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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."
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?
Nope, sorry, piracy has no DIRECT effect on programmers unless those programmers sell their product directly to the consumer instead of relying on a corporation or another department to handle sales. Indirectly, piracy does hurt, because if the employer loses money, he/she will have less/no money to pay the programmers.
When I hear reporting like this I really start to wonder if all the whole newspaper is this inaccurate. I'm sure almost everyone here has at one point used something that could be considered warez. Are we all part of this group? Where is my share of the profits? etc.
The New York Times has always had remarkably bad technology coverage. They never point out that the BSA is a Microsoft shell corp. Whenever some worm takes advantage of a horrible bug in Microsoft software it's never pointed out. They even gave Microsoft credit for inventing the optical mouse a couple years ago.
They had a couple good reporters in the early days but I don't think that advertising section has ever had a tech literate editor to fire the idjits.
Their news coverage is considerably better, though FAR from perfect.
I'd say that piracy was a large part of the demise of the Amiga.  There were a smaller number of machines out there relative to the Mac and PC and the typical piracy levels had a much larger effect on developers of the platform.  While I don't think that piracy was the primary reason for it's demise, I do feel that it played a significant role.
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.
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.
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.
Exactly! I've been warezing for a while now, and always for the same reason. "Try before you buy." Back in the 'old days' I spent a lot of money buying games and programs that were absolute crap. Now that I (and other users) have "choice" though means such as p2p, gnutella, etc, we can grab a copy of a program, see if it is worth it or if it's shit, and then decide if we want to buy it. Sometimes expireware and crippleware just doesn't do it. Same with video, same with audio. It's all about choice for the user I think.
It's still up to the user to buy it if they use it, and I can see that the average warez kiddie isn't going to buy their pirated copy of XP or photoshop, but for businesses who have the money to buy a program legally after it's been tried for a bit in a production environment.
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
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?
As at least one other person has pointed out, it's not condoning the bad stuff, it's deliberately ignoring EVERYTHING. MIT does this so that they have some claim to common carrier status for their internet service. Many other schools (including mine) do the same thing for the same reason. If they once start policing any of the illegal activity on their networks, they risk becoming liable for ALL of it. Given the nature of college students, any intelligent person will avoid any liability for ANYTHING they do, be it computerized or not!
-Cheetah
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...
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.
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.
Also check out Yahoo, the DOJ and Quote.com for more articles that don't need a registration
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.