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."

Comments

Just how far we've fallen...

[Bob_Robertson]

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-

Thats not the point.

[HanzoSan]

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.

Re:Oh? So then they finished the terrorist problem

[NeuroKoan]

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.

Federal piracy and entrapment

[baudbarf]

"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."

So not only did they use entrapment; but they were themselves accessory to over 12,000 incidents of software piracy!!!

Re:Responses here not surprising, unfortunately

[abe ferlman]

That's what the pony express said to the railroad. "You may be faster and more efficient, but our livelihoods depend on our outmoded means of profit, so piss off you techno-pirates!"

I'd bet you'd oppose the legalization of prostitution on the grounds that vice cops would be laid off.

They had good timing

[HanzoSan]

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.

Re:What some people won't do

[garcia]

ok let's look at this from the correct angle.

I get paid by Company. Company makes money by selling Program. Program is stolen. Company loses that much moeny on Program. Because there is less money due to piracy I might possibly lose my job at Company.

If I lose my job at Company I am fucked.

That's stealing.

Did you know. Time to teach you some facts.

[HanzoSan]

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.