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

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.

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: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: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.