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NYTimes Looks at Warez
Flamerule writes "The New York Times has a new article up that relates the end result of the DrinkorDie copyright infringement case (the "ringleader" and 5 other guys are in prison), and talks about warez in general. They at least tried to get a story from both software companies and denizens of the warez scene. Pretty interesting stuff, even if you haven't been following the case closely."
Anyone knows an FTP site when I can download Linux Warez? K Tnx!
This is like the chicken and the egg story. Only with warez, what came first, extremely high prices for software or software pirates? Software developers always whine about how pirates drive costs through the roof, and pirates always whine about how they dont but their software because its too overpriced.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
Forget this registering for an account at the NYTimes! Time to go post and ask if anyone has any cracked versions of it! hehe ;)
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
Last week, at age 29, John Sankus Jr. moved out of his parents' house for the first time.
Wait, a warez d00d aged 29 still living at home? NO WAY. This totally shatters my image of them.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Its a vicious circle: Warez exists because programs (for home users, anyway) are too expensive, and they are too expensive because of warez. Like Photoshop. I "have" a copy of ps 6.0, and I've used it twice in 4 months. I made some wallpaper, and one character portrait for NWN (Drizzt is available too!! www.threemoons.net/dnd.php if you want them!).
This is NOT worth the hefty (600 or so??) price tag associated with it, although I'd've probably paid 50.
Just my $.02
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
To me, an interesting aspect of the fight against piracy is the teaming-up of companies/divisions.
Right now, the MPAA is trolling IRC for servers, and reporting infringing IPs back to Time Warner, who promptly warns customers against their usage. I've seen some of the letters.
There may or may not be antitrust concerns, but it's certainly schizophrenic... In cases like these, whose profit is considered to be more important?
It's not exactly a new assertion, but Open Source quite obviously killed most of the motivation behind warez. Now we can just download the apps we need anyway. The desire to put your name out there, and to participate in the distribution of good software to people. Many of those creative people that would oce have been cracking software have a much more interesting, rewarding and legal outlet in devloping open source applications. Instead of "giving something back" by posting warez to ng's or pub ftp's, you can do your bit by bug testing, or contributing documentation etc etc
Leader of an international warez group... works as a gateway tech. Priceless :)
Here's a nice quote from the article:
"It's the same reason that people join gangs," said Allan Doody, the Customs Service investigator who led the DrinkorDie investigation...
Um.. yeah, script kiddies trading software like baseball cards is exactly like joining a gang so you won't get beat up on the way to school. I just love when the government/media feels the need to subtly add words that make things sound more evil than they really are.
Have you hugged your Karma Whore today?
Although release and courier groups engage in little direct commercial activity, a 1997 extension in federal copyright law made piracy a crime even if there is no monetary profit.
How were pirates prosecuted before then? I seem to recall that they busted hacker rings long before 1997.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
*snip*
"It's cool to release something that costs $18,000," said Mr. Grimes, the DrinkorDie member from Arlington, Tex. "Basically, if it wasn't for us, you would never see this piece of software."
*snip*
I understand how they figure that companies "lose money" whenever they're software is pirated. But do they figure into those billions of lost dollars statements like the one above? Seems to me it's hard to find out just how much money the software companies are really losing because not all people who pirate their software are people who would ever pay for it.
Still, the worst part is that because software piracy is so rampant, it enables people who would (can?) pay for proper licensing for software to obtain illegal licenses.
I certainly feel bad that small businesses that rely on software licensing for revenue are having their stuff pirated, but another company like Blizzard who sold something like (correct me if I'm wrong) 1 millions copies of Warcraft III on pre-sell alone... how are we supposed to feel sorry that their "losing" money, when we can't be sure that people who pirated that software would never have bought it because they don't have the money or whatever? Maybe that's a lame example, but you get my point. Replace Warcraft III with some $500 publishing software, like Photoshop or CorelDraw. Is everyone who pirates those someone who would pay for them if they couldn't obtain them illegally?
Now here's a good hypothetical question: Suppose someone illegally downloads a copy of Warcraft III just to "try it out", with the intention of buying it if they like it. They play it and don't like it because of the 90 food limit, or something like that. They delete the game and never play it again. Do they owe Blizzard $55 because they should have bought the game in the first place to "try it out"?
These guys need to lay off a bit. One or two unarmed agents would have sufficed to bring the guy in.
According to the /. article Warez is slowing down, but the articles say "Although the warez scene took root only in the early 1990's, piracy has expanded rapidly, particularly in the last five years." So, what is it? is Warez cooling down or still heating up? Warez is blocked (at my school at least), so that could be why most students are not downloading warez software anymore. Who knows what they do to the code anyway. Besides other things on their site, warez is never an option for me. I would rather buy my programs, write them myself or use open source. Open Source is the best option anyway.
Well, keep in mind that back when we were all on 14.4s (I still have my old Practical Peripheral's external, with the LCD screen.. *sigh*) stuff was a lot smaller. Ultima VI is one I remember fondly because it was large for it's day, and it was what, 6 1.44mb floppies? When games are that small, you can trade them across a modem link if you're determined. Try doing the same with a whole CD.. ouch!
So yah, the bandwidth has gone up significantly, but so have the size of the files. Maybe it's not proportional, and I agree with you that it's faster and easier now, but I just wanted to make a point.
Besides, don't you think there was something cool about the local warez communities we had back in the day? When your name could mean something to everyone within your area code? To this day I meet people in real life who remember me, who called the same BBSs I did and downloaded stuff I had a hand in cracking or distributing or whatever.
This article shows just how out of control our government is, when 40 armed agents "bust" a guy who's pirating software.
First off, let me point out that I'm a software developer, and I'm in the process of creating a shrink wrapped application which I intend to charge for and which I expect a number of people are going to try to pirate. Since I am a one man startup in this situation, if piracy affects anyone, it affects me directly in my pocket book.
But this situation is absurd. Teh government should not be wasting time going after people who are pirating software who aren't profiting from it.
If someone steals my software, then they are liable to me under the law-- not to the feds. The feds have no rights to my code and no rights to lock people up for violating my rights in this way.
If someone pirates my software, then I should be able to take them to civil court and sue them for damages-- possibly twice actual damages, but I have to show damages to recover the money.
The Feds are busting people, claiming that "millions of dollars" have been stolen when this is a bald faced lie-- millions of dollars have NOT been stolen.
The only way a pirated piece of software is "theft" is if the person who uses it would have OTHERWISE bought the product. IF someone tries it out and then discards it and never would have bought the product, then the software company has not experienced damage-- they got some free advertising and didn't happen to pick up a customer.
IF someone pirates your software and then sells it, well then that would be theft. But those who give it away a guilty of mischief, but do not belong in a federal prison.
As for the guy who claims his software costs $9,500 but lost out because it was pirated-- make your software not work without authentication with the mothership. This is really easy these days-- get the MAC address, and send it in, and return a cryptographically signed authorization code that the program needs to run-- if the MAC address changes too much, or you['re getting identical requests from dozens of IP addresses, then don't return the key. Hell, make it such that a key set of code for the App is stored in an external runtime-loaded framework, and encrypt that bit with the key so that it never exists on the CD or hard drive in decrypted form... and of course keys have an expiry so that the program has to check in every 90 days or so. Or whatever less draconian version of this works for you, hell dongles are cheap enough.
Yes this can be defeated, but my experience with warez sites is that they just have CD images, the programs security hasn't been defeated, and people just share license keys-- in this case reporting the key to a central server and the ability to turn it off when it becomes obviously shared is easy.
This seems to be working for ambrosia and idsoftware.
But sending the feds in is NOT the solution-- we cannot tolerate this. MS has sent teams of armed men into small offices where they suspect the people are not licensing all their copies of windows. This is unacceptable.
As long as we accept government stormtroopers doing the bidding of private companies we will not be free-- it will just get worse and worse.
What's next- 40 armed marshalls bust some 13 year old for sharing MP3s?
All the while real crimes are going on and are ignored.
These are civil issues and belong in the civil courts. And anyone who doesn't protect their IP is just asking for it.
This is the equivalent of cops busting down dorm room doors because 20 kids in the same class photocopied pages from a library book to study from.
But because its computers they're "pirates" and the idiot press and public go along. Who's to stand up to the invasion of police in what should be civil matters? If anyone- US. Don't tolerate your company using stormtroopers-- protest loudly if they do. And protest to anyone who has the ability to affect change in this area-- such as your congressman (though I don't hold out much hope that they will listen, idiots that they are.)
Civil disobedience is going to be what this comes down to eventually-- sooner or later, they will be tightening the noose. who here doesn't have an MP3 that they can't prove legal ownership of?
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
And I remember an article I read a while ago where the releasing group for audio software (I forgot the name) only released programs that could not be afforded by the ordinary person. Things like SoundForge run a couple hundred dollars, and therefore only businesses or professionals could use it. What about the little guy who wanted to consider entering the profession, but didn't have the money (yet) to buy it. -- Generally, business -do- get legitimate copies pecause of audits and support.
Anyways, back to point, this same group -refused- to release any programs that were under a hundred dollars, because these are generally writting by individuals or extremely small companies, and are generally affordable by the common man.
"Wares" is the correct pronunciation.
;). No sane person would buy a $17K program for personal use, and any business that uses pirated software will get in trouble so I dont see what the problem is. Fair use rights for software should be the norm.. Free for personal or non-profit use. How many photoshop professionals learned photoshop at home on a pirated copy? How many of these professionals now do their work with a legit copy that some business provides for them? Repeat this question for any other highly pirated expensive software and ask yourself if anyone is truly being hurt by the process.
Searching for warez, mp3z, gamez, moviez, etc. is much easier than searching for wares, games and movies and makes it very apparent that the materials you are obtaining are of dubious nature.
Not that I was ever into the warez scene or anything illegit of course
The more widely pirated the software or movie, the more successful it eventually becomes so long as there is a significant benifit to not having the pirated version. Examples include games where network play requires an account (warcraft 3, NWN, quake 3, etc) and any business software (fear the BSA).
Yes, in that sense it's different. And I quite agree with what they're saying, but you pulled it out of context.
His next workds were: "They're hanging out on the cyber-street corner." I used to in the priacy rings; and it -is- like a gang, it's a place to be accepted, to be around similarly-minded people, etc.
Then again, joining the football team is also like a gang. Adolescence is about joining "gangs" regardless of whether or not you commit crimes.
(Read: A gang is a group of people, not a group of people who kill other people.)
They can arrest all the people they want. Realistically though .. People have been pirating software since the 80's.
.. or obtained market share if they didn't embrance piracy.
.. but they have better sales over lightwave because of college piracy of their product.
.. legel or not?
.. ask Games Workshop how much of their product is illegally produced in Russia or Poland.
.. (or at least the big boys are) is because it gives upcoming companies the same ability to snake them like they did to others in the past.
.. crying wolf about lost sales during their HIGHEST sales year in history.
.. is that its better to be a company that sells billions and looses 5% revenue to piracy .. than a company that sells hundreds of thousands, and looses 2%.
Anyone remember Mr.Nibble ?
Not that its justification, but there are products that wouldn't have market share
Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia, Quark.
All of these 'big names' became the 'standards' becuase folks were able to play with them.
3dMAX hates to admit it
College kids graduate, and eventually get into positions in companies that decide what software to actually buy. Do you buy something that you have never seen before ? or software that 1/2 of your staff already has at home
Internet piracey is a joke, You want real piracy
[were talking toy soldiers]
or Ask Black & Decker how many chineese companies made a knock off of the snake light.
piracy is nothing compaired to actual industrial espianage. How many car manufactureres buy, and reverse engineer their compeditors autos?
Or pick the solid state electrical giant of your choice. Chances are they are on the beta test list of all compeating companies through a friend of a friend of a friend.
The reason Software companies are so loud about it now
Its kind of like how the music industry was all over MP3
What people tend to forget
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
Has anyone seen the site? Why would anyone want to pirate *their* software? Not that it probably isn't good software, but other than the value of collecting it? It's all pretty high-level engineering stuff. I can't imagine any use for it outside of specialized fields, and those people would probably purchase anyway, as stated previously, for the support, training, documentation, etc. Strange...
If the software developer community have raised their prices to make-up for the sales lost to piracy they should in theory be making just as much money as if their software weren't pirated (because the price would be lower then). So the reason why software developers are chasing pirates is so that they can lower prices?
Thanks for browsing at -1
Please vistit my blog: www.framtiden.nu
Ironically, what if this guy had been playing something like Rainbow 6 as his house was raided!
*snip*
:= real lost revinue the company would have gotten were it not for copyright violators := profit per copy of software company makes when it is purchased legally. This isn't the same as the retail price, as Id probably makes domething less than the $30.00 sticker price of a retail copy of Quake, for example. := Number of copies obtained illegally := Ratio of people who would have paid for the software had they not gotten an illegal copy over the total number who got a copy illegally (value 0.0 - 1.0),
:= C * P * N
"It's cool to release something that costs $18,000," said Mr. Grimes, the DrinkorDie member from Arlington, Tex. "Basically, if it wasn't for us, you would never see this piece of software."
*snip*
I understand how they figure that companies "lose money" whenever they're software is pirated. But do they figure into those billions of lost dollars statements like the one above? Seems to me it's hard to find out just how much money the software companies are really losing because not all people who pirate their software are people who would ever pay for it.
If we define
R
P
N
and
C
then
R
C is a value between 0.0 and 1.0, and probably almost never equals 1.0. E.g. if out of 500 copyright violators 250 would have bought the program otherwise, while the other 250 would have done without, C = 0.5
Still, the worst part is that because software piracy is so rampant, it enables people who would (can?) pay for proper licensing for software to obtain illegal licenses.
Actually, the value of money lost probably approaches $0.00 the more expensive the software becomes. I suspect C is quite high for really cheap software that is copied illegally, while it approaches 0.0 for really expensive software copied illegally.
Two factors play a significant role in this: (1) commercial entities almost always want to have their licensing in order (due to audits, liability, etc.) and (b) individuals have very limited budgets (comparitavly speaking).
I doubt very much a single copyright violator of an $18,000 program would have purchased it legally had it not been available on the internet. Indeed, I suspect C = 0.0000 in that particular example.
On the other hand, illegal copies of a $50.00 program (e.g a game) probably do mean that some percentage would have gone out and spent $50.00 on it had they not obtained it, so C is probably higher.
For a $2.00 piece of software (assuming its really easy to find and pay for), C probably approaches 0.9 or higher.
Of course, even this equation ignores the effect of advertising (someone copies the $18,000 program, then finds a need for it in their professional life and talks their employer into purchasing one or more copies), as well as the 'bleedoff' effect (a kid copies one $50.00 game, but goes and spends the $50.00 he would have spent on the first game on another game instead, perhaps by the same company, perhaps by a competitor. Statistically, assuming both games are roughly the same popularity, this is a wash, and neither company loses anything despite the kids having twice as many games as they could have afforded). It also ignores the very common practice of 'try before you buy', where people will in fact borrow a friend's copy of a commercial package, use it, get used to it, then quite often chose to buy a copy (for the documentation, for support, etc.).
I think it is obvious even to the IP zealots out there that the real losses due to copyright violations are tiny fractions of the amounts being deceitfully presented to the FBI and the courts, and in some cases (e.g. Napster) copyright violations have been shown to have the opposite effect, and even increase sales.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Sankus should have raped someone, or robbed them at gunpoint. He'd be out in half the time.
So you advocate the valuation of a sophisticated tool for skilled artists based on what you can do with it? It's not my intent to offend you, but might I suggest using something else that's more in line with your skills, price range, and scope of application?
From the article:
"It's the same reason that people join gangs," said Allan Doody, the Customs Service investigator who led the DrinkorDie investigation, part of a broader anti-piracy campaign called Operation Buccaneer. "They're hanging out on the cyber-street corner."
But in contrast to petty criminals and warring gangs, Internet piracy groups have a worldwide impact of at least tens of millions of dollars, if not more. Such groups secure their reputations by releasing thousands of free movies, games, music and software programs on the Internet each year.
So, distributing copyrighted materials is worse than such "petty criminal activity" as drive-by shootings, drug sales, and car theft? I'm glad our law enforcement dollars are being invested wisely to get this vicious criminals off the street.
(And yes, they are criminals, I just object to the implied severity of their crimes.)
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
These companies are like the RPAA
:)
It's RIAA (recording industry) or MPAA (motion picture).
I pretty much agree with you I think. If I was selling a program for 10K or more and I only expected to sell a couple thousand copies, then I would most likely have some serious security features. Even ~$3K 3DS Max uses a hardware dongle. Not foolproof, but a lot better than a lot of companies do. But like you say, the more the software is worth, the more security it should have. I also think that companies that use pirated software should have the proverbial legal hammer dropped on them. They are attempting to profit at the expense of the companies whose software they are stealing. I'm not as convinced on home use. I think that the argument about people using a program in order to learn it is a good one. I know that I wouldn't want to blow 500 bucks or more just to see if I really wanted to use this program. If it weren't for warez, I probably never would have learned a lot of software packages that I now use at work. It helped me get a decent job.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
OSS should want to stop traditional software piracy. When people can't get those expensive programs for free anymore(ms office anyone?) they will either pay the price, find an alternative, or do without. I would bet that most of the time a free OSS alternative will do just fine for the average user. This could actually cause a increase in the usage of OSS.
It's obvious that what these guys were doing is illegal. Still I feel sorry for them, with their multi-year prison sentences, because they really weren't costing the software industry that much money in lost sales, and because they are scapegoats.
As many others have said, most people wouldn't have bought the very expensive applications anyhow. When someone makes a pirated copy of Photoshop to do web graphics, at worst, they are depriving The GIMP community of a new user, or depriving Jasc of $99 -- usually not depriving Adobe of $600. There is some financial impact on the industry, but the numbers are lower. Also, there are plenty of software copiers. Software "theft" won't be reduced one iota by locking these guys up.
The reason for that is, they were just functioning as a completely essential part of a healthy information economy -- the underground. Why is it essential? One reason is that, espescially near the turning points in society and revolution, information occasionally must transcend barriers created by law. If these underground data networks -- very small ones, if you believe the numbers in the NYT article -- are maintained, hidden, and keep working based on an economy of commercially available pilfered information, and if more citizens are trained in how to communicate covertly, and people are indoctrinated to know that storing or exchanging illegal information may not actually be wrong, then our surveillance-laden society has paid a fair price.
The loosely hierarchical distribution network used by warez kidz is analogous in form and function to those used in China and other repressive regimes by political dissidents. Capable of passing only information, peer-organized, and with a medium level of identity isolation -- bring down one and you bring down a few others, but not the whole group. Personally, I feel more secure knowing that there exist these sophisticated illegal networks, capable only of traffic in information, that would be rather difficult for any authority to completely shut down. Who knows when they may be needed...
-=Ivan (actually not very paranoid at all)
"Here are a few notes from the underground / load them at your pleasure / These are the dusty pictures that I found / while on my search for treasure" -- Information Society: Mirrorshades
Now when will we read more about the CEOs and other corporate executes who have deprived the good citizens of this country of billions of REAL dollars through their skimming and shady accounting practicies? Can we give this corporate rape a nickname? Can we make comparisons like "The CEO of suchandsuch is kind of like the guy who robs the 7-11 except he hit 10 million of them and left behind several million victims. Their sentences should be served concurently."
Yeah, piracy is illegal, but I'm not seeing it at risk of pushing the world into a recession or worse depression, as investors and fund administrators move their money out of corporate stocks faster than they did in 1929...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The `warez scene' was alive and well long before that. Back before the Internet explosion, warez was traded via BBS's, and by people bringing boxes full of floppies to their friends houses who had copy parties. Or they'd borrow a school's computer lab (rows of Apple II's) and set every one copying ...
It seems that the NYT thinks that the warez scene needs the Internet to `take root' in. Not at all -- it'll root in anything it can, be it face to face meetings, BBS's, the Internet, or whatever comes next.
And yes, while commercial piracy exists, does the BSA seriously think that commercial pirates aren't capable of doing their own cracks? They're in a totally different space from what it sounds like these warez guys are doing. The idea that commercial pirates wouldn't exist without the warez crowd is ludicrous. The most popular targets for commercial pirating (Microsoft Office, etc.) aren't even copy protected.
None of this is any news to /. readers but it's sad that the NYT swallowed the BSA line so readily. Some tougher questions definitely would have been in order.