other ads when you close them, and why do I have to goddamn pass idiots in the right lane because they drive 54 in the left lane and won't pull over? Somebody should be taking care of this. That's what tax dollars are for. Me. As much as for Microsoft. If not more than. I'm not saying the FBI needs to drop what they're doing, I'm saying that congress needs to get off their lazy asses and get something done for once. God I hate them!
Sorry for ranting.
Synergy is your friend
A lot of people on here have stated that the government should just step back and let people pirate and the whole "it's not hurting anyone" mentality. What is not often quite obvious is organized crimes syndicates have taken to selling pirated software and pawning pirated software as legal copies to fund their illegal activities. (It's talked about in this article) These are the people that the government is going after, not joe blow who copied his friends version of Photoshop.
Secondly, (I don't intend on starting an OS war) but it is kind of hypocritical to say that all software should be free. Everything in the world cost money. Software is not cheap to produce. Wait, I take that back.. GOOD software is not cheap to produce. Companies invest heavily to research, develop, hire programmers, rent offices, marketing, etc to sell their software. Just because the final product is pressed onto a 10 cent CD doesn't mean that it does cost ten cents. People have argued, Companies should price it so high if they don't want people to pirate. Well, there is a thing called supply and demand. It is only because there is enough demand for it that companies can price it so high. Secondly, they price it high because it is a good product that they have invested time and money into. [Even with Windows, nobody is forcing anyone to purchase windows...and yes, you CAN get a PC without paying MS tax]. Well..that's my rambling..
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
We sound like the marijuana activists. Yes, the arguments make perfect sense, but no one other than us is interested.
Unlike the norml groups we have a wonderful, free alternative.
So fuck 'em, use linux.
"A matter of internal security, the age old cry of the oppressor" - Jean Luc Picard
So, that means that some of us are, or rather were pioneers when we copied Microsoft Flight Simlutaor 1.0 onto other disks to give to friends ... oh wait ... why start at the times of the good old 286, lets start at the times of the Commodore ... big time cracking there ... copying, etc etc etc ...
...
Razor 1911 are so to speak the grandfathers of this 'new' frontier of crime, for them ofcourse old lands
this is so funny. ya know why? because you don't like the DMCA... hahahahahahahahaha i can't stand it.
go to hell.
Why is it that so many people see this sting as a Bad Thing(TM)? This is actually a Good Thing(TM). Free/Open Source software benefit greatly when proprietary software is difficult to obtain.
Here's the train of thought: A user knows about both Windows and Linux, but only knows how to use Windows and doesn't really want to sit down to learn Linux, no matter how much his friends say it's easy to use. If the user could not pirate Windows, but instead had to pay some exhorbitant price for it, that will make Linux a much more attractive option and the user may actually start listening to his/her friends about Linux.
I think that software should compete based on their merits and the price of software is a merit of the software.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
I've spent 9 years in the scene.. and I've been in a bunch of groups.. I have respect for everyone in the scene. The problem lies w/ all the people that don't contribute anything and download warez off the web.. and copy cds from friends. The scene itself is very small (the immediate.. top courier groups, release groups)..
.. lots of incremental upgrades..
Pirates do release everything they can get their hands on.. but I can never keep up w/ all the shit.. a LOT LOT LOT of it is crap.. there's like 50-60 releases a day
hmm.. and i suppose 100 billion is barely enough for him to scrape by.. also i dont know about anyone else but i could care less what "projects" microsoft is pouring money into. Last time i looked it was snatching up satelites and stealing other peoples ideas, oh and one more thing, the microsoft product of the future? MS-DOS (Microsoft System-Dominating Operation Satelite)
lol.
VAX
I don't know of *companies* that died, but I do know that piracy contributed greatly to the Atari ST's death. I was an Atari enthusiast back in the 80's and know for a fact that the Atari "community" pirated freely. It got to the point the devolopers simply ceased to produce any more software. (This includes MS; it is not well know, but MS actually produced a word processor for the Atari ST, Microsoft ST Write.)
If you can find any old Antic magazines (an Atari enthusiast magazine) you can find many editorials pleading with the readers to stop with the rampant pirating.
Where the hell are you getting your numbers from? You think that Windows XP plus Office XP is $900? Hell, the retail price for that is more like $450, and the OEM price one would pay to have it pre-installed is well less than $200.
Of course, it doesn't surprise me that you don't know the real prices, since, like most linux people, you don't believe in paying for software.
The way advertising works is very basic math... a percentage of people who hear a commercial will purchase the product. Quite obviously this percentage won't be 100, yet this is exactly what the software giants claim when they speak of losses in the billions of dollars. Don't be fooled for a second if you think Philip-Morris wouldn't love for perfect coppies of their product to be freely distributed... eventually you'd have the addicts buying the original.
So here we have people distrubuting software at no cost to the company. Perhaps I get myself a pirated copy of a $600 product. Turns out I like the product very much, but my pirated copy doesn't come with the support I want, nor does it come with the discounted upgrades. So I purchase the product. The sofware company now has me as a customer. And why? Because I was able to get a copy of their product to test and play with. As it turns out they make an excellent product and I'm hooked (Blizzard).
Face it... a fixed percentage of people who know of your product will buy it. How do you make more money? Make sure lots of people know of your product. For Budweiser its commercials during the Super Bowl, for software it's this no-cost-to-the-company thing called "piracy".
Relating to the law s o fthermodynamics:
- Capitolism: you can win
- Socialism: you can break even
- Buddism: you can quit the game
Where does anarchy fit in this?. Anarchy would mean that I could super-spam the luser spammer directly, and not hear the cry of DDOS from them. My mom always told me that I could never start a fight, but I could finish it. When did we as a whole become a bunch of wusses who could not stand up for ourselves?make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
First of all, your Survior example is nonsense, because there is no law against making a copy of media that is broadcast on television or radio (although there is a law against broadcasting the copy or distributing copies of the copy).
Secondly, your rantings about "this is still a republic" is even more foolish. You forget that most regular people don't want to break the law. They won't pirate once they realize that it is illegal. Nor will they vote to make it legal.
Much software that is pirated is inexpensive crapware. I am sick of hearing this excuse "oh, I only pirate because the software is too expensive." Do you think that if one can't afford a Porsche, then one is justified in stealing it? Oh, I know you are going to argue that unlike the Porsche, when software is stolen, the original copy is still there. OK, well if one had a Star Treck replicator that could replicate a Porsche, would one be justified in using that to steal a Porsche?
You're a fucking douchebag, you know that? The Founding Fathers warned us real Americans about the likes of you. Don't believe in free speech? You SUPORT the Talliban (yeah I know its speelt wrong). "Just because you don't like a law" is what some of us hicks call "being American" and questioning authority and every other un-conservative thing that preserves freedom (cocksucker). Fuck You.
That's the most intelligent thing I've heard someone say on /. today. Here's $10, go buy yourself a steak.
Anyone who's studied sociology or criminal justice knows that it's the laws that create and define the criminal.
You're just a person going about your life, and if the legal structure in place defines any of your actions to be illegal, you suddenly become a criminal.
Maybe I'm out of line here, but I've always been of the opinion that "crimes" which do not result in harm to a victim should not be punished by jail time. Why incarcerate software pirates, pot smokers, script kiddies, and the like? You're not reforming shit. Give them monetary or civil punishment, community service, or something creative.
Don't make these people who are of little threat to others into a burden to taxpayers and potentially more criminal than before. (Ask any felon where they learned the most about better ways to pull off crimes....99% will say in prison. There's no wiser group than a bunch of guys who are learning from their mistakes.)
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
People who pay a 100gs just to help solve the worlds problems should have been put in bars a long long time ago. Long live the crack whores and the other upstanding citizens. If I got arrested for shit like that, I'd so be selling crank on the streets and busting caps off day 2 out of prison.
Remember boys and girls, stalk the rich, then steal from them and kill them. Don't kill people you know. Go psycho on the rich.
God spoke to me
Its called a bust, they can do shit thats illegal and reversable.
God spoke to me
That is the most idiotic thing I've ever heard on /.
How is it even POSSIBLE that hardware sales would lessen due to software piracy? If anything, DC sold (err...sells) *more* units because people knew it was easy to get pirated games for it.
It doesn't hurt to use your brain just a little bit before posting, honestly.
http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2001/December/01_crm_6 43.htm
Multiple Enforcement Actions Worldwide Snare Top "Warez" Leadership
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Attorney General John Ashcroft announced today that in three separate federal law enforcement actions federal
agents executed approximately 100 search warrants worldwide against virtually every level of criminal organizations engaged in illegal software piracy over the Internet. The three Operations, codenamed "Buccaneer," "Bandwidth" and "Digital Piratez," struck at all aspects of the illegal software, game and movie trade, often referred to as "warez scene."
"Today U.S. law enforcement initiated the most aggressive enforcement action to date against illegal software piracy," Attorney General
Ashcroft said. "Many of these individuals and groups believed the digital age and the Internet allowed them to operate without fear of detection
or criminal sanction. Today, law enforcement in the U.S. and around the world proved them wrong. These actions mark a significant milestone in
the efforts of U.S. law enforcement to work internationally to combat what is truly a global problem,"said Ashcroft.
"The execution of these search warrants mark the completion of the most extensive software piracy undercover investigation that the FBI has
participated in to date, and should send the message that trafficking in stolen goods - whether the property is in physical or electronic form - is a serious crime, and will be prosecuted," said Robert S. Mueller, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The targets of these Operations included both individuals and organizations, known as "WAREZ" groups, that operate within the United
States and in various nations around the world and specialize in the illegal distribution over the Internet of copyrighted software programs,
computer games and movies. The investigations will continue to identify and pursue additional targets in the months ahead.
Operation Buccaneer:
Operation Buccaneer was the culmination of an investigation that has been ongoing for over a year under the direction of the U.S. Customs
Service and the Justice Department's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, working in conjunction with the U.S. Attorney for the
Eastern District of Virginia.
Buccaneer marks the most significant law enforcement penetration ever of international organizations engaged in the illegal distribution of copyrighted software, games and movies over the Internet. The enforcement action involved the simultaneous execution of 58 search warrants
against high-level warez leadership and members within the United States and abroad. It is also the first enforcement action to reach across
international borders and strike at the most highly placed and skilled members of these international criminal enterprises.
Although one of the primary criminal enterprises targeted by Operation Buccaneer was the warez group known as "DrinkOrDie," which
consists of approximately 40 members worldwide, the investigation has led to infiltration and development of cases against individuals from
other top groups as well.
The organizations targeted by Buccaneer are highly structured and security-conscious criminal groups that specialize in obtaining the latest
computer software, games, and movies; stripping ("cracking") copyright protections; and releasing the final product to hundreds of Internet sites
worldwide. Because the "suppliers" to these groups are often company insiders, pirated products frequently are in circulation before, or within hours, of the release of the legitimate product to consumers. The groups are structured specifically to avoid detection. It is expected that hundreds of thousands of copies of software programs, computer games and movies will be recovered by this effort, with a retail value that is expected to be in the millions of dollars.
Buccaneer also marks an unprecedented degree of cooperation and coordination with international law enforcement in the fight against
Intellectual Property violations committed via the Internet. Through a variety of authorized means, the United States has shared evidence with
counterparts in the United Kingdom, Australia, Norway, and Finland to help further identify and investigate numerous significant foreign targets
engaged in this criminal conspiracy.
WAREZ n., (wares) (alt pronouc: ware-ez)
1. Commercial software, generally of a highly desireable nature, but with an exhorbitant price thus not allowing curious young hackers a chance to even try it.
2. Software in general.
What WAREZ is not:
1. A group of people.
2. An organization.
3. Anything but software.
A "warez" group is a group who is interesting the the afformentioned software. IT IS NOT SOME "CYBERGANG" OR OTHER SUCH DRIVEL. Gee, with reporting like this, one has to wonder if we are really at war with Afghanistan because of terrorism, or if this is all about oil.
See "Wag the Dog" for more information.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
48 hours after release? That's a long time in the warez scene.
offtopic maybe...
IMHO the real reason that some software is so expensive is this. The pricier your software the less you spend to support it. eg. the higher, the fewer. Ever notice that you have to pay for _both_ the software _and_ the support for it?
No matter what price you set your software at, there will be warez. All you do is set the saturation point. eg at $200 dollars 60% of potential customers will use it, at $20 - 90% will use it. Above this saturation point is the warez factor. I will guess 5% more usage. (I wonder what it really is)
This gives me hope for all OSS. To paraphrase a Dune quote. There is a place terrifiing to us, to MS. If you look in that dark place you will see Tux looking back.
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
The last few months I've downloaded games such as Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Civilization 3. I've played them for a couple of hours just to test them. My computer is a bit too slow for RTCW, and I just don't have the time to play Civ3, so I didn't buy them.
On the other hand, a few days ago I bought Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 for Playstation 2. It's a really great game. I wouldn't have bought it if I hadn't downloaded the Playstation version and tested it though. I've never played the previous versions at all (except THPS2 on Gameboy Advance, which I've tested about 30 minutes (pirated of course)), so I didn't really know kind of game it was until I tested it on Playstation.
There is also another reason why I usually download the games before I buy them. There aren't any good software/games-stores in the town where I live. You can't try the latest games in any of the stores, not even on PS2, and usually they don't get the games on the release date.
Getting too big is real problem in Warez industry.
I hope DoD can live. And others learn to keep the group small and efficent.
Busting DoD USA sites is nearly noting. There are lots of Warez groups here. Also there are lots of wanna be. Heh. When DoD goes down, PoD (Pirating or Die) gets on.After these operation, others going more underground for some time. Then return online with more secure ways and more secure rulez. Perhaps Warez CD price increase liddle bit.
Anyhow busting some DoD memberz is not solve the M$ and others problem. They want more money. Heh I'm so sure a man who taking 4000$ for year can buy WinXP, Office XP and Adobe Photoshop.
Day by Day software prices going up. Thats absolte mess. From Word 2.0 for Word XP I din't see anything change for my usage. But prices going mad.
Other side, pirating software is not good to developers. But another side is looking my face.
Without pirating someting I never became a Network Administrator. (Well how can I learn install, use Novell, NT etc. When I starting to using computers M$ hasn't establish an office in our country. I never see any Win3.1, Office 4.3, Novell 2.2, 3.1, Dos Xyz orginal boxes)
But this day pirating software is unnececary. Let leave that fools, who wants to pay that crappy software to use.
Greatly thanks to GNU. Without you I will never became that much powerfull on IT industry.
PS: Hey FEDS what about "Razor 1991"?. Their Warez Career more 15 years.
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
Another point:
Some of the articles I have read regarding this case tells of piracy of amongst other graphical programs running in at "$20.000" per client. Some would claim that this in itself i robbery. But lets have a look at it:
I claim that software piracy actually _helps_ the industry! Because without piracy most homeusers can't afford even one of these programs on one years salary. But it is from these homeusers that the professional industry recruite their workers. Nobody can become a professional without access to the software, which the industry denies the users by pricing the software out of a homeusers league.
Further I'd like to argue that a percentage of these users are, _because_ of their involment with "illegal software piracy" hired as professionals at all the topmost IT-firms in the world. Something they could never have accieved without paying _waaaay_ to much in tutoring or the likes.
Software piracy helps the software industry by making more professionals. Regardless of what the industry (BSA in particular, but they've got to survive somehow too) claim!
It's LOSING, people. LOSING.
Flame away!
Is it unethical - NO! (in my opinion)
The "download, try and buy-if-you-use-it" approach is even good for a country's economy. Follow me on this one:
- If people can properly evaluate the software before they buy it, beter-quality/more-adequate software will be chosen
- If the software is beter, this means that time lost in crashes, lost work, going around the software's limitations decreases - this implies a productivity growth ( spending your time solving software problems is not a productive activity )
- At the same time, the number of software packages bought doesn't decrease - people buy software because they need it (keep in mind this is the ones that use the "download, try and buy-if-you-use-it" approach), so if they couldn't try it before buying it they would either risky it with something or maybe think beter about it and not buy anything
- Since the same ammount of software is sold and the average productivity of the users will increase, this means that the average productivity across the country will increase - this means less $$$ spent for each $$$ made
As i see it, the same ammount of software is still sold, it's just that it's selected more on qualitiy and less on hype.Given the current quality of most software out there, any behaviour that promotes the "natural selection" of quality software over crap software is ethical and positive.
I wouldn't even let it near my box, even when paid for.
Violating the DMCA is now an act of terrorism.
But only when performed by an individual against a large corporation. Otherwise you may as well simply send the B52s in over any large US corp...
I've been selling warez for years (Europe). I was HARDLY using any of the stuff I was selling. People who were buying were mostly buying warez in order to see how it works, and if it really works. Cashing out even $100 bucks for an application was something you would do only when you really knew you'll use that app.
2 years ago, a game came out, named "Homeworld". I did have a 'warez' copy of it. However, I went out and bought *2* copies of it - because I love that game. 1 copy was for playing, and another was in case "anything goes wrong with 1st copy". I will never regret spending that money.
I've done the same with Quake 3, and appx 15 more games (got Winblows with computer, so didn't need to buy it).
I really wish to find out what f*cking money did any company lose because of me 'using' pirated software? All the CDs/tapes with warez I had I never even used.
Microsoft? Yeah and maybe Adobe, but really. ITs just as many as there are successful ISPs. And AOL is the Microsoft of ISPs
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Yes its a good idea, but no ones actually doing it.
Make open source profitable.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
More Info on the subject from Cryptome.
The licences/laws/formal-rules are not the core here, it's all a question of what's ethical to do and what's not:
why call it piracy when it about bill's cheap software toys and fraud when it s about sophisticated perfumes or jewelry ?
Beats me. I don t want to be a vocabulary inquisitor ala Stallman or stg, but why should we accept a term that would normally describes assaulting, killing, raping and stealing all possessions from ships at sea ?Can we call this "fraud on for-profit software" or stg shorter maybe...This sensationalism is maybe nice to those who want to think of themselves as rebels rather than geeks, but it serves IMNSHO M$lawyers more than truth.
EuroNews is also running this story (they don't have it on the web page though)... I thought I would never hear the day when news readers use the expression "warez group"! =)
I've always considered copying software to be pretty much what it exists for. I _will_ go and buy a product which I use and think is good, because then the developers of it will be encouraged to produce more/better. I think I own a number of windows licenses, which is really annoying since I only have one machine which runs it (Yes, Linux rules, but Dune Emperor doesn't run under linux). Unfortunately, it's really hard to buy a PC system _without_ a copy of windows. (Naked PCs (almost) illegal) And of course, it's illegal to transfer those licenses. I guess the pirates are doing the 'transferring' for me...
I would never advocate breaking the law but the laws surrounding DMCA, patents and EULA contracts are counter-productive. I don't think the companies that back these policies know what is good for them.
We must accept the idea that the nature of computing, filled with highly technical people, who need to perform research all of the time to stay on top of the market, with computers pieced together from various bits, not all of which were purchased, will always run into trouble.
The EULAs are completely silly. If I buy something I own it. Period. Full Stop. You can't tell me how I can use it too.
The real kicker of course is the patents that seem to last forever. It is amazing that so many works of 'art' never move into the public domain.
And of course the DMCA is total crap and only serves the needs of the companies.
Support EFF.
CAN YOU READ ENGLISH?
Selling service is not selling products.
You pay for code to be created, not for the code.
You pay programmers for their time and effort, not big greedy corperate CEOs.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Of course, people can organise themselves, but again that costs money. In the end, it is often easier for a corporation to buy influence through a lobbying movement than it is for people to persuade a politician themselves.
See my journal, I write things there
Take a look at some 0day warez websites and the software the offer (or rather, they claim to offer to trick you into banner clicks)
95% is complete and utter crap which noone in their right mind would ever download.
The U.S. is already a dictatorship. Did you miss the last election, or was the cheesy writing of that choreographed event too subtle for you?
Anyway, this whole kafuffle about software piracy is nothing new, and who the hell cares? The Evil Overlords WANT you to be plugged into your flickering boxes, because they make you soft and dumb and easy to control. GTA3 and all those retarded shooting games? Whether or not they create Columbine Kids is totally irrelivent. Fact is, the power/money/establisment people THINK that such games raise the danger level of society, which makes it easier for heavier internal security measures to be passed into law.
No matter what the playing field happens to look like over the next ten years, whether you have to pay through the nose, duck arrests or trade software in a free for all, Joe Asshole WILL be plugged in, he WILL think that his choice to be plugged in will have been un-affected by the general miasma of social programming which surrounds us all, and as a result, his brain WILL be all mushy and ripe for 'instruction' and easy control.
What are YOU going to do about it?
-Fantastic Lad
If as many argue, computers are like brains, or like extensions of our brains, then the patterns of code which flow through them are the thoughts and the ideas.
Now, I don't charge for my ideas, even though they take life energy, (Time, food, security), to generate. I share them freely. (A little too freely, some of you might suggest!)
The whole charade of selling ideas, and licences for ideas was pretty bloody weird to begin with. Just because something takes hard work doesn't mean that it must automatically be compensated. If you don't want an idea shared, then DON'T TELL IT TO ANYBODY! Like any secret, once you let the cat out of the bag, it's out of your control. It's ridiculous to imagine people running around trying to sell limited licences for secrets and punishing people who re-tell a secret to somebody else. (Except that's what the whole spy/espionage/cold-war culture was all about. . . How nice was that to live in?)
And yet, millionaires are made and broken today based on this farcical software industry, and as such people have come to accept the reality of it. They give it power by playing along with it, as though it were something with actual legitimacy.
The fact is that ideas need to be communicated in order for them to thrive. But our society has become increasingly dependent upon maintaining a thought restriction and control system, (complete with 'Thought Police'!). This is making all our lives miserable in many ways which are invisible because we have already accepted the premise that ideas can and should be controlled by those who think them up.
Basically:
1. An operating system should be made by the computer manufacturer and come as part of the system, burned on a rom. It should be part of the cost of manufacture, as it is an essential part of the computer; it should be free and open for people to manipulate as they please.
2. The kind of games we see today should basically not exist under a sensible system. The enormous effort and resource which goes into their manufacture is moronic, like the crazy hedonistic parties the Roman emperors threw; highly enjoyed by the participants, but which can only be maintained at enormous cost to the civilization. That cost being, the sale and ultimate control of thought.
I find games boring, and bloat-ware lame. I steal and distribute it all in the hopes that the whole architecture of the software industry will collapse under the weight of its own insanity. I'm probably only helping to speed us toward the end of things.
Pardon me. There are some gentlemen in black at my front door. . .
-Fantastic Lad
"Millions of dollars are wasted on perceived need.
Not that much has really changed since I was using Wordperfect in Dos 3.3 or doing DTP in GEM or using Lotus 123."
Lotus Approach and Organizer are stuck in a time warp, there has been no significant change to those applications since 1994 (apart from long filenames - wow, I can now use names which contain characters which are forbidden by most CD filesystems). I started using SmartSuite in 1995 and 3 versions later there was no real change to any of the applications except Word Pro could handle HTML documents in SS 96 and later.
It is no wonder that SS Millienium can now be bought for under £10 in many places.
Microsoft Office is little better, HTML support is the only thing which has increased its usefulness to me in any way since I first used it in about 1993.
I could go back to using Office 4.3 if it wasn't for those people who insist on sending me Word documents, what's wrong with RTF for a simple letter (or even plain text). Windows Write would be fine if only it had a word count feature.
If it wasn't for internal modems, CD writers and mp3 software I would still be using Windows 3.1
Notice that all but the mp3 software is a matter of hardware support. Not animated paperclips or having my spelling corrected while I type. Not web pages which won't display without 12 different plug-ins.
So i have mixed feelings about this.
first, I think that many people are missing an
important fact. As a community of developers
and open source advocates, a group which is
based on ideas about software (et al) I dont
think that piracy is justifiable. Theft is
theft. I'd be pretty hopping mad if someone
'pirated' my GPL'ed source and stuck it into
their closed project.
On the other hand pirates and warez pups have
always been part of the topology of closed
source software. And as many have already
pointed out more eloquently then myself, it
almost never actually hurts sales. As i under
stood the way of things, was that pirates were
beneath the notice of law enforcement, not being
worth the effort to track.
So why these busts? It could be that the DOD is
bored, or someone felt the need to fire up
carnivore. Maybe they're just misguided, and
think that they're preventing a real crime. Maybe
the sagging economy is making software makers
bitch harder. who can say?
i think we should consider before condoning piracy. on the otherhand i think its stupid
to spend tax money on busting them.
--------------------- Turn evil by smiling.
48 hours? What about 0-day?
If as many argue, computers are like brains, or like extensions of our brains, then the patterns of code which flow through them are the thoughts and the ideas.
Now, I don't charge for my ideas, even though they take life energy, (Time, food, security), to generate. I share them freely. (A little too freely, some of you might suggest!)
The whole charade of selling ideas, and licences for ideas was pretty bloody weird to begin with. Just because something takes hard work doesn't mean that it must automatically be compensated. If you don't want an idea shared, then DON'T TELL IT TO ANYBODY! Like any secret, once you let the cat out of the bag, it's out of your control. It's ridiculous to imagine people running around trying to sell limited licences for secrets and punishing people who re-tell a secret to somebody else. (Except that's what the whole spy/espionage/cold-war culture was all about. . . And how nice was that to live in?)
And yet, millionaires are made and broken today based on this farcical software industry, and as such people have come to accept the reality of it. They give it power by playing along with it, as though it were something with actual legitimacy.
The fact is that ideas need to be communicated in order for them to thrive. But our society has become increasingly dependent upon maintaining a thought restriction and control system, (complete with 'Thought Police'!). This is making all our lives miserable in many ways which are invisible because we have already accepted the premise that ideas can and should be controlled by those who think them up.
Basically:
1. An operating system should be made by the computer manufacturer and come as part of the system, burned on a rom. It should be part of the cost of manufacture, as it is an essential part of the computer; it should be free and open for people to manipulate as they please.
2. The kind of games we see today should basically not exist under a sensible system. The enormous effort and resource which goes into their manufacture is moronic, like the crazy hedonistic parties the Roman emperors threw; highly enjoyed by the participants, but which can only be maintained at enormous cost to the civilization. That cost being, the sale and ultimate control of thought.
I find games boring, and bloat-ware lame. I steal and distribute it all in the hopes that the whole architecture of the software industry will collapse under the weight of its own insanity. Sad thing is that it benefits the Evil Overlords for people to be distracted by their flickering boxes, (makes you soft and stupid and easy to control), so this state of affairs where people are inundated with software/programming will likely continue regardless of whether it's free, stolen or paid for.
Pardon me. There are some gentlemen in black at my front door. . .
-Fantastic Lad
>but it is always nice to institute friendly
>governments in parts of the world that are
>close to countries that are rich in oil.
Hm. Friendly governments are especially useful if you need to build a pipeline through that country.
Ok, lets watch mainstream media screw up once again. "Pirate cells" "Pirate cells called WAREZ" WTF is with that? The last I checked, they were called warez groups, warez refers to the software, not the group, and DOD the biggest pirate "cell" out there? The feds have completely missed the boat. Perhaps the boyz at DOD were busted for being pathetically stupid. The only time you ever hear about warez busts is when they decide to try and make money off their cracks. As it is, theone story mentioned Razor1911 and RiSC. razor is still around, but i havn't seen a RiSC release in ages. I don't particularly advocate piracy. I don't advocate throwing money away either. If software is good, I buy it. But it would be foolish not to try it first. I consider the pirates as providing a service, actually. Try before you buy. You get to testdrive cars. They let you testdrive UNCRIPPLED software... Just a thought.
According to an article at BBC News on-line,
So, I guess after taking them down, on-line piracy will fall by 95% and the problem will be solved for a while, huh?And why can't journalists ever tell the difference between "hacker" and "cracker" anyway?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The numbers that these companies are quoting are completely ridiculous. I mean, the people who pirate software are people who simply wouldn't use the software if they couldn't get it for free. Therefore, they're losing no money!
Now mod me up to 4 or 5 like you guys have done for every other guy who has said this.
What, you dorks thought that the new laws they just passed were about terrorism? Bullshit! In the past few months the feds have swooped down into the clinics providing cancer and AIDS patients with legal marijuana in CA, OR... Now they're going after 'piracy' though there is no mention of any actual money making happening here.
/.
They never wanted to go after real criminals in the first place, they are simply using this as a way too convenient excuse to go after anyone they want. This is war on the American people by an unelected fraud right-wing psycho government.
Now that we're 'safe' from warez kiddies and cancer patients and they've rounded up all the Arabs, who do you think is next? Probably people posting politically incorrect stuff on
Oh...
first of all, I have a hard time beleiving anyone by the name of "Allan Doody" .. and second .. 1 to 2 terrabytes? where are these kids getting their hard drives from? and where can I get them?
I wonder how many of these kids had "abandonware" and the like on their computers, and how would the government tally up the damages if the computer was full of programs by companies long out of business?
So... uh.... who said it again? Philip Bond? The Commerce Department? The BSA? Nice journalism.
It's good to know that the government has stopped all the real crime so they can focus on people pirating Quake and Windows ME (remember ME stands for "suckbox crash enhancer").
seven two six five
seven four six one seven
two six four two e
When the big companies whose whining prompted these raids actually finds out who these people are, they should pay them. Piracy has been the friend of big software for years.
Consider two scenarios:
Scenario 1: Adobe releases Photoshop. No one ever makes an illegal copy of it. So kids who want to goof around with pix they got on the Internet don't use it; they use a shareware Paint Shop-type app instead. If the bug bites him, he'll probably spend a lot of time on that piece of software, getting better and better with it. A small percentage of these kids might get their parents to spring for a copy of the real thing for Christmas or something, but don't count on it.
Meanwhile, Mr. Graphic Design Company CEO needs a tool to use in his design shop. Does he go with Photoshop? Maybe -- it has a lot of options. Big problem, though -- he'll have to train people to use it. Of course, there are some real hotshots out there with Paint Shop experience. Hmmm...maybe I only use Paint Shop, and outsource to a specialty company when I need Photoshop work. In fact, maybe I don't _need_ Photoshop; these guys are getting a lot of the same effects using the more primitive shareware tools.
Scenario 2: Adobe releases Photoshop. Individuals, mostly people who can't afford personal copies (students, kids at home, pros or amateurs at home) pirate it. They develop proficiency in it. Companies (who can be easily audited) more or less always buy licensed copies -- and they do buy it, because their employee base is all fluent in Photoshop!
Thanks, software piracy!
phil
This is what happens when geeks vote Rupublican...we get a dicatator named Bush and his gestopo leader ashcroft
That is the most utterly clueless article and statements I've read in a long time. We need to get a few gross of clue sticks and go on a search-and-destroy.
The ocean parts and the meteors come down
Laid out in amber, baby.
Yes I agree with you. This is the sort of attitude among Linux users that really pisses me off.
Very few people want to be arrested or jailed. In an ideal case of civil disobedience, the government finds your activity to be so widespread and unstoppable that they realize enforcing an unjust law isn't worth it, given the incredible measures required by enforcement (years in jail for copying some files with no intention of making a profit?) And maybe an unjust law is repealed.
Now, oftentimes things don't go that way. People get arrested, locked up, etc. Some people think this part of the process is the be-all-end-all-- that people should want to go to jail, and in the absence of that desire, there's no message to be taken away from the situation. And that's a shame.
The folks in Boston who threw tea into the harbor wore disguises and did their work under the cover of night. They probably had families, and didn't feel that rotting in jail or the stocks was a great way to demonstrate their disaffection.
And what do you know? Respectable people nowadays say such favorable things about those idiots, despite their desire not to face the consequences.
You can have copyrights and freedom of expression at the same time. The only time copyright restricts expression is when that expression involves verbatim copying of someone else's expression.
If there's a riot in progress in my city, and I'm stopped by some cop who has nothing better to do than bust me for going 8 miles over the speed limit, I am going to be pissed. And with a certain amount of justification.
We're being told that the FBI needs enormous resources to fight the war on Terrorism. We're told that they need extreme new police powers. I'm not saying that we should put all other law enforcement matters on the back burner, but if what we're being told is correct, we should damn well put the less important ones there. Nobody was even arrested in this scheme. The government poured an enormous number of agent-hours into capturing a handful of Warez-crammed boxes... That will no doubt be replicated within a week.
... against yesterday's pirates. Now, when anyone can just use a p2p program to share a program they've ripped, cracked or made an image file out of, why would warez groups follow the old model of distribution at all? Oh, so they can be 3l33t and stuff. Look, except for very expensive programs, all you need is a copy, a skilled cracker or two, and a p2p program and the net will take care of the rest.
By the way, if the feds let all the pirate groups copy their releases and the pirate groups distributed them to all others, how many warez owners are there who've just gotten a little extra from their government this year? Isn't this a lot like if the government grew pot, sold it to 50 people, let the 50 people sell it to all their friends and then got around to busting the 50? Ohh, they got 50 drug dealers! Wow! Meanwhile, a couple of thousand hippies are stumbling around high on government pot.
Makes you wonder how they're fighting the war on terror, doesn't it?
Someone who I saw speak once said that in some third world companies, it's difficult at first to convince people to use free software instead of illegal copies of windows- until, that is, signs go up saying things like "Use illegal Windows = go to jail for 10 years". Apparently outside of the US the anti-piracy folks are less subtle, and there's no better advertisement for free software in the whole world.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Excellent gag...
Reminds me. As a friend of mine one said: "I only wish they'd tell me where that street is"
I don't know where these sites are usually located. It could be universities, isps, companies. I'm sure they are losing a LOT more money than the software companies that "loose" money to people who probably wouldn't even buy the software because there is simply too much warez being released for anyone to actually use even a small portion of what they were getting.
So basicly:
How many sites?
What is the average costs in hardware per site?
What is the average monthly cost in bandwidth per site?
What is the cost in human resources that were lost due to people spending time on the warez instead of the actual work?
Now these are figures I could actually believe in terms of real losses.
The Linux companies also got most of their software for free.
So in a way, "piracy" (using the term jokingly) is responsible for those companies' existence in the first place.
Someone called into the G. Gordon Liddy show about this the other day, but forgot the details.
I remember the incident in the late 80's or early 90's a software company sold a copy or two of some sort of management software to the feds. DOJ I believe.
The agency then copied and copied, sold copies to other agencies and other folks, etc.
FINALLY, years later, after the firm was out of business or nearly bankrupt, they were heard in court but I believe the case was settled before a judgement was made.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Look, just because you don't like a law doesn't mean you won't face the consequences if you break it. That's what civil disobedience is all about, taking absurd responsibility for an unjust law. What these idiots were doing was breaking the law hoping to never face the consequences.
... at which point you may well find yourself serving hard time for living in the same apartment as your lover (this happened in Texas a few years ago, brought to you compliments of a local DA of the religiously right persuasion and a century old state law no one remembered remaining on the books), or doing some other innocuous thing (like singing a copyrighted song in public, say in a bar with your drunken friends) which common sense would tell you would never be illegal, but our lawmakers and/or their corporate paymasters say otherwise.
Well, not to defend the warez dudez, for they were (and probably still are) idiots, but you should be very careful what you wish for. There are so many laws on the books these days at so many levels of government restricting and legislating virtually every aspect of our lives that each of us, just about every day we get out of bed, is breaking a number of laws just by living out our daily lives. Without ever meaning to, and certainly without malice.
What allows us to live out our daily lives? The fact that these laws are (almost) never enforced, at least until some local police officer or official develops a personal vindetta against you
So the argument that enforcing unjust and absurd laws, which many of us feel copyright in the digital age to be, is a screwed up priority in light of current, more pressing events, isn't so misguided, particularly given that our very ability to conduct our normal, everyday lives depends in no small part on the selective enforcement of a plethora of existing laws anyway.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
"They seek an Internet devoid of rules or law."
Wasn't that the original intent of the Internet, to allow free and unrestricted sharing of information across a wide network?
What if the cart of paper happens to be uncut hundred dollar bills worth 20 million dollars?
It isn't so much that the treasury department misses the few thousand dollars it cost to buy the paper and print the bills. The economy wouldn't suffer because there's an extra 20 million in cash floating around. But the thieves still made off with 20 million dollars in cash. You can sit around talking about how the economy doesn't suffer, and how the treasury department didn't suffer, but there's no doubt that the culprits have 20 million extra dollars.
It's kind of the same thing. There is a way of saying "look, microsoft didn't lose any money." But, there's also a way of saying "look, these people have in their posession 20 million dollars worth of software they shouldn't." It doesn't really matter to me whether or not microsoft actually suffered. It is enough that they could potentially suffer. Laws were broken, the pirates have software they did not obtain legally, and they were so proficient and brazen that the FBI actually paid attention to them.
You are right about the microsoft thing being crap, however. :)
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
I think you meant to type "a War on some Drugs."
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
At any rate, so long as we are still a republic, that means the people are ultimately in control.
What do the NSA and the CIA do? Are "the people" setting their agenda? Do major news outlets report on their activities?
Generally big companies, special intrest groups, etc get what they want because they are the ones that whine to the politicians.
s/whine/donate/
It's all about money and power, as usual.
And I bet you if the FBI starts locking up normal people over things they've been doing for years, people will speak up, and with a loud voice.
The FBI locks up peaceful, productive, taxpaying citizens who happen to smoke marijuana. The United States has the world's largest prison population, and that is due to our insane War on (Some) Drugs. People in prison for possession of marijuana are not criminals. They are political prisoners.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I got to Duke, and frankly I thought failing my physics exam was bad. Imagine coming back from an exam and the FBI waiting at your door. Hmmm...I can see it now...
"Dear Proffessor,
I am writing this email to you from a computer lab, and I was wondering if I could have an extension as the FBI confiscated my computer which had my term paper as well as 5,000 illegal movies on it."
Isn't that entrapment?
Er. I guess the police do the same thing during sting operations. Kind of gives me a dirty slimy feeling to know that they are out there, watching us. Monitoring our every move.
The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout
You're crazy. Capitalism has more than its fair share of abuses, but your alternative is unworkable.
The design for, say, a Ford F-150 is just an IDEA. It's the top selling truck in the US, I believe. But nobody complains that GMC or Honda can't make F-150s.
The recipe for Papa John's pizza is just an IDEA, but for some strange reason only that particular chain sells the stuff.
If someone else started selling Stephen King novels that Stephen King had nothing to do with, there would be prosecution in a hurry.
If a company makes closed source software, they're making money off their idea, and they're keeping that idea to themselves. Just like designing a truck, or making a recipe, or writing a book. You have to pay for it, and you can't duplicate it and distribute it. This is no different. If these ideas 'must be public domain', then there's no reason for anyone to go into business.
If you hate the concept of proprietary software, exercise your free market, capitalistic right to not use it. You have no right to steal it.
This is a direct result of the Patriot Act. I just knew that when Asscrust threw out our Constitution and Bill of Rights that they would sson be using their new found "powers" to crack down on any areas of corporate loss, real or perceived.
Of course he told us to "trust him", that he wouldn't use the power inappropriately. But I trust power to corrupt. This was a cash jackpot waiting to cracked into. How much do you bet that the people caught are threatened with being charged with terrorism?
Face it: The government Mafia needs to declare large sections of the population as criminals to have the reason to keep us in check. It's just a machine to make MONEY.
I think that they did face the consequences... seems to me that there was a bit of a messy war that happened not long after that--no doubt many of those same disguised Bostonians were wounded or killed during the Revolution. I don't think that was civil disobedience so much as a step on the path to inciting a war, which is what happened.
But that brings up a good point--there is a difference between conducting legitimate civil disobedience and just breaking the law to get something you want. I doubt that many of these pirates were truly interested in making a statement about unjust laws. IMHO, civil disobedience requires the willingness to be arrested and jailed, very publicly, in order to make your point. It is, as you say, to draw attention to an unjust law, and the best way to do that is to force the public to realize the absurdity of the actions versus the consequences. A lot of those who would currently claim the mantle of civil disobedience seem to want to skip the consequence part. That's understandable, but regardless of the fact that the law may be unjust, it's a necessary part of the game. If they don't want to do time, they need to hire a lobbyist and work inside the system. Otherwise, people need to stop whining and make their choices.
No relation to Happy Monkey
Public Libraries are a threat to democracy. They allow people to read books for free, which is much like Pirating Software, Music and Movies. Publishers cannot survive if people can read books for free.
Public Libraries could be considered terroristic because they represent a large scale Liberal attempt to weaken our economy. Germs can be spread on the pages of the publicly distributed and unchecked books, so they also serve as a vehicle for Bio-Terrorism. Many Subversive thoughts are also spread in the books, such as communism, terrorism and the homosexual agenda of murdering children.
For the sake of America, Democracy and God, Public Libraries must be stopped and their books must be burned. it's the only way to protect our Freedoms.
Sales Doctrine applies at the sale. If there is no license presented before purchase, then there is no license attached to the sale.
This is especially important with licenses that would turn the sale into a "lease". Since it was not presented when you "bought" it, it is a sale no matter what the license on the inside said. The courts even ruled this in the adobe case.
The Feds are the FBI, DOJ, BATF, US Marshalls, etc., who crack down on violations of the law. The Fed is the Federal Reserve. So saying "Fed Raids..." means Alan Greenspan, et al got into the business of fighting software piracy.
The campus internets are the last bastions of the internet as it was supposed to be. Peer computers and subnets operating as equals. All else in the US is now firmly in large corporate hands. Whose your ISP? ATT eventually.
I fear that this stupid Warez trash and September 11th will be used as a cover issue to kill freedom. Who here really wants a copy of "Planet of the Apes" or M$ Office? Such stuff is garbage and I'll be happy when there's less of it flowing on the net. But I'm much more concerned about the levels of proof used for these raids and newer dumber laws like USA and Patriot acts. Away go the computers to sit for months or years while "experts" try to extract "evidence" of your wrongdoing. Speedy trial, right.
I'll be very pissed if my favorite Debian mirrors go away.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,49013,00 .html
./'s have downloaded an ISO or three? Well, your're a fscking thief that needs to do some time:
, 00 .html
some choice quotes:
> One of Benedict's hobbies was trading computer
> games with, he says, friends and casual
> acquaintances contacted through
> bulletin board systems and even word of mouth.
and
> "After I got into the house, I thought it had to
> do with the computer games," Benedict says. "I
> thought they were going to seize my illegal
> copyrighted computer games."
Uh, folks, just in case you're confused, America is no longer the bastian of freedom that is used to be. Stopped being that way, probably, some time around the 1920s, but I'm sure American Indians would disagree with me on that...
I can't wait until the next generation of postal inspectors/FBI washouts discover gnutella... How many
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,49026
A choice quote:
> This is not a sport," Commerce undersecretary
> Phil Bond said. "This is a serious crime. These
> people should do some hard time."
My model is that of America as the new China... where freedoms have been given up for the periodic showcase bust... where lives and careers are ruined for political convience and where priorities have been completely lost by those responsible for making sure life is livable.
As survalence (in the name of "The War Against Terrorism") escalates the frequency of these types of "busts" will increase... Mark My Words!
All is not lost, however. The age of encrypted hard drives, 802.11b access points (for plausable deniability and perponderance of the evidence) and solid-state USB keychain disks holding encryption keys (remember, they have a right to search your house, not your person... as long as you stay off the property during the search) is upon us! I would also encourage cross connection of subscription service, registering your phone number under a different name from that which is on your lease/morgage and building community networks that provide the cover of plausable denabiltiy.
The really cool thing about this emerging situation is that it is *very* easy to take advantage of. Find out who was busted in your area, research who the primary investigators were, establish anonymous (use a different pay phone each time and turn off your cell before you go) rapor that leads to seemingly useful information and then bust your boss for failing to give you that raise (by having a snuff flick mailed to his house using his credit card)... hell, if you're creative you could creat an entire neighborhood of pedofiles.
Let this be not only a lesson about Linux and the GPL, but about banks in America. This kind of behaviour is completely sanctioned by federal banking laws. Most people don't realize it, but federally insured banks are allowed to whatever they want, whenever, they want, with your money and you can't do a damn thing about it.
As someone who tries very scrupilously to obey the law, I ask this with no neferious intentions other than protecting my own solvency against misguided or perhaps even malicious government or banking beaurocrats:
Are there any countries one can recommend where a private person's finances are protected against this kind of unilateral action, where some kind of due legal process is required before one's accounts are frozen? Although I live in the United States, I bank online and use direct deposit, so I don't really need physical access to my bank all that often.
How do Canadian laws compare? German Laws? Swiss Laws?
After reading this nightmare scenerio I have more than half a mind to switch banks outside of this country in the very near future. Can anyone offer any pointers to hard information, comparisons, and guidance for individuals wishing to do their banking offshore to protect themselves against this sort of thing, what pitfalls there may be (legally as well as financially), and so on?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Say I don't like you. I have rocks. You have a rifle. I try to hurt/kill you by throwing rocks at you repeatedly. You shoot me. I'm bitter about it?
Rather than have "(Free Reg. Req., blah blah)" appended to every freaking NYTimes link, why don't you just use an acronym like (FRR) linking to an everything2 node that explains it for the 3 people who have never visited NYTimes and have never seen a slashdot reference to a NYTimes article.
bp
The article repeatedly refers to the 'warez group', 'warez network' and the group in question as being a prominent 'warez unit'.
j00 h4d b3tt3r b3 0n 7h3 100k0u7 4 7h3 w4r3z, 1f j00 p155 7h3m 0ff 7h3y w!11 c0m3 2 j00r h0us3 4nd r1p 0ff 411 j00r s0f7w4r3!!! 7h3y 0wnz j00!!! 1f j00 r n07 w34r1ng 7h3 0ff1c14l 3mb13m 0f w4r3z j00 w1ll b b34t3n d0wn in 7h3 57r3375!!!! 0r w0r53: 7h3y w1ll 3m41l 411 7h31r fr13nd5 4nd t311 7h3m j00 sux0rs!!! |2un 1n ph34r!! ph33r the w4r3z!!!
I know my leet sux, no need to tell me. Sorry.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Sorry, it had to be done.
12 billion in losses seems an awfully high number. Hypotethically speaking (since no one actually commits crimes anymore), if I download Maya at 5k a pop retail, play around with it, decide that no, in fact I don't have any use for creating effects from Contact, and trash it, exactly what is the cost to the company that created? Or am I expected to drop 5k on a package only to decide it's useless. Yes, this is what demo's are for, but if I'm not making any money from the use of the software (even indirectly by winning contests/building resumes) then what money do they expect to recoup from me?
Scrupulous people will but the software if they see profitability in it, or just for the tech support/maunals/ability to not break into a cold sweat when the IRS knocks and asks how they came upon that particular asset. There will always be a few people who want something for nothing, but I don't think they account for 12 billion anything. In a free market (not that this is), the consumers decide what the best products are, and their producers stay in business. The only software I've ever made money with is Photoshop, and I bought in and have paid the huge upgrade fees for years, but it's worth it, I more than make the price of the fee, and it's a fabulous piece of software.
I worked at the economics department back in july of 2001. I started working with 5 other northeastern university students in the systems administration department. One of which was Chris Tresco, the member of DoD.
They all were a great bunch of people, really friendly, and down-to-earth. Summer is pretty slow at MIT because not too much goes on besides grad student work.
The first day of work i went through an "initiation" in which we went out to eat at the "Cheesecake Factory" resturant in Cambridge, a very posh resturant. My initiation was to select the appetizers for the rest of the department, if they liked my choices then i would become a part of the group, otherwise... i don't know. The talk around the table focused on our manager Lisa talking about an ex-employee who used to screw around with rather ugly women, and how he was a man-whore, etc. Very casual, even almost vulgar conversation. I felt very at ease, they were close, and quickly became friendly towards me. The bill was quite expensive, but of course MIT paid. This was monday.
Later that day Chris and the other guys showed me the systems, and explained what each machine did, and the basic design of the network. I noticed a rather large file server, and when i asked what it did, Chris explained that it was his own machine. I browsed the web
Tuesday rolled around and I was updating different professors homepages with a new design template. Not too much really, i finished the job quickly. Later in the afternoon, the manager Lisa came into our office and asked us "Do you guys need anything?". Chris turned and said "I could use a beer." another guy said "How about a foot massage?", i turned and said "I could use a back rub." She laughed and returned to her office. I spent the rest of the day updaing the website, and watching the guys messaround with the mp3 server, and the music one guy was making with Cubase.
I had yet to fill out any working papers as it was only my 2nd day working.
Wednesday rolled around, and the day started as normal. Chris showed me his computer, and i noticed the 3+ terabytes of disk space it had. He casually informed me that it was a DoD "Drop box", and that if i created a directory with the name of a software, or mp3 title, that in the directory the next day it would appear there, almost like magic.
Later in the afternoon, the manager called me into her office, i thought she was going to have me fill out some forms for work. Once i was in her office, she had me sit down.
"About that joke you made yesterday..." she said.
"Umm, which one was that..." I replied
"The one about the back rub.... i didn't appreciate that, it was a direct insult to my authority." She said.
"Oh, that one.... I'm sorry, but i didn't really mean anything by it, the other guys were joking around as well, and i didn't think anything of it. I replied, suprised.
"Well i didn't think it was very professional, and with the Professors and expensive equipment we have here at MIT, i expeceted a higher level of professionalism from you." She said.
"Oh.... well you guys all seemed to be pretty relaxed. With no dress code, and you're down-to-earth, and friendly personalities, you all seemed like a bunch of bar-mates, and just happen to work together. I thought my comment was right at home. I'm sorry, but i guess i shouldn't have said that afterall." I said shocked.
"Well, i'm sorry, but i'm going to have to let you go." She said quickly.
"You mean i'm fired? Don't i get any warning, or second chance or anything? I mean... i didn't really mean anything by it, it was just friendly banter. I said be wildered.
"I'm sorry, but i feel that it upsurped my authority, and we expect a high level of professionalism here. She said.
"Well thats funny, because with the conversation at lunch on monday, the birkenstock sandals, t-shirts, shorts, and most of all, the warez server in the other room, i didn't really see a high level of professionalism, if any whatsoever." I snapped.
"I'm sorry, my decision is final, you can leave now if you like. Or finish out the rest of the day..." She said, and looked away.
I got paid for the rest of the week, and left. Then I heard this story.
I guess she'll not be working long after this, it was right under her nose. Good managering i guess.
I'm glad i got fired.
"Charging a man with murder in this place is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500" -Apocalypse No
Ever notice that a lot of piracy is of big-ticket, high-end software packages (Maya, Lightwave, Photoshop, Visual Studio, etc)?
And that a lot of it is done by college students?
People that, by and large, like to play with things, but don't have much money?
No college student or tinkerer is going to drop $2500 on a software package that he/she is only going to play with.
Many companies offer "educational" licenses, but usually the discounts are only a couple hundred bucks off the retail, so legal software is still out of reach of most people, not to mention the discount is only applicable to students.
My solution?
Non-commercial use licenses.
Sell licenses that basically just offsets the cost of the media, with the restriction that the software can't be used for commercial purposes.
Corporations (the main market for high-end software) still pay full price, but students and tinkerers get the software for virtually nothing.
The software companies lose nothing (since people that can't afford the software at retail prices won't buy it anyways) and create a huge base of (mostly young) people that will potentially become commercial customers in the future.
Enforce non-commercial use the same way we enforce educational use now, with EULAs and, when necessary, feds.
Yes, there will be cheaters, but there are cheaters now, and I don't see the software industry suffering.
The way I see it, everyone wins.
Big companies pay big money, kids making weird flash movies in their parents' basement, don't.
C-X C-S
Maybe this raid was a result of post sept 11 international cooperation. Maybe it was a result of increased police powers. It's nieve to assume that these enhanced powers will only be used to fight terrorists. Leaders are increasingly doing intelligence on their adversaries. Clinton looked at his opponent's FBI files. Bush Senior was head of the CIA for chrissakes (yes, I know they're not the FBI but they are an intelligence organization)
It should be assumed that any new powers granted to the police will eventually be used for whatever the hell the state wants to use them for. In the US, this means continued dominance of the two major political parties.
Warez are just a secondary issue in all this. Personally, I've used them since I've gotten tired of being dicked around by software companies. For example, I bought a macromedia suite of software as a student. When I installed it I got the message that it was for 'educational use only' and could not be used for commercial projects despite the fact that I had paid somthing like $200 for it (can't remember the exact figure). I tried to return it, as the EULA said that I should do and the store refused. I tried contancting Macromedia and they gave me the run around. " fax the information to us." "Our fax is broken" etc.
Microsoft did the same for Frontpage (yeah, my fault for buying the *$%&). They refused to remotly enable the software and wanted personal information before they'd let me use it.
Somehow I doubt the FBI is going to raid Macromedia, and the government seems to be calling off it's 'raid' on Microsoft.
The legitimacy of the law comes from the fact that it's applied equally to all people. Without that, it's just a bunch of men in blue with riot gear.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
So let me get ths straight... as long as I can't afford something, it's ok to steal it. I've got another solution... get a fucking job. If the job you have doesn't pay enough, then go get a better fucking job, if you are incapable of getting a better job, then get off your lazy, worthless, ass and go develop some skills so that you can get the better job. As far as not being able to get access to the software to learn it and become part of the workforce in the future, have you ever checked out a college? The one I lived in the dorms of (saying I actually attended the college is pushing the limits of the truth ;) ) had classes on most of this expensive software you need and you could use it free because the college paid for it. They also sell in the college bookstores "student edition" software... it's EXACTLY the same, except far cheaper, I paid $100 for jbuilder pro 2 back when it was around $500, still pricy, but not a bad discount, and put on my college credit card provided by the college to use at their stores, it was no problem at all. If you get off your lazy ass and look around, there's legal, non-harmful, ways of getting what you need, you just have to do the same thing that the people making all this money off of the software you are stealing did and fucking work for it. Allright, I'm off to go steal my ferrari, i'll just tell the cops it's ok since even with my 2 jobs I can't afford one... and perhaps I'll stop into the server farm area here at work and take home one of the unisys systems, too... on top of being ok since I can't afford it, i'll be doing them a favor since I can now learn to use it and get a job doing that, right?
--
Work on enough successful projects over the years, and you can happily retire.
Some would say that this is called "stock options" but the difference between company-based and product-based performance is important.
And for those who say programming is a massive group endeavour that doesn't allow for royalties, I say consider the number of people and the amount of time it takes to make a movie, and still actors get royalties.
__
passetspike!
'The costs are enormous to both industry and consumers.'
If it is so costly to both industry and consumers then why is it happening at all ? The truth of course as we all know is that it is only SLIGHTLY costly to businesses because they think that the poeple who copy or pirate their software would actually have paid for it at full price if they could not get it for free. This is only true of a small fraction of those who illegally copy software (notice I did not say "steal" because stealing implies taking something. When you make illegal copies of software you are not actually stealing, rather you are copying the software and the only thing that the companies are losing is money. The only reason that copying is considered bad or wrong is because the law says it is illegal, if there were not copyright laws and you could copy software all you wanted would you not copy software because you felt it was inherinetly wrong? I would hope not becuase that means that you are making ethical decisions based on law. Law should be based on ethics, not the other way around.)
Further more I do not see how it is costly to consumers at all. If I can get something for free as opposed to paying for it doesn't that save me money and isn't that the whole reason that software piracy is so prevalent (besides the ease with which it can be done). The industry may try to tell us that it is costly because they have to spend more money to protect their software, but isn't it true that the companies who spend the most on anti-piracy are probably the ones who have their software pirated the most.
Wow. I guess Alan Greenspan got tired of cutting the prime rate and decided to go kick some ass.
Feel stupid now? You should.
Ok, piracy is bad, I'll be one of the first to admit that, I'll also be the one of the first to admit that I pirate software. More out of nescity then anything else. Still a student and working fulltime as a technician I don't make a whole lot of money and laying down $200 for the latest and greatest M$ OS just doesn't fit into my already tight buget. I do however pay for any game that I play, because they are priced reasonably. The other side of this is because I am a tech I need to stay current with whats out on the market. It is more feasible for me to find a pireted copy and what till I can afford to purcase it so that I can stay current. Now if M$ would charge $50 for any version of its OS then this whole piracy thing would be less of an issue. How many people do you think would then buy the liceince as opposed to D/Ling it from DoD or thier favorite FTP.
I have been useing warez since I have been plugged into the net. I don't horde, I don't openly distibute what I have, and I don't advicate it. But if you were starving would you not take a half eaten loaf of bread from the dumpster, that is stealing as much as piracy is.
Ahh.. The mind what a wonderful trap!
Naa, just drop a planeload of the B-52's bootleg "Cosmic Thing" CD. That'd cause more damage.
You are obviously the vapid thinker that you accuse me of being. Because you think that there is some guarantee somewhere that says 'I MUST BUY YOUR SOFTWARE.'
Just because you spent your time writing a piece of software DOES NOT GUARANTEE YOU ANYTHING. I don't have to buy it. Nobody does. You seem to think the world owes you something for the fact that you wrote some software. Guess what? NOBODY OWES YOU A GODDAMNED THING!
Fucking idiot.
Just because YOU can't see the distinction between theft and infringement doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
Moron.
you just confessed to a federal crime
What's going to happen when they'll break my house and find plenty of burned CD of Solaris 8? They'll try to open all my computers to see if I run it on a node with more than 8 cpus?
What you fail to realize, my retarded friend, is that you seem to think that the world owes you a living, and that unsupportable models of doing business should keep on going forever.
Go ahead and start stealing VCRs. Most people with a shred of intelligence (which does not include you) can tell the difference between stealing and copying. I'm sure Guido who shares your cell will be gentle with you.
Idiot.
Interesting
My goodness. Equating murder with copying. Let's see, I guess that means that you graduated from, say, the third grade?
You are a fucking retard. Get over it.
I have just two words for you.
FUCK YOU
Now please, go and fuck off.
BUT who is going to pay them for their "extra tax free" benifits?
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Access to warez has given me a career, and money to buy these programs. 5 years ago, I could barely afford a computer, and barely knew how to use it. If I had to cough up the cash for a registered copy of Photoshop, 3d Studio, Illustrator, etc... I WOULD NEVER HAVE LEARNED HOW TO USE THEM. Commercial use, and thus profitability of these programs increases when people have access to them for learning purposes.
Fucking pseudo-intellectual snobs...
God is real unless declared integer.
No, I'm afraid it's you who are mistaken about a great many things.
idiot
Do you think that all those home users went out and paid for DOS, Windows and Office?
They got a copy, then had their businesses use the product they used at home.
The trouble with whole warez thing is it is really not easy for the average joe to obtain. Yeah, I could click through a couple dozen porn pop-ups, download a trojan or virus, get infected from a web page .eml, and spend hours in chat rooms looking for that last .rar file I needed, but really wouldn't you rather read some reviews on a decent site, plunk down the $50 bucks and spend that time playing a kick butt game or using the software fully instead of a butchered, hacked, cracked copy.
One other thing, while all you open source guys ARE on to something, the REAL serious applications that will bring the future to the mass market will always be developed by closed source companies. The revolution will be televised and filled with IBM, Microsoft, Intel and Dell ads. There is no other way to generate the type of money necessary to bring superior products to market. Open source is great and I use it daily, but I will continue to support great products with my hard earned cash. Companies like Id, Blizzard, Valve, Verant and others aren't going to make great games or apps for free or there'd be so much open source gaming goodies out there I'd spend all my time downloading them. It ain't gonna happen!
Go visit Tibet, Congo, Saudi Arabia or a place like that, then tell me we have a dictitaorship here. It sounds like you seriously need a glass of perspective and soda. If you really think the US is a dictatorship, leave. You are free to emmegrate to a new country at any time and the FBI/CIA/RIAA/whoever don't care.
The country is not a dictatorship just because the presidential candidate you happend to like lost.
Yes and you could download and install WinSock2 from the MS site, which fixed that problem.
What do you know I wrote a novel
Had the same problem under WinXP and Win2000 - make your swap file smaller, much smaller, and it might work !!
I paid for winzip too.
Moving at the speed of government.
Thanks to the GPL pirating linux is "legal". If MS GPLed windows then piracy would probably drop tremendusly!
Why is this funny, it is absolutely true!!!
joke
/joke
Dood! Congress just passed a law making software pirates terrorists. Atleast that's what their aides told them. They're not really shure cause they didn't read it; the bill was just painted red white and blue, had the word patriot on it and GW told them to do sign it so it must be good. It was getting late anyway and everyone just wanted to do home home but they had to DO something!
>Yes and you could download and install WinSock2 from the MS site, which fixed that problem.
And, back then, that would have cost $$$. When the consumer has to pay, then it isn't a free fix.
Now, if MS took the initiative and sent product updates to me via the mail, for free, then I'd say the fix is free. Otherwise, I'm having to pay, again, for their broken software.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
maybe this IS why the terrorist attacks happened. They did say that this was months in the planning.
1. People who can't spell properly but expect to be taken seriously (you make yourselves sound like idiots).
2. People who quote law this, law that. I know law degrees are easy to get in the US of A, but I didnt realise one came free with finishing college.
3. Self-righteous know-it-alls. (speaks for itself).
'nuff said. be nice.
Again, this is where we disagree. Many people believe this is true, but it's not. Actions of civil disobedience can be undertaken peacefully, by people with a sincere desire not to be punished. When the people of East Berlin marched on the Wall, they were engaged in one of the greatest acts of civil disobedience of this century. Some of those marching may have been looking forward to a confrontation with machine guns, but the majority probably would've hit the bricks if they really thought they were going to die. But that didn't happen, because a million people standing in solidarity makes for a powerful form of civil disobedience. So powerful that, perversely, it also reduces the chance that there will be consequences for the individuals involved. The problem with your definition is that it measures the "quality" of civil disobedience by the potential consequences to the perpetrators, not by the results that they obtain.
A lot of those who would currently claim the mantle of civil disobedience seem to want to skip the consequence part.
In their heart, every sane person wants to skip the consequences part, no matter how just the cause. The exceptions are generally a few lunatics or would-be martyrs. Where is it written that we need rely on narcissists and the insane to keep our society balanced? In any case, when you knowingly engage in an act of civil disobedience, you've made your bed. You know at the outset that there will be consequences, and even if down the road you decide that you don't want to go to jail (quite a reasonable decision, mind you), you can't really do much about it.
Furthermore, fighting the charges is a large component of civil disobedience. If you're being accused of violating an unjust law, then you want to make everybody and their brother know it, and hopefully go down fighting-- or better, yet, come out on top. Some people view this as avoiding responsibility... But honestly, if the law is illegal or immoral, why should you feel personally obligated to roll over and do time? There are plenty of other people who'll handle the prosecution, without your help.
Back on track, I'm not calling these Warez kids heroes, or comparing their actions in this particular case to the toppling of the Berlin Wall. Hell no. And I'm certainly not implying that their actions weren't primarily undertaken for personal gratification. But I'm willing to accept that there's a certain element of nose-thumbing implicit in any operation that so publicly tramples copyright law, and that maybe their actions will have a certain, tiny impact on the nation's overzealous attitude toward copyright protection despite the fact that they were mostly just looking to play games free. Maybe twenty more kids will be so annoyed at the gov'ts actions that they'll start a Warez group of their own. Maybe the gov't will become even nastier in its legislative/enforcement efforts, to the point where the rest of society rebels against laws like the DMCA.
Who knows, at some point, twenty or fifty years from now, we may look back and be shocked that Federal agents would draw their weapons against some kids who were just sharing files.
I am an American and I have a right to steal. To anyone who says otherwise, I say, quite plainly, fuck you! We stole land from the natives, sovereignty from the British, and slaves from Africa. I live in California (taken by the U.S. in 1850, and again by the Propellerheads in 1998) and my tax dollars are stolen for rich people by the Bush administration, which wouldn't even be the administration if it weren't for stealing!
The ideas behind the games we steal have probably been stolen from a Hollywood movie script. Applications steal features from each other regularly. And music! Don't get me started, that whole fucking industry is about stealing!
Which is fine! But as an American, I'm afraid this means that stealing is my birthright.
The biggest problem with stealing is that we've given it a stigma. Somewhere, at some point in time, we engrained into our common morality this bullshit idea that stealing is wrong, and because every one of us and every law we've crafted agrees on that premise, we can't admit when we're doing it. So what happens? We cover that up with more bullshit, because bullshit also happens to be this country's leading industry.
So the little guy gets squashed not because he's stealing, but simply because he can't produce as much bullshit as the forces he's opposing. But what's interesting about the situation is that there is so much bullshit involved that it actually begins to fold in on itself. However, this is still all built on one bullshit idea, that stealing is wrong. And if we recognized that the idea that stealing is wrong is bullshit to begin with, well... you'd better run because a big tower of bullshit is going to fall.
Funny how Internet Traffic Report is showing a massive decrease in bandwidth usage. Wonder what caused that dip?
Bah.. it must be coincidence
nearly every download and page hit on the internet involves copying someone elses expression - the only way to halt it is make it illegal to communicate about how to copy - hence DMCA.
Oh god.. this must be what happens when you fuse rabid "Pro-life" fervor into an "Open-Source" zealot
I didn't see anything in his post about abortion. Stick your uncle's cock back in your pie-hole and keep it there.
Yup, okay, I wasnt focussed enough ;)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Then why hasn't congress passed any worthwhile laws recently?
Who defines "worthwhile"? Some of them think the PATRIOT Act was worthwhile, though a number of us would disagree. Frankly, I'm just glad they haven't passed even more "worthwhile" laws like that recently - and doubly so that passing laws in situations like this is (supposed to be) hard. As for why they think those laws are worth passing, well, that's a political discussion that would take its own Katz article; suffice it to say for me, I voted against the current administration.
I mean, why do we still have SPAM,
There are laws against junk faxes, for much the same reason as the grievances against junk email. The laws are almost never enforced. Merely passing laws will not help.
and those ads that spawn other ads when you close them,
I surf the 'Net with Javascript turned off, only turning it on when I run across a site that requires it - and turning it back off when I'm done. Or, if I need Javascript on for an extended period of time, I turn it off immediately if I run into whack-a-mole popups, just long enough to close said popups, then turn it back on and resume life. I don't have any problem with popup ads.
and why do I have to goddamn pass idiots in the right lane because they drive 54 in the left lane and won't pull over?
Because no cop has come and pulled them over. If you have the local police department's number (not 911: this isn't an emergency), get on the offender's tail (but don't tailgate) long enough to read the license plate, then put in a call to the cops filing a complaint. They will probably at least investigate, and maybe even dispatch a car immediately (if you tell them where you are), since 54 in the left lane is a safety hazard (assuming there is space in the other lanes to pull into, and it's not 54 vs. 34 in all other lanes).
...
"These are the people that the government is going after, not joe blow who copied his friends version of Photoshop."
As far as I know, DrinkOrDie (DoD) is no organized "mafia" - they don't make any money from what they do. They simply distribute commercial software illegally. While this is morally wrong, they are actually not "using it to fund their illegal activities". If they did, why would they use their company's or even their university's equipment and connections to do so?
No, the people they are going after are the major site owners - the ones that distribute commercial software illegally. These site owners do not make a dime, it is done on a purely voluntary basis.
If they want to go after organized crime and people who use this to fund their crimes, why don't they attack those who actually sell "warez"? I don't know the answer to this, but it is strange that they spend over a year to plan an operation against people who don't make any money from it. People who are simply part of a community which shares information and data.
After all, they visited a number of universities and forced FTP servers to shut down, not factories creating bootleg CDs.
That these people are evil and probably murderers, child molesters, and whatever bad one can think of is simply a way to build up a public opinion against them.
In reality, most are individuals who just do it on their spare time.
Disclaimer: I am not defending warez, I am simply pointing out that these people are not part of the mafia or organized crime or make money from it, which they use to fund further illegal activities.
(I also apologize for the rant, and welcome any corrections, but the above is the way I understand the situation.)
Clever signature text goes here.
Yes you would have to pay for the internet connection to download WinSock2, but that is no different than today. I don't see your point.
A fair number of comercial products shipped with the WS2 installer as well, so many users were upgraded as a part of that.
What do you know I wrote a novel
Hmmm... I guess I should have qualified what I was saying better.
I don't disagree that people would like to accomplish their goals without paying the price--wouldn't we all! But civil disobedience on a small scale (in other words, those cases where you do NOT have a million people out marching) relies upon garnering respect. I think that respect comes from seeing people who are dedicated enough to their cause to break an unjust law and face the consequences. When they are NOT willing to face the consequences, the respect tends to evaporate (no one likes a whiner!) and their potential for gathering support with it. This could be a personal bias, but I am much more moved by someone who someone who goes out to face imprisonment precisely in order to draw attention to their cause, than by someone who suddenly finds that they have a cause only after they get caught. Fighting the charges is perfectly acceptable, because it generates more attention and the courts often provide the best forum for demonstrating the absurdity of truly unjust laws. But the willingness to go to that length is, IMHO, what separates those who are exercising true civil disobedience from the people who just happened to be breaking the law and got caught.
So it's not a case of wanting to do time or not--it's a case of being willing to do it if that's what it takes. This does not require narcissists or the insane; just people with strong convictions. The presence of a desire not to be punished does not in any way preclude a willingness to face such punishment if it is required to accomplish the goal. The worst thing that can happen is to be completely ignored (although at that point, what is there to disobey?).
Anyway; the warez d00dz and I agree on more than a few points, but if any of them consider what they are doing civil disobedience (which I doubt) they didn't pick their fight very well. These issues are too arcane for a fair hearing in a public forum, and will likely remain so for years. Better demonstrations are available--people don't 'get' software, but they do get education, and the chilling effects of the DMCA on research and teaching institutions is probably the soft place where protesters should be driving the wedge.
No relation to Happy Monkey
http://phlow.digimagix.org/scenebusts.htm
>Yes you would have to pay for the internet connection to download WinSock2, but that is no different than today. I don't see your point.
Today NetZero exists, and getting internet access can be as simple asking your next door neighbour. Internet is now effectively free.
Back then expecting people to have internet access was like expecting someone to have a colour TV in the 50's. Not at all freely availiable, unless you were quite lucky.
>A fair number of comercial products shipped with the WS2 installer as well, so many users were upgraded as a part of that.
And you (normally) buy commercial products. Still the patch isn't free.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Fine I'll trump that. For those who remember, MS also ran a BBS that you could download such files from. Yes you had to own a modem, and pay for the call, but there are limits to how far I'm willing to argue this point...
What do you know I wrote a novel
As our own President Bush would say, stop using FUZZY MATH!
According to the Sydney Morning Herald it was a blitz across 6 countries.
>Yes you had to own a modem, and pay for the call, but there are limits to how far I'm willing to argue this point...
:)
;)
Not for me.
I'm Canadian and phoning US BBSes for an hour is just not gonna happen (at that point 14.4k was pretty fast and IIRC the download was like 1 or 2 MB). At the long distance rates charged here at that time it would have cost me about $15 to get that patch (likely more).
Feh. I guess for Americans, the BBS was a reasonable answer. And there's only 30 million Canucks, so who cares?
Well, all that being said, unlike normal companies who create shoddy products (imagine if your computer monitor melted down after 4 hours!), Microsoft didn't usually send out papers to people detailing major defects in their software and how to repair them.
Or maybe they did, and just never let me know.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
If we all pirate enough software, maybe 'they' will be less occupied with the "War on Drugs"...
takochan,
I'll refrain from expressing any view pro or con here, as I think it is an issue with many greys. I just want to make an observation that you say, "but in other cases, it is not so clear.." then you go forth with two examples that many would argue clearly show the opposite viewpoint. If you wanted to discuss ambiguity, take a look at an average sized software company, like maybe one that produces software for a niche market. Let's say this company has 100 people, 25 of whom are the developers. These are typical programmer types like you maybe and certainly like me. Let's say this company is run by some fat cat who pays the programmers a decent wage, but keeps the profits for himself. Now if this companies customers start saying, "hey, we already paid for this software, it's okay if we install it on a few more machines," then the companies revinues will subsequently go down. Now being a fat cat, the owner doesn't want to give up any of his income, so he lets a few employees go (including, inevitably, some of those "overpaid" programmers). Then a few more. Eventually all the customers are gone and the company has closed shop. Didn't hurt the owner at all, he's still rich and will go off and find another tax write-off. So is piracy acceptable in this case? I mean, it didn't hurt the fat cat, who is the one that was risking his money on that company, right? Even that example isn't that great, but it's certainly greyer that either picture that you painted. And I think that's really the thing about piracy: it's not a black and white issue.
-"Zow"
Why would you think that?
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Yeah, Meese's DoJ stole Promis from the Inslaw Corp, well sorta. Right wing and left wing conspiracy folks have been talking about this for years...Oh yeah and there was a Congressional inquiry like ten years ago. G. Gordon Liddy and his cutting edge journalism at work... Try: http://www.webcom.com/~pinknoiz/covert/inslaw.html
amongst other sources...
illegal copying already has a word for it
If not piracy, what is it? "Illegal copying" is two.
People are lazy. We all want a single word when we can get it. If that word is piracy, ohh well. On to other battles.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
To generalize, the primary goal of an action of civil disobedience is to draw society's attention to an injustice. I don't think either of us would argue on that point. There are various ways to get attention. Certainly, getting yourself jailed or shot is one. But there are others.
The bottom line is, does the rest of society see what's happened to you as an injustice, and have you accomplished your goal? Somebody who's arrested for killing doctors to make a point doesn't get a lot of respect from me and a lot of other Americans. On the other hand, some guy who finds himself incarcerated for violating some silly, unjust law (and who never intended to make a statement, or go to jail) can make a very big difference.
So again, I suppose we're talking about the ends and the means. I submit that the ends are what defines a successful disobedience, while the means may vary. The point here is, if I think that somebody's being punished unfairly, I will sympathize with them regardless of whether they have the cojones to be stoic about their plight. And if their whining is what ultimately gets more people to pay attention to what's going on, then that's as effective a technique as any other.
MS did run a Canadian BBS. You could call MS and have the patch snailmailed to you (yes that cast money, about $7 US). You could go to a MS user group. MS didn't take an ad out, but WinSock2 was reasonably promoted by the company.
Around the same time as all of this was going on, I was running into a major bug in Word Perfect, I was paying for a support contract, and it cost me a lot more than the amount you are talking about to get the fix. I'm unsympathetic.
What do you know I wrote a novel
>I was paying for a support contract, and it cost me a lot more than the amount you are talking about to get the fix. I'm unsympathetic.
Which all goes to show why paying for commercial software is almost theft in itself.
Imagine buying a computer, brining it back to the store the next day, explaining (and proving) to them it crashes after 4 hours. Imagine if this was a common defect in all the computers they sold.
Now imagine that the store told you "We can sell you a repair for the problem for $10, or you can drive to our repair depot 500 miles away and get it for free". I'd be angry as hell. Sounds a little like you'd be apathetic towards the whole situation, but I feel pretty sure that's unusual.
MS should send out patches for free, by mail. Their mistakes should be fixed in the same way any decent company would fix them. Just because it's commercial software doesn't let them (or WordPerfect) off the hook.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
The question that should be asked isn't whether software piracy is unethical or immoral. The question should be are the current morals right or wrong. A moral is merely an agreed upon rule for the betterment of a civilization. Often, morals from past civilizations are hung onto far too long after the situation that created the moral is gone. For tribal societies, cannabalism was morally sound, even a way of life. For that community, it was an acceptable action. In ours, its not.
Should software piracy be prosecuted? Are the current concepts of "ownership" of ideas and information "healthy" for American society? I can't answer that question; its up to the members of the society.
...that's not to say that a majority of the community wrongfully believes something(such as software piracy) is unethical. Is America standing up for the right ethics of the time...or just afraid of the inevitable change?
-Aaar! Avast, ye software pirates! Ye be punished for yer sins of disloyalty and theft!-
Bill "Blackbeard" Gates
I have no desire to reach nirvana.
The FBI takes orders from the White House. The White House was purchased, recently, during the last (rip off) election, by American corporations, including, but not limited to, Microsoft. They give the orders.
I'm amazed, but I guess I shouldn't be, that anyone can think the FBI works for the citizen'ry of the US.
I remember these guys from back in my BBSing days! Damn they have been around for a long time..
sorry had to. quote from steve jobs.
My guess is that the feds are uncovering
previously hidden networks.. the more obscure the more investigated. and while looking for terrorists that way, theytrack down the warez d00dz 31331 instead.. what a shame
Don't click here. BT will enforce intellectual rights and sue for eac
Or the software when UNCOMPRESSED was a few terabytes, but before the raid was in handy-dandy compressed format.
5,000 Movies
x 120 Mins per Movie
x 60 Mins per Second
x 4 Mbps (lowest rate for full screen MPEG2)
This suggest's about 17TB, (~585 30 Gig Disks).
the words "intellectual property" make me cringe. Its the kind of half-assed capatalism that has ensnared our culture through greed and the distant promise of new toys to keep our minds off the fact that spiritualy, our lives are devoid of meaning, and only the accumulation of material wealth will bring us happiness and that prosperity is not harmony with ourselves, our surroundings, and our world, but the false security of an overstocked pantry, big-screen TV, and plenty of eye candy fodder.
You know what's a real crime? The ecological impact that all the toxic chemicals that are produced and used in the manufacture of computers leaking into landfills, poisoning the earth and the population. The 3rd world working-class wage-slavery that allows us to play with our nifty little toys. The blatant disregard for the scarcity of natural resources that results in using petroleum products to press hundreds of billions of CDs that never get sold because the price is too high. Bill Gate's bank account and the millions starving on the streets of America.
It is pathetic that the American gov't can find no nobler, better thing to do than continue to protect the interets of the nations wealthiest 1%, offering security to the sad-sack investors and their billion dollar chump-change stocks while offering no security of something as simple as being fed and having a roof. The American gov't is in a position to globally wipe out hunger, homelessness, and illiteracy, if we weren't spending our time spelunking in Afghanistan and busting college kids for trying to keep up with the latest software so they can get jobs and do something TRULY heinus, like EAT. (sarcasm included without charge)
When you steal a car, you are deprving someone of a mode of transportation that they worked very hard to earn and buy. When you steal a loaf of bread from a store, you very much drive the cost up for everyone else because the resources that went into that bread are not duplicable, they are physical entities unto themselves that cannot be reproduced. Software, on the other hand, when reproduced, does not have this effect. When you copy software, you are not depriving someone else of it. Are you driving costs up? No, and I'll tell you why - software has ALWAYS been ridiculously expensive, even before the advent of broadband internest and CD burners. M$ and others have ALWAYS charged an arm and a leg for their software, even before duplication was as practical and easy as it is today. And I'll tell you something else - if I had the money, I'd buy EVERY LAST BIT OF SOFTWARE I USE. If I could afford it, I'd send Adobe TWICE the cost of their software because I think its worth AT LEAST that. In the meantime however, I'm sick of being told that just because I was born into an extremely poor family, spent time homeless, and have since worked my ass off just to keep food in my mouth and a roof over my head, that I am NOT ALLOWED to use this software to learn a skill that will prevent me from becoming homeless again sometime in my adulthood simply because I can't pony up the $500. Do you know how long it takes the average Joe to make $500? I'm not talking about a priveledged programmer who had the luxury of a parental-paid education at a really nice school and the security of somewhere to fall back to in the case of emergency, I'm talking about Mr. Working-Hand-To-Mouth-Paycheck-To-Paycheck who just wants the OPPORTUNITY to get some more security in the TRULY IMPORTANT THINGS, like HOUSING and FOOD. And if he has to pirate software to learn it so that he may aquire a skill that will keep him from being homeless, SO BE IT.
I'm sick of capatalism in general. But this "intellectual property" thing just STINKS. Because if ANYONE should be getting rich off this code, its the actual coders, not some guy behind a desk to signs papers and twiddles his thumbs while the stockholders light their cigars with $20 bills. I have NO SYMPATHY for the rich. I have NO SYMPATHY for M$. And if all those programmers got together outside of work and coded for themselves, they could make scads more money by selling a comprable product to 5 times as many people at HALF the cost.
There is NO JUSTIFICATION for software manufacturers to charge what they do. And they could, VERY EASILY, recoup the losses by reducing the price of their software to the point where it becomes a viable option for 5 to 10 times more people to buy. Its not as if CDs are expensive to produce. And if you stick to electronic documentation (and why wouldn't you? We're running out of trees and the DEA is banning ALL hemp products!), you don't even have to pay the printing costs for those pretty books.
SCREW the software manufacturers, SCREW the American gov't, and SCREW the rich. Its EXACTLY this kind of self-centered profit-motivated behavior that got NYC and DC blown to shit a couple months ago.
If we actually cared about humans instead of profit, maybe we wouldn't be so hated around the world.
Oh, and one last point: guess who is being stolen from to FUND these raids, and the subsequent trials and imprisonment of these "criminals"? EVERY SINGLE LAST ONE OF US. Just watch your taxes rise and try to tell yourself that its going to Social Security. Feh.
Brainwashed capatalist stooges.