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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
We are. Violating the DMCA is now an act of terrorism.
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'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//
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.
Software companies have very good lawyers who work out the numbers. When they say that 11 billion was lost due to software piracy, they estimate those numbers by only figuring "how much would we have made if every kid in America had their very own MS Windows Lease?". They use these make believe 'losses' as a tax fraud.. come on? wouldn't you love an $11 billion tax write-off?
What is really sad is most of the software that is pirated is never worth the time it took to download it.
...and usually sell it to companies as well; they buy stuff when they need it. And hardly ever use illegal software (at least here in .nl that's my impression). Home-users on the contrary usually buy software when they buy a new computer (Windows, Office etc.) or when they finally have enough money (youth that buys games). Therefore I think the majority of the software that is pirated would not have been sold anyway and therefore the losses are no way near as large as projected; home-users use the software if they can get it illegaly but wouldn't buy it if they couldn't get it illegaly. And the type of home-user that really needs software is usually also the type that buys it. Except maybe for those that pirate Windows and Office, but I couldn't care less about Microsoft products and I think they're about the only exception to this.
At least, that's my impression...but who am I to speak about this when I only use free software?:P
0x or or snor perron?!
... 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.
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'
Get over yourselves. Piracy is illegal and tough if you get caught.
Give me a break; this is complete and utter overreaction. The government should kick in doors and confiscate computers over violating COPYRIGHT law? Law enforcement agencies should coordinate raids on an INTERNATIONAL scale? Personally, I don't like to use pirated software, something which my friends consider odd. Yes, it is wrong, but despite what the corporate flacks say, it's not the same as stealing.
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
This is insane. By your logic, the amount of money entering an industry does not affect the salary of the people working in it. Therefore programmers make as much as artists, garbage collectors, ditch diggers, etc? No, of course not. Programmers can make tons of money for not so much work simply because the product they produce is worth a lot of money. End of story.
Now, what you're saying is true, in the sense that once you've worked on a project, the amount of sales of that product in the future won't affect the amount of money you make now. But this is a horrendously simplistic viewpoint. When you work for a company, they're not paying you out of the money they will get selling the product you're working on. They don't have it yet. They're paying you the money they've made on previous products. And yes, me pirating M$ software today will affect the job prospect of M$ programmers in the near future.
Sorry, kid, it's the way the world works.
Come on, give it up, that's
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???
It appears to me that what happened was that they setup a site and undercover agents who were infiltrating the warez scene "advertised" it to others in the scene as a distribution point. Since these people were already pirating, it is doubtful that this would be seen as entrapment, in my opinion.
However, the fact that they became a distribution point makes them software pirates as well. It's not like buying drugs off of a dealer, where the drugs end up confiscated by the state. All of those 12,000 copyrighted programs were pirated BY the government, and they should be liable for all 100,000 individual incidents of which they most likely have detailed server logs.
This went on for two-years!! How many small but promising software companies went under because the FBI was distributing their software illegally?
This has to be one of the most outrageously blatant examples of the need for STRICTER control over our government's law-enforcement powers. Not only, did they take part in illegal activities, they made it more damaging to those that the law was intended to protect.
Aren't all of you programmers out there happy to find out that your tax dollars have been spent for the last two years PROMOTING software piracy?
"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.
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.
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.
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...)
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'.
Oh yeah, this isn't talking the victim into it:
"T3 LINE DIRECT DOWNLOADS NO RATIOs 0-DAYz RIPS ISOS" and a link to t50.com ?
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.
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
"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.
When you pirate Microsoft and Adobe software, obviously you aren't bringing Microsoft and Adobe to their knees.
Who you're hurting are the guys trying to write reasonably priced, moderately featured software that will sell for $50-$200, instead of the $500+ price of the Microsoft/Adobe/BigName software.
In a non-warez world, people look at the very expensive apps and think, no way! Then they see the moderately-priced alternatives and think, yeah, this will meet my needs.
In a warez world, people look at the very expensive apps and think, no way! Then they see the moderately-priced alternatives and think, maybe. Then they see the $free, full-featured warez apps, and choose that.
The little guys are hurt.
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