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.)

Comments

Do you wish you'd raped someone instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you got more time than the average rapist, do you wish you'd raped someone instead of 'pirating' software?

Re:Do you wish you'd raped someone instead

[glesga_kiss]

You obviously missed the point of that post. As you point out, rape is a horrible crime. So how can it be just that someone who commits rape will spend less time in prison than someone who copied (not stole) some digital bits? That's if the rapist actually gets any prison time to compare his with.

There are other idiotic sentencing issues...you can spend more time in prison for bringing a natural harmless plant over an imaginary line than you would if you held someone at gunpoint and robbed them. In the latter case, the person could be traumatised for rest of their life, looking over their shoulder every time they go out. In the first case, well they might feel the urge to eat some junk food.

It depends who the crime is against really. If it's big business like the RIAA, software companies or the alcohol & tobacco lobbies, you are in trouble. Harm a real person, you'll be out by Friday.

Re:Do you wish you'd raped someone instead

[Anonymous Coward]

To quote Moe Berg:

"Sometimes to get your point across, you have to advocate the position you're fighting."

I'm the person who posted the question. I know a few rape victims; the closest friend I've ever had was raped when she was 6 years old - now, 35 years later, it still affects her. She's attempted suicide more times that I can count.

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!

You're right, it doesn't.

It also doesn't destroy the victim's self esteem,

Nor does it screw them up for most of their life, preventing them from having a 'normal' relationship.

It also doesn't cause them to contemplate (and sometimes attempt) suicide.

So why does someone who copied a few bits warrant more punishment than a rapist?

Anonymous is for good reason

Yes, but you'll probably never know what that reason is.

and the COWARD shoe fits!

I don't see you posting your real name and address here.

Re:Do you wish you'd raped someone instead

[crivens]

I couldn't agree with you more. The justice system places so little value on human life, especially that of the victims.

On a side note, I saw a story on the news last night that several people arrived on the scene of an attempted child kidnapping. They managed to get the two children free from the kidnapper, and kicked and beat him until the police arrived. While I don't condone vigilante actions, this is probably the roughest punishment the kidnapper will face. I'm sure he'll get minimal jail time.

Another story I saw was that a police officer was killed during an alleged road race. An earlier death of an innocent member of the public in a road race resulted in a minimal sentence for the driver. The government's response to the problem of road racing is to educate the public as to the dangers of driving at such speeds. As in many cases, they're completely missing the point. Justice and punishment is supposed to be about making someone think twice before proceeding with a crime. To do this, they should convict a driver of manslaughter or murder (you can argue the differences), take away their license for a long period of time (20+years) and throw them in jail for a long period of time.

A third story that has been progressing was the case of an illegal Japanese immigrant who abandoned her babies in her house for ten days while she went out clubbing and partying with her boyfriend. The children died of starvation (and probably other effects from not eating or drinking). The news programs proclaimed that the Government's support system failed this woman, and as a result two children died. No, the system didn't fail. The woman failed. She received something like seven years in jail less the year she has already served, so she will probbaly be out in about six years.

All of these stories took place in Canada.

At what point did people decide that responsibility is no longer theirs? When you drive, break the speed limit and receive a ticket it's not the fault of the Police or the Government. It's your fault for breaking the limit. You can't turn round and complain that the Police are being too heavy handed.

I'm sick and tired of Justice systems no longer being about Justice. I'm sick and tired of hearing people laying the blame elsewhere. Responsbility for your family's lives, your life and the life of others around you is in your hands. Don't blame anyone else for it. Next time you try to jump a red light, or the next time you speed pass a pedestrian crossing the road, reflect for a second what might have happened. Could you live with the guilt of killing someone due to your impatience?

If you haven't guessed, I'm a carless pedestrian, and I'm tired of drivers trying to run me over as they can't wait for more than 5 seconds while I cross the road.

Rant over, but not finished.

OpenSource

[theefer]

What do you think of Open Source ? Bad because there is nothing left to put on your warez website ? Or good because this has the same goal as software piracy : allowing people to use softwares for free (though I might be missing the point of piracy) ?

Piracy Justification

[RomSteady]

One of the most common justifications of software piracy is that it doesn't hurt the publisher or the creator. However, there are documented cases of it doing just that.

Blue Byte released an amazing game called "Incubation: Time Is Running Out," which sold moderately well...but not enough to cover their original expenditure on the product. They then released an expansion pack, "Incubation: The Wilderness Missions," which was the first product ever to use SafeDisc. The mission pack outsold the original game by 1.5x.

How can you justify piracy when so few titles break even on their development costs?

Re:Was it worth it?

[Jester99]

I call logical fallacy on you. Shame, shame.

Take the syllogism: "All New Yorkers must be Americans."

(So are you saying that if you're not from
New York, you're not from America?)

Given that the guy's an MIT student, we can safely assume with a reasonable degree of assurance that he's a smart cookie.

"All MIT students are smart enough to understand the consequences of illegal actions. He was an MIT student. Therefore, he's smart enough to understand the consequences."

The contraverse is not neccessarily true. Don't twist his logic like that. It fails.

Re:The Economics Of Warez

[kootch]

Come on, the same people that pirate Photoshop also pirate $30 shareware products.

Hell, one of the most requested serial numbers requested (in a mac channel) is the sn# for Ircle, the shareware client most apple users use that has a 30 day limit.

However, the ppl that pirate warez rarely use the products for more than a week (unless it's a game), if in most cases, use them for non-commercial purposes since businesses usually need to be legit.

Personally, I don't see warez as a huge financial problem for *large* software companies. The people that use them are small-time users who would never be able to afford them, they build a userbase of people that use their products for corporations (that pay for lots of licenses), and retain the marketshare of the product (adobe/quark), (office/claris/openoffice), etc.

Legality vs Morality

[SkankhodBeeblebrox]

Do you think the DoJ basically are using you as an example to dissuade other 'w4r3z d00ds' from pirating commerical software, or do you actually believe they undertook a massive operation to specifically stop DoD?

Do you find most people are more concerned with the morality of software piracy, rather than the legality? (e.g. piracy is bad because its morally wrong rather than piracy is bad because it's illegal)

Re:The Economics Of Warez

[mcfiddish]

I fail to see a justification in stealing something becuase you feel the price is too high. Only in this industry does that mode of thinking seem to carry any weight.

Well, in this industry the cost of duplication is zero. I'm not defending software "pirates", but I wish people would stop equating copying bits on a hard disk to theft of physical goods.

What kind of time?

[xtremex]

Are you going to a minimum security prison? A federal Prison? Will you be with white collar criminals (let's hope you do) or will you be with "real" criminals...you know, thieves, rapists, etc.

Re:Was it worth it?

[NDPTAL85]

Its not a loaded statement as long as you don't subscribe to the faulty logic of "Information wants to be free" and the other one which dictates that its morally wrong to copyright any form of electronic information.

Regarding your fate:

[mosch]

Do you think that incarceration is a just consequence to your actions?

Re:Stealing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please!

Bandwidth at universities is like electric cars. It is free and clean. The universities are just power hungry pigs that ripoff everybody. The fiber is in the ground and was payed for long ago.

Okay, I fogot the other stupid arguements the redboxers/environuts have for their self justification, but if anybody else can remember more please respond to this post with them!

Thank you
The Open Don Knotts guy

Re:The Economics Of Warez

[unicron]

That's pretty ignorant, man. Those bits might've taken a company 2 years and 10 million dollars to develop. You seem to think the entire cost of a software manufacturer is whatever printing the cd and jewel case cost them.

Their are a TON of ways you can steal without it being a physical good. If I hack a university and enroll myself classes, free of charge, I would consider that stealing.

Re:Couple questions

[evilpenguin]

Damn it! I am sick of this shit (pardon the language, but I'm getting tired of it). We do not ALL do it. I do not do it. I use Free Software. I haven't even been tempted to steal a bit of code for four years. And even when I was tempted, I DIDN'T DO IT.

It is not only illegal to steal code, it is wrong.

I also think the closed proprietary model of software development is wrong, but the same laws that uphold their proprietary licenses uphold my GPL and BSD licenses. If it is wrong for people to violate those licenses (and I think it is), then it is wrong to break a EULA from Microsquish or whomever.

We do not ALL do it. There is at least one person who does not (and I'm willing to bet thousands if not millions of others).

Re:Sharing != Piracy

[dachshund]

oh really? so we need two different kinds of prisons now? one for the blue collar crimes, and one for the white collar?

No, we need civil crimes with stiff judgements for people whose only crime is depriving another person of some theoretical income.

In the end, this is probably better for taxpayers, copyright holders and defendants alike.

Re:Stealing?

[cheezfreek]

Were you stealing bandwidth from MIT to do this? Or were you hacking into other people's boxes to get the bandwidth?

He's not going to answer this question. If he does, he's copping to another crime (assuming this wasn't one of the charges he's already been convicted of). I suggest that, even if this question gets moderated up to a 5, the editors don't send it, because the answer will just be "I plead the 5th".

Re:Couple questions

[thumperward]

May I say then sir, that you don't know what you're missing. Have fun with those morals there.

c - Chris

Re:Pirating software is like...

[Doc Hopper]

Your argument, Squarewav, holds water like a sieve. I apologize in advance for correcting grammar, punctuation, and spelling from your initial posting.

If you recorded the Simpsons, removed the commercials, put in your own ads, and rebroadcast it, is it theft?

The answer is a resounding NO. If you rebroadcast their material, substituting your own ads, you have profited by infringing copyright. Motive in copyright infringment cases is very, very important. If you do not profit from infringement, the violation is not as serious as if you gain profit. Additionally, profitting from copyright infringement leaves you liable for damages equal to or greater than the profit you gained by infringing someone else's copyright.

It's not theft. It is copyright infringement. They are two dramatically different things, although the major software and media companies would have you believe otherwise.

[Let's assume] you owned a furniture store and wanted to sell Lazyboy chairs, but you didn't want to pay for them. So you made your own chair, that looks exactly the same, and then put a lazyboy logo on it. [You then] sold it for next to nothing; is [this] theft?

Again, you are incorrect. If you produce goods similar to, or in many cases as identical to (in any case where patent, trademark, or copyright do not apply), someone else's and place your own trademark upon it, you have done nothing wrong. If, however, you place another's trademark upon it (implying that it was produced by the other manufacturer), you are guilty of trademark infringement. Alternatively, if you use a patented invention and do not pay patents to the patentor, you are liable for patent infringement claims. Similarly, if you duplicate a copyright work, you are not guilty of stealing from the author; you are guilty of infringing upon his right to control copying of his work.

The only reasons one could proffer the arguments above, that I can see, is 1) simply lack of education regarding U.S. law. I am not a lawyer, but I do believe I have a sound understanding of laws where they affect my day-to-day life. There are also 2) those paid to have that viewpoint. Hilary Rosen and others are paid part to promote these views of copyright infringement as theft. To promote an alternative view disagrees with the corporate agenda, and this disagreement would most likely eliminate their sources of income.

The fundamental problem with the thinking comes about because of the nature of what we're dealing with. Information is trivially reproduced, even when spoken. I suggest you study the history of copyright, to fully understand the nature of the laws. Today, we have a society where such information can be reproduced for (effectively) free. It's my personal opinion that Copyright is a doomed concept. However, we have not come up with a suitable reward yet for authorship to promote the science and arts that is not Copyright. Until we do, we will be stuck with this system that so obviously maps so poorly to reality.

There are certainly cases where the line between copyright infringement and theft is very blurred. For instance, if one breaks into a computer system and makes copies of information that were never intended to be made public. One has obviously violated copyright in that case, since U.S. law regards all authorship as copyrighted. Is it theft? In that case, I don't know; just as "breaking and entering" is considered "breaking and entering" (vandalism and trespass, if you prefer), if you don't steal anything for entering, but instead copy important documents, you've not stolen the documents, but made copies in violation of the wishes and reasonable expectation of the holder. The company or individual never intended to release the information to the public for profit (the point of copyright), the information was reasonably expected to remain private, and consent for this action was implicitly denied. In that regard, information violation seems more analogous to rape than theft: one has expressly violated the wishes of the holder of the information, taken nothing from them, but used them in a way inconsistent with their will. Copyright infringement on released goods, however, is similar to using a hooker for her intended purpose, but refusing to pay her. One has no implied contract, the other does. The penalties for rape are spelled out in the law, and include government-sanctioned prison time. The penalties for not paying your prostitute are the same as for not paying any service person: if your bill is not paid, you are sent to a collection agency, which then may take you to court to seek damages. It is (often) not treated the same as theft, since the "goods" (a service) are intangible, you have not deprived anyone of anything except time invested (which has value, but is again intangible and cannot be stolen) and potential profits. In some cases, particularly where the one infringed upon believes the intent was to defraud (once again, fraud law, not theft), they may seek criminal remedies. Most don't, though, because by so doing they are depriving themselves of a potential customer, getting bad press, and preventing the infringer from quickly paying the damages by depriving him/her of income.

Note that the paragraph above is entirely my opinion, and not really part of my initial refutation. I simply think that most software companies and authors would do well to remember that they simply sell their time for money. Their "product" is a service, and our current model of copyright attempts to treat information as a tangible good, which it is not. Those prepared to acknowledge this fact (as Microsoft seems to be doing with their license renewal services) will probably do OK as the economy transforms to take advantage of new realities. Those who insist on treating intangible as tangible will eventually go out of business as realists (the customers) begin to treat it as the intangible, inherently value-less thing it is.

A few links for you to peruse:

• This is far more of a rant on why copyright is bad law than the history of copyright, but still worth a read.
• A useful timeline and overview of U.S. copyright law. It's useful to note that copyright was initially designed to prevent authors from attempting to enforce their rights to a particular piece of work interminably. Copyright was made to allow works to enter the public domain, not prevent them from doing so. A very, very important distinction we'd do well to remember in this age of 100+ year copyrights.
• 
  

  
  
  Fundamentally, it's a thorny issue with a whole lot of ramifications. Those who attempt to cast copyright infringement as a black and white case of theft are intentionally misleading you as to what is going on. It is its own legal domain with its own remedies and penalties, entirely aside from traditional laws regarding property theft. There is no such thing as "intellectual property": there are patents, trademarks, and copyrights which give rights to works based upon a well-established but sorely broken legal framework.

Re:How serious was your crime?

[enjo13]

Defacing a web site is wrong. Breaking into a webserver is wrong. Period.

If you want to "improve your skills as a SysAdmin", then feel free to setup your own box and break into it all day long. Hell get a friend to set it up and you can go back and forth trying to break into each others setups.

While the Slashdot community doens't like to admit, cracking (for the most part) is a crime. Defacing a web-site is the real world equivalent of boarding up the front of a store. Sure its just temporary, but its certainly not good for business now is it?

THe mere suggestion that we as society should just tolerate it (boys will be boys after all) is simply ludicrous. If this guy didn't want to go to jail he shouldn't have broken the law. These laws exist for very real reasons.... take responsibility and don't try to justify illegal actions because its "educational."

Hell by that logic I should go out and rob a few banks because I might want to one day work in the physical security industry.

Re:I'm not the devil but I play his advocate on tv

[i0lanthe]

Is it wrong to murder and eat someone?

C'mon. Relativism is a slippery slope and this is not a good season for tray sledding.

Re:I'm not the devil but I play his advocate on tv

[clary]

Well, that's up to your personal ethical code.

Either there is no such thing as right an wrong, or it is most definitely not up to your own personal ethical code. To admit that right and wrong are a matter of preference is to destroy any useful definition of right and wrong.

Just because you say it is wrong doesn't mean it is. Is it wrong to get an abortion? Is it wrong to smoke pot? A lot of people will give you different opinions on the ethics of those issues, regardless of their legal standing.

Yes there are people who don't do it, agreed, but your declaration that it's simply wrong is a bit self-righteous.

Without saying anything about whether those particular things are right and wrong, I will make this statement: In the context of a given situation, each one of these actions is either right, wrong, or optional according to the one correct moral code. Either that, or there is no such thing as right and wrong, no such thing as a moral code that we "ought" to follow.

Many people wish to say something like "We can't favor one person's morality over the other" without accepting the full implications of that statement. Namely, if each person gets to decide right and wrong, then we lose the ability to judge any action as wrong, no matter how horrific.

That said, I don't pretend to have all the right answers about which things under which circumstances are right, wrong, and optional. But until someone convinces me otherwise, I am going to assume that the categories exist, and do my best to figure out what things go into which.

Re:I'm not the devil but I play his advocate on tv

[quinto2000]

Absolutism is a slippery slope. What do you do if there is a riot in the town, and you know that if you falsely prosecute and imprison this one man (although you know him to be innocent) many lives will be saved and the riot will end? What if you know that the riot will only end if the innocent man is lynched, thus saving ten other innocents?

The key to any moral system is recognizing that people have different moral values, that those differences can be legitimate, but still being able to make value judgments regarding which action is correct for a particular situation. Any hard and fast rule will cause problems, but the recognition that people live differently is not the same as total moral relativism.

How horrible is this, is that even a legal arrest?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you feel about the state of things, like the legalities of reverse engineering and arresting people who at least in my eyes haven't caused monetary damage to any company?

Rant/Personal Opinion below >>>

Personally, I think it's all a bunch of b**ls*it. I'm a software developer, I work for a national software company and I write my own stuff. Do I get offended or angry if someone cracks something of mine. Not at all. Why? Because if I was that concerned about someone pirating my stuff I would have been more careful with coding the protection. I mean, the entire software development corporation structure wouldn't have existed if people couldn't 'crack' or reverse engineer software. They wouldn't have modded a PDP and added instructions Digital asked to put in the next PDP, Microsoft wouldn't have existed because QDOS wouldn't have (QDOS was a ripped copy of CPM), Compaq wouldn't have been able to create an IBM Clone of the XT, there wouldn't be an Adobe Photoshop for sure, cause someone probably would have claimed the rights to all the filtering algorthms, and whoops, Xerox with the mouse as wel. And what's sickest of all is that now these companies are banking on core foundations of software and technological development not being legal. The fact that I can take any .NET app and get the full readable source out with a program called Akanimo because the MSIL is /fully/ described, or that Adobe uses a crappy crypto in one of their products that I learned to write on a computer that was twenty years old at the time when I was only nine, or that the activation components of a particular OS product are /public/ objects that anyone can use to brute force with even any scripting language that has a do loop (and if the objects aren't there the OS doesn't even halt), it's ouvious these people aren't concerned with even trying to make things harder for their own products to be cracked. They're more concerned with ensuring that the laws get put in place so they can cry like the babyish code they seem to be spitting out. I know that my stuff will get/has gotten cracked, and I even put things in there to ask whoever did it to let me know how they did it so I can give them a greater challenge the next time around (how else is my protection supposed to get better). It's sad to see that these /Private/ corporations have to go whining to the government because their programmers suck. It's ignorant to hear that looking at a competors product is 'illegal', or that I have to buy a 1200 dollar product before I can find out if it's worth it or not. If I go out and buy a 20000 dollar car I can sell it off if it doesn't fit my needs, or if I get a pair of pants as a gift that doesn't fit me I can return it to the store, however most all software products that I know of try to circumvent the fair use laws and most stores won't let you return the software. So I'm supposed to take that 1200 and let it go, and then still have to find something else that I think may be suitable and then fork out even more money and maybe be wrong again. I can even count how many products I've read the reviews of and sounded great, and then was able to use and found out they either sucked or didn't do what I needed. Can I sue the companies becuase of all the money that was thrown down the drain, nope.

I know my software will always be cracked, and in a way I'm glad it does because it helps me make my software better, and I know that people actually want what I'm working on. But laws should not be placed for the ignorance of companies like Microsoft and Adobe. How many banks do you walk into that hasn't a high grade hard to defeat security system? I believe software companies need to start programming their software with the same ideas, instead of trying to enforce crapola like this. Maybe that's why I've been slowly moving to the open source ideals, I'm fed up with all of it.

This isn't meant to cause a flamewar, just wanted the convicted to hear the opinion of one of his so called 'targets'.

illegal software

[Anonymous Coward]

i dont understand the big deal on piracy myself, and i am a developer. what i do find funny is the people who are completely against it, and slam those who do. the arguments go that it is illegal, and morally wrong, same as stealing from a store. i just have 1 question for you, do you do anything illegal or morally wrong. i bet there is not a single person on this list that upholds all the laws. when you get into the moral concept, nobody has the same morals, and i am sure everyone breaks someone elses morals at some time.

i drive 90 - 100 mph to work in kansas city, obviously the speed limit is 55-65 mph. am i breaking the law, yes, do i care, no. a coworker smokes pot, illegal, you betcha, immoral, in my opinion yes, do i care, no, am i gonna narc, no way.

simple rules in life:

1. mind your own business, and others do same
2. you do the crime, you haveta do the time
3. you roll the dice and ya takes ya chances

Re:Prove me wrong.

[Kintanon]

I could rape your little sister and spend less time in jail than this guy got.

Something ain't right.

Kintanon