Slashdot Mirror
Talk To a Convicted Warez Guy
Chris Tresco is one of those evil "software pirates" cybermoms warn you about. He was a sysadmin at MIT, and also a member of "the secretive Internet software trading ring known as 'DrinkOrDie'" who got caught by the DoJ's Operation Buccaneer, got convicted, and was sentenced to 33 months in prison on August 16. Chris has a little time left on the outside before he goes away and has agreed to spend some of it answering your questions, so ask away. (Usual Slashdot interview rules.)
Software piracy doesn't tend to invoke the feelings family members and loved ones of the victim who want to wait outside the prison and beat the living shit out of the rapist!
Please mod the above AC down as low as you can go to go along with how victims feel for D E C A D E S to come after they are violated.
Anonymous is for good reason and the COWARD shoe fits!
MMMmmmmmm....erotic cakes!!! Homer J. Simpson - Treehouse of Horror VI
Did you come to any realizations after being sentenced? Like "Stealing software is bad cuz I got busted" or maybe "It's fine to steal software as long as you don't share it with everyone else".
Maybe the real moral of the story is "Illegal is illegal and if you do it and get busted you deserve everything you get", because in the end the people you are stealing from are the very people who are gonna pay your way for the next 33 months of your life: the general public.
I used to be a MS fan but then I was brainwashed. Now I see the Light. Mac OS X pwns u.
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
It might help if you had spelled "discipline" correctly. As it stands, you look like a bunch of illiterate fools.
by doing what you did, you helped to increase the market penetration of closed (and increasingly intrusive) software. you smeared the line in some user's minds between free software and closed software distributed in a manner against it's creator's wishes. even worse, you smeared the line in the public's mind between free software developers who respect copyright and the ideas of credit and recognition to people who create things (music, software, etc) and the people who willfully violate copyrights and have no interest in giving credit or recognition to those who create things.
all of these are damaging to the users and developers of free software. so my question is, what do you have against those of us who use or develop free software?
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
Don't you feel that you're called to accomplish something more than trading porn?
George Will has an appropos phrase: "well-educated moral cretins". Don't you feel that with your substantial ability you have an obligation to use it to create something, rather than just jerk off in front of a computer monitor?
You were at M.I. frickin T, man! Do you know how many people don't have the tickets to make it there? And you blew it. All that potential...how pathetic.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Oh well, see you in 33 months..
He did. He used his political and monetary influences to bring about the change he wanted. The Pentagon with a big hole in it and no World Trade Centre.
Back on topic, are you saying that warez guys would make a substantial difference to the world if they all pledged allegiance to the Free Software Foundation (absolutely no pun intended, blame RMS), or are you simply spouting off in what even I, as a bloody Guardian reader, see as an embarrassingly lefty rant?
- Chris
Pick and 2--
1: his ass
2: his mouth
3: his hands
4: His ability to negotiate a pack of ciggarettes into a 3 week stay and the MGM Grand and an early release.
5: His ability to overclock a P4 1.5 GHz into a 30.45GHz that fuses Hydrogen near the surface of the processor
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
mschwarz@sherbtel.net you are a self-righteous cocksucker. I bet you're willing to pretend you've never ever jaywalked in the in the interests of defending that statement.
Enjoy getting your ass raped by
your fellow in-mates ?
you'll be someone else's bitch, or will you have a bitch of your own?
Do you find it ironic that this interview seems too have attracted at least twice as much comment as other /. discussions that might have far deeper inplications for us all? What does that say about the typical /. respondent?
Try life. The 33 months in prison, assuming you are not analy raped, are the least of your worries. The day you get out is when your trouble begins my friend. No one hires convicted felons. Not only have you foolishly made yourself a burden on society for the 33 months you will be in prison and we have to pay thousands of dollars annually for your transgression in order to feed and house your stupid self, you will more than likely never work again in anything remotely resembling your prior occupation. So congrats silly rich boy. Not only have you burdened all of us for the next 3 or so years, you have extinguished a respectable career that we will also not benefit from via your taxes in the future because you can kiss MIT Sysadmin money goodbye. Forever. Now was it fucking worth it?