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.)
1) Are you guilty?
2) If so, do you feel what you were doing should be illegal?
3) If so, why did you do it anyways?
Why the name DrinkOrDie?
D/\ Gooberguy
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
Does he have a copy of Visual Studio.Net?
Sean.OutaHere()
Since you got more time than the average rapist, do you wish you'd raped someone instead of 'pirating' software?
33 will be long, really. All that for copying software ? Do you think what you did was that bad ? I mean, is it really your fault if people don't buy software ?
Lots of things are illegal, a lot of them arent wrong. A lot of them are. Which did you do?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Can you get me a free copy of Office XP before you go?
What do you think about Linux on the desktop?
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
You had a career all lined up, and probably enough income to pay for everything you wanted.
You were intelligent enough to know it was wrong, so was it worth it?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
If you could change one law, what would you do?
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
I occassionly go warez shopping with carracho, should I be worried about a prison term for browsing these servers? Exactly how much software do you need to have to get 33 months in jail?
What motivated you to pirate software? Was it just because you could? Or were you trying to make some sort of philosophical statement regarding commercial software and the like?
Eddy.WriteLinux.Com
There's been a lot of talk about DRM being built into Microsoft's next generation of operating systems. XP currently has the major annoyance (especially from a piracy perspective) of registration...do you think these new efforts will be able to significantly reduce the prevalance of Warez?
Slashdot 's editors are dickheads
The popular "pro-warez" argument is that if software companies made big-ticket products (for example, Photoshop) available for a lower cost, the demand for warez would drop. As someone in the know, do you think that's at all true?
33 months seems like an outrageous sentence. It seems unjust. The old guy who has been in charge of the photocopier at my local library for the last 20 years would be on death row if similar criteria were applied to him.
Do you think that justice in the USA these days is too influenced by corporations?
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.
Doesn't the conviction of the DOD principles on traditional copyright infringement grounds negate the "digital is different" theme of the constant call by the (MP|RI)AA for stronger anti-circumvention measures?
Would stronger anti-circumvention laws or technical protective measure (TPMs) have affect the operations of DOD?
Do you think the DOD's conspicuous visibility (and the ease of online searches), made DOD easier to target that the street-corner DVD, VCD, and VCR vendors?
Is there any way to distribute content online that a copyright holder would not be able to find the that content -- assuming that the content was visible enough to have (in the language of fair use) an "impact on the fair market value of the work"?
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) ?
theefer
Did you get busted for copying from someone else and making available, or by making copies you bought/got from school available?
M@
Krispy Cream is people
So... you knew what you were doing could get you thrown in the klink. Why did you do it? To make a statement?
You do know the proper way to catch the eye of lawmakers in order to change a law is to gather a large enough portion of the population who supports changing the law instead of breaking said law in an effort to "stick it to the man", right?
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?
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
When you get out, if you were offered a high-paying job to do so, would you use your knowledge to help protect software from other crackers?
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
Do you believe that this all out attack on the technically knowledgable by the digital illiterati enforcing the bloated bottomline of many of these companies will lead to an eventual electronic revolution or do you see the united states becoming controlled by copyright owners and corporations? And do you see hackers eventually out numbering the number of people in prison on drug related crimes?
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Microsoft (may have) designed its Palladium system to stop guys like you. As it seems pretty heavily-engineered, do you think it'll be effective to stop piracy ? Or will it just annoy legal users, as all previous protection schemes ?
As someone who was involved with the Warez scene: Why did you do it? What motivated you?
Why do people copy, or want to copy, proprietary software illegally when they can legally obtain copies of Free and Open Source software more easily (without doing cracks etc.), usually free of cost, and without risking fines or imprisonment? Do you see the status quo ever changing?
Stick Men
Would you agree with the notion that many software companies aren't really losing much to piracy since someone who pirates, say, a copy of Adobe Photoshop would never have purchased it in the first place due to the outrageous cost?
Personally, there is a lot of software out there that I would find useful, though I couldn't afford to (legally) own it. I think that if Adobe charged half of what they do for, say, a current version of Photoshop, they would likely sell MORE legal copies and enjoy larger market penetration and larger profits. What's your take on this?
What was "The Bust" like? Was it like _WarGames_ where they showed up in black vans and confiscated your computers and rifiled through your trash? Or was it more like _Matrix_ where they called you in and presented all sorts of evidence they collected online etc.. ?
M@
Krispy Cream is people
Does anyone know this guy's handle? I couldn't find it in any of the posts or stories. It's great that we know his real name, but the name more likely to be recognized is the nick/handle/alias/etc.
There are rapists that get less than 33 months time for their crimes. How do you feel about that? Are you being used as an example to warn people committing similar crimes?
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
Bitch or Butch?
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Why isn't there more Mac warez? I had a hell of time finding Office v.X
Knowing what the DoJ did to catch you, what would you recommend to others to prevent being caught? Were your personal security measures (encryption, anonymization, etc.) lax or altogether absent?
Check out AbiWord.
do you think the average warez kiddie will ever get convicted of "warezing" or do you think that it will always be the release groupz?
"Martha Stewart can lick my Scrotum......do i have a scrotum?" -- Sharon Osbourne
Every petition that ever worked had just one signature on it once.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
But at least I'm not a coward, COWARD!
MMMmmmmmm....erotic cakes!!! Homer J. Simpson - Treehouse of Horror VI
If you were talking to a young kid who's trading warez, how would you advise him to do it without getting caught?
If you go to one of those country club prisons, will they let you have highspeed internet access?
If they mysteriously put you in high security, will you get tatooed with a ballpoint pen? That would certainly intimidate the students when you're back on the outside.
If you write a book, do you think hollywood will try to sue you for the proceeds?
If the RIAA/MPAA/MS offered you a boatload of money to work for them developing DRM, would you take it? Would you do a good job?
If you could be any animal, any animal at all, what animal would you be?
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
What kind of a case did the prosecutor build against you at your trial, and in the court of public opinion via the "news?" And, what do you think of its merits (or lack thereof?) Do you feel that they were unnecessarily harsh or overly light on you? Do you think that they were trying to make an example of you or not?
Did they call you a "threat to modern society" or just a "guy who'd erred from the straight and true?"
What, do you feel, is the moral difference between what you have been convicted of doing and what everyone else here has probably done at one point or another?
On a personal note, 33 months of your life is a horrendous price to pay. Good luck, man.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
Did you encrypt your hard drive? Why or why not?
-Matt
Who gets your warez when they throw you in the joint? Did you have a distribution plan for this, or will they just raid your house like the feds did?
If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Do you think spending 33 years in prison is a fair sentence when drunk drivers and other people who have mortaly injured or disabled others can get off with Involuntary Mansluaghter and 10 years?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
The incredibly large volume of warez DoD was trading must have been staggering. At any point in time did you or anyone else in DoD ever think that the whole ring was getting way out of hand? If so, what ever came from that or those discussions?
Without commenting on your recent conviction, I am curious what you think regarding software evolution. It's clear that the current nature of software 'licensing' is flawed, given the rampant mistrust and disregard for EULAs by the general software-consuming public.
What kind of environment should software exist within? Is the corporate model doomed to fail as protective measures become more and more draconian, alienating nearly all software purchasers except those in the Fortune 100?
It's nice to think that I can have a long career of creating good software for people who need it (since the effort of creating it is not inconsequential). How can the desire to own software without purchasing it (or obtaining it legally under GPL or other open license) exist in conjunction with what is likely the goal of many on this list?
Hope your time in the clink isn't too bad, and that they didn't lock you up in solitary confinement like Kevin Mitnick was (because of the ignorant fear of allowing him access to a phone thinking that he could blow up the US!).
Anyway, what is your view on the grey area of using pirate/cracked software for non-profit/education purposes?
I have been using pirate software for ages for the primary purpose of being able to know how to work essential packages (where your group, Phrozen Crew, Razor1911 and IvanPaulo have been on the best quality tools I've used). And if I find I need to use the software for business needs, then I'll stump up the cash.
In the case where it costs large amounts of money for apps like PhotoShop, 3dsmax, etc I have noticed that some graphics artists have to have legit program keys (registered in the artists name) in order to do business with other companies, do you think that is a better way to go in that sense of checking program legality?
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
What are your feelings on the reports of our nations impending doom, suffering the wrath of giant, fire breathing robot monkeys, hell bent on death and destruction?
Do you feel that horrible disfugurement, maiming, and excruciating pain are in the works for all of us, or is it God sorting out the good from the bad?
Do you know of any ways to thwart the robot monkeys, and if these methods were employed for good or evil, would it help alleviate some of the tension around your case, perhaps even leading to your eventual early release?
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
How have your peers at MIT reacted? Digust? Sympathy?
Did the prosecution offer you a "deal" if you would talk and testify against other members of your group?
If so, did you talk in exchange for a lighter sentence? Or did you stay silent and let only yourself take the rap?
Considering that most people, even those without much grasp of technology have probably downloaded a pirated .mp3 (even the 12 year old kid I have baby-sat for on occasion has quite a collection), do you feel it is fair that you were singled out as a software pirate when hundreds of thousands of people walk free?
I also recognize that you were probably a participant in the scene for social reasons as well, how many people have you known through Drink or Die that you would consider close friends and how will this conviction change your relationship with them? Will you be tempted to return, or maybe just come back in a limited capacity (ie no illegal activites)?
Good luck in prison, it can be hard (I know personally)
Adam
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Why do you guys brand your releases with your group name?
I mean, think of the movie "Home Alone." The two burglars broke into a lot of homes. Every time they left, the stupid one would turn on the water and flood the homes, saying he was leaving a "calling card." When they were busted at the end of the movie, the police knew which homes they had victimized, because of this "calling card."
Seems kind of foolish, don't you think? I mean, so long as you're not caught, there's no harm in marking your territory, so to speak. But once you're caught, if you've pissed on every tree along the way, the authorities are going to know exactly how many crimes you've committed. It could mean the difference between a slap on the wrist, and 33 months in prison.
Punishing the duplication of some information, with zero proven *losses* (how many people *would* have purchased the software, anyway?) with over two years of jail time seems just plain idiotic.
Most univ. profs at CMU would be in jail for Xeroxing stuff left and right.
Frankly, in terms of impact to me (esp. since I use free software), I'm more concerned about legalized hacking on the part of copyright-holding corporations affecting my computer. I don't use any commercial software (got rid of xv a while ago, so I'm even clear there).
An interesting aside: Much pirated software is games. The only reason copyright exists is to encourage artists to produce, to improve society in the long term. Over the years, profits and video game budgets have shot sky-high...and yet the entertainment facter has increased very, very little. Is copyright producing the desired effect? (Note that this isn't intended to be taken as a claim that people should be able to pirate software...just a question about whether we're getting our money's worth out of copyright.)
May we never see th
Are you scared about going to prison? Do they prepare you in any way before you enter the facility, or do they just throw you in and that's it?
Just typing these questions make me uncomfortable.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
What advice (if any) would you give to those currently involved in the 'warez' scene.. whether it be one who downloads and uses cracked/copied software, or even one involved in one of these distribution groups.
Were you stealing bandwidth from MIT to do this? Or were you hacking into other people's boxes to get the bandwidth?
If you were stealing bandwidth, how much bandwidth do you think you stole from MIT? Did someone there have anything to do with the prosecution, either as a witness or as a whistleblower? Did you feel any moral qualms about stealing from a university?
If you mostly got your bandwidth through hacking, what do you imagine were the costs to the companies to repair the damage from the hacks? Did you feel any qualms about abusing other people's property?
Also, if you were hacking into other people's machines to open up Warez sites, what is the closest analogy to a physical property crime you can imagine? I envision going through the "house for sale" flyer to find unoccupied and poorly monitered homes in my neighborhood, using lockpick (or breaking a window) to get inside, and then "remodeling" it a little bit on the inside so that I could throw huge parties for hundreds or thousands of people. Is this an accurate description of the type of hacking being done, or would you compare it to something else?
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
From the article:
"I regrettably got involved with some stuff I shouldn't have and to anybody I affected, I'm sorry."
What stuff did you get involved with that you regret, pirating software, getting caught pirating software, or something else? Or is the quote just BS?
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
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)
As someone who used to be into cracking software, I find the types of cracks going on today very interesting. Back when I was doing it, copy protection involved formatting a couple of tracks different from the rest or asking for the first word from line 5, page 10 of the instruction manual.
Every time a new form of software 'encryption' (obfuscation?) comes out, it's easily cracked, relatively. Uncopyable CDs aren't, DVDs can be copied without a problem and with more and more items becoming digital, the list will expand. My question is this...does having something in a digital form automatically mean it's copyable and, if so, what does/should this mean to the makers of software? Lower prices? Come up with physical DRM of some sort? What's the answer, or (IMHO) isn't there one?
--trb
Once you get out of jail, IPv6 will be the big standard, we'll all be running Linux 2.8 and microsoft may have taken over the world. Will you be to keep up with technology in jail, for example do some studies on a laptop?
.sig: No such file or directory
Relax DOJ I run Linux, this isn't an issue for me. ;-)
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Some warez seems to involve incredible programming effort, developing custom install tools to e.g. convert MP3'd WAVs back to the originals, deal with movie resampling to save space, etc., not to mention substantial reverse-engineering work to break copy protection schemes. Who does all this? Are they professional programmers with spare time? Bored college students? High school students?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
How much money would you say that developers lost because of your pirating ring?
How much would you say all of the downloaded software was worth?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Did you think you where going to be cought?
Did you feel you where doing illegal things?
Do you regret what you did?
At the end of the late 80s and early 90s, phreaking became impossible, BBS's died, and basically the Internet allowed any kid to pass around massive amounts of info/games with little to no skill. Knowing the "golden age" of warezing was long over and all that warezing required from anyone was a server or a fast connection, why did you still do it? Where was the draw? The skill? It wasn't like you had to scan phone card numbers for days on end to get free calls to up that new game to that BBS on the other side of the world anymore..
Have you had a change of heart on this matter or are you bitter but resolved?
How do you feel about going to jail? I know that sounds stupid, so let me clarify.
Do you look at it as a miscarriage of Justice? That the goverment and big buisness are railroading you.
Or was it the price to be paid? Kind of a personal Civil Disobediance, that you knew what could happen, and did it anyway. And if it was a Civil Disobediance issue, do you think it will have a major impact on Piracy, either positive or negative?
"To Do Is To Be" - Socrates, "To Be Is To Do" - Sartre, "Do Be Do Be Do" - Sinatra
Disclaimer: I'm a sysadmin who maintains a large DCHub and shares over 200GB via overnet & ftp -- I'm sure there are many /. readers who can state the same.
I'm curious to know if you had any sort of deadman's switch apparatus that might have prevented your conviction (by lack of concrete evidence).
If not, do you think one would have helped?
What particular technologies would you suggest if you had to built one?
With the recent attempts at copyright protection by the RIAA, have you seen any technology from your favorite *AA that actually might work to stop piracy of copyrighted material? Anything that you couldn't break or was exceedingly difficult to break?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
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!
What are your plans from this point on forward? Are you going to appeal? And what are you going to do when you get out (though I won't expect you to actually SAY you are going to pirate software again ;-) )
PageTurner Reader: open-source e-reader for Android with cloudsync. http://pageturner-reader.org
On the other hand as software piracy becomes more expensive in legal terms to those who do it, it forces people to choose between paying for their commercial software, or learning about and possibly getting involved in open source, community supported software.
What do you plan to work on for your 33 months behind bars? Will you be permitted to have a computer, and if so, have you considered working with software that you can't possibly steal since it is freely given away?
--
BitTorrent in C -- LibBT
http://www.sf.net/projects/libbt
Please, slashdot, don't try and cheapen what the guy did. He committed a crime, got caught, and is now going to jail for it. Though you may think "all software should be free!" or some other similar bullshit, what he did was illegal.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Was part of the 1980s Skateboarding based arcade game 720.
I'd always thought [pure_speculation.com] that the DoD guys were influenced by that.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
What was the first piece of software you pirated?
What was the weirdest piece of software you pirated?
What was the most memorable piece of software you pirated?
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.
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
1) Why did you do it? Was it for a thrill, for fun, because you knew the software companies were overcharging, or for another reason?
2) I've heard rumours that some large software companies actually leak software out on purpose because they realize the importance of getting their product out to be used and tested in order to spark intrest in it. Do you believe this is true?
If not, then why the hefty sentence? Did anyone make any money, I guess is what I saying?
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
where can I find software like PhotoShop, but free/open source for Windows?
Where did you find Windows?
Anyway, GIMP (equivalent to Paint Shop Pro or to Photoshop Elements) works on Windows.
Where can I find Nero?
Bundled with your CD burner. CD burners are hardware, and hardware can't be duplicated easily with current technology.
Where can I find Adobe Premiere?
VirtualDub isn't as powerful, but it should fulfill basic video editing needs.
Instead of Microsoft Office, try this.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Do you think that incarceration is a just consequence to your actions?
Does it bother you that the fed's went after a smaller group like drink or die, but ignored groups like Razor or Fairlight which are arguably larger and more organized? I mean .. Fairlight has been around 13 years at least.
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
If you plan not to pirate software again would you chose to pay for commercial apps or would you use free software?
Has your opinion changed about free software vs commercial software because of your unfortunate experience?
Do you think strong armed tactics by the BSA and upcoming drm will actually help spread free software?
http://saveie6.com/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you could send a message to the children of tomorrow, what would it be?
Do you plan to do anything productive while in jail (think Bird Man of Alcatraz)?
Do you think you'll ever make the news again?
What types of crimes have been committed by those you'll be jailed with?
Except the personal stuff of course.
Do you still belive that spreading warez is ok and that you were sacrificed, or will you speak against it and never do it again?
I am sure everyone that got caught wish that they never did get caught, the question really is if they wished that they had done something else, or that the police had target someone else instead.
Why do people copy, or want to copy, proprietary software illegally when they can legally obtain copies of Free and Open Source software more easily
Because the features essential for their work are patented, and the patent holders do not license the patents for use in free software. That's one reason why GIMP doesn't support CMYK, Pantone, or GIF writing and why the LAME project does not distribute binaries.
Or because the proprietary software uses a proprietary encrypted file format. In the United States, it's a crime to distribute software that decrypts a proprietary encrypted file format.
Will I retire or break 10K?
What do you think of this metaphor? I'm guessing that many people might view your crimes similarly (not a really big deal, but it is still a crime, so you gotta take your lumps). I'm curious if or how your view differs.
-------------------------
A person of moderate zeal
Interesting, but wrong, comparison. Actually, if he were in China, there would be no fear of prosecution for software piracy.
-Steve
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
There have been many examples of the mishandling of cases where the justice system just didn't get it with regards to technology. Do you feel like there were some technical concepts that the justice system did not understand, and as a result mishandled in some way? In short, where would you like to see the justice system have more of a clue?
You have been found guilty, but do you feel guilty?
Who do you think is more responsable for the demise of coutless small development companies - the publishers, the warez community, or the development companys themselves? And why?
Thad
Games Developer.
Thad
How do you believe your actions affected society in a positive manner?
I am assuming (and hoping) that you are being sent to a "minimum" security facility.
33 months, I'm sure you'll have some free time; do you plan to study anything in particular? (I.e. Programming, hardware, philosophy, art, etc...)
Second question, how is your family taking your (future) incarceration?
Take care... I do hope that you don't have to serve the full 33 months.
If you took all the money you spent on legal council, and instead spent it on legitimate copies of commercial software, would you still be in this mess?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I think the parent has hit the right question.
Everyone knows its illegal, and the "software costs too much" argument doesn't hold water for very long.
So was it philosophical? Was there an agenda? Or did he just do it for the intellectual kicks? (breaking the law, breaking the law!)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Is there a job opening now avaiable?
NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Pirating software is like taking a picture of a chair, and then being able to use the picture as if it were a chair.
It's not like stealing a chair. Rather it is denying the original chair-maker a *potential* sale. This is not the same thing as denying him a sale (restraint of trade), any more than going into business as a competing chair-maker.
Clearly, it's a copyright violation. But attaching penalties above and beyond those that arise from the act of infringement itself is really hard to justify: if you take a chair, it is gone: that's stealing. If you take a picture of a chair, and the chair is still there, you haven't stolen the chair.
Violation of copyright is not theft: it is violation of copyright.
-- Terry
You could have an excellent quality of life
in any number of relatively free nations such as
China
Relative to what - Imperial Rome under Nero??
'No rational religion claims "supernatural" exists, that's an atheist slander.' - seen on slashdot.
What's your opinion on the contingent of society that considers your actions heroic, and considers you to be a hero?
Do you have your 'soap on a rope' yet?
The reason may be that open source/free software alternatives are usually harder to install (involving compiling the code yourself or using install scripts) or very hard to use (the UI's are designed by geeks after all). Also there is the notion of if its free, it must suck otherwise the author would have tried to charge for it. And for the most part, thats true of open source/free software in general with some notable exceptions (Linux, Apache, Mozilla)
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Call Microsoft, offer to work on their DRM technology in exchange for them having one of their lawyers represent you in an appeal. This very well may save your goatse.
Was it a fair trial?
why or why not?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Many of us who have only skimed the surface of "the scene" but have no real connection to it -- this would include the majority of people -- often have have the belief that Courier Groups, et al, are generally one rung up the ladder from clubs in treehouses and that they are little more than bunches of hyperactive teens who want to be part of something.
.nfo files that say who in the group is in charge and who does what -- my question is: are the organizations really that structured and organized as all of this literature would have us believe? Are they more than just clubs run by Middle school students?
Yet, while you were in DoD, you were a Sysadmin and in most respects a professional, skilled, mature, and above all appeared to be a responsible person which lends come creadance to the idea that these groups (or at least the "older ones") are not the inept preteens they may appear to be.
We've all read the
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
Watch out for your cornhole, bud.
Okay, Lawrence.
dohPDHoss
======================================
Writers get in shape by pumping irony.
if given the oppurtunity, what would you do to change the scene in order to make it more secure? sftp instead of ftp?
do you have any advice for those who continue to operate 'top sites' or anything you want to say to them?
How many of the agents and other government members that "busted" you, do you think have a pirated version of Windows or some other software. Do you think any of them have a version of the software you cracked, and don't you find this ironic.
Some people don't seem to see the fundamental differences between copying information and taking
tangible objects from somebody elses possession. Thus many analogies are skewed.
Today the value of CD's, Movies and Television Shows are artificially controlled by limiting the means
of distribution. The problem the entertainment\software industry is having now is that anyone with a home
computer can be their own distributer and as a result their business model is obsolete. So in order
to protect their business they are investing in lawmakers to pass laws that make it illegal for
consumers to copy certain types of information.
While making money is important, it is not as important as a consumers right to
freely distribute information to friends, relatives or even strangers.
Say there was a man who could take a loaf of bread and make an exact copy of it.
Then this man feeds everyone around him with the copies of this bread. Should he be put
in jail for depriving the breadmakers of a living? Of course not, because it is
understood that the distribution of the bread is more important than a few people
profiting from it.
Say I buy an apple. I eat it down to it's core and then plant the seeds. The seeds grow into a tree full
of apples that I choose to give away. Would that be considered stealing? Of course not. I bought the
apple and I have the right to make copies of it.
Say I ask a man to light a candle so I can see in the dark. He charges me 50 cents. Afterwards I take
my candle and transfer my flame to all my neighbors candles. Was this stealing? Of course not! This man
has no right to control the spread of fire just because he is the originator.
Whether it's fire, a pattern of sounds and lights or a sequence of ones and zeros it should not be the
property of any one person or corporation. It is to societies benefit that information flows freely.
I might be wrong, but this is just how I see things.
You were a sysadmin at MIT, so were probably pulling in a pretty good wage.. at least, probably better than 50% of the Slashdot readership anyway.
So if it wasn't about the money, what was it about? Prestige is one option, but people in these groups need to keep hidden, so that doesn't fit. Was it for the ideals? If so, what ideals are there in ripping off software?
I can understand why people who can't afford software rip it off.. they have stuff to do, and can't afford $500 for Photoshop or whatever.. but tell me why someone with a decent salary will work in secret to beat the software companies.. what is the motivation?
mogorific carpentry experiments
I am a CS major at a midwestern university where software piracy is rampant. Often it is argued that the software that is pirated is much too expensive for Joe Student to procure legally, and, since it may be necessary or recommended for a course, the student is therefore "justified" in pirating it. Is the student justified? Should an equal share of the blame for software piracy be put on the software companies for charging often ridiculous prices, making software virtually inaccessable to those who need to use it? It seems silly to talk about, because we all know that software is just another product, and companies have a right to charge what they wish, but when a school states in it's guidelines that a student needs to have MS Office or Visual Studio or Windows XP Pro, that's a lot of money to take out of an already stressed budget, and Joe Student usually doesn't know about the free/open-source alternatives. Lastly, is there anyway that this disparity can be reconciled? Will piracy cease if more companies approach the pirating demographic with lower prices and other deals or ways of making software more accessible to them? Would you still have pirated if MS Office, Photoshop, and the like were only $40 a copy?
Insightful: 76, Off-Topic: 379, Flamebait: 24, Funny: 152, Interesting: 201, Underrated: 55, Troll: 9, Total: 896
Have you given any thought to the subject of "Gay, is it genetic or environmental?" Cause I think you are about to find out....
hehe
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Do you agree with your punishment? I mean, from someone else's point of view, if asked, would you say "Yeah, he got what he deserved" or "Thats entirely too harsh"
/moral/immoral base of this question)
Could be hard to think like that while facing jail time though...
(and please everyone, ignore the right/wrong
---------------------------
Where should they get compensation? Calculate the full cost of paying the employees and charge the very first buyer the thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars they spent creating it? The main deciding factor for software (generally) is an estimate of expected sales and pricing it (absolutely) no less than enough per unit to make up the cost of producing it (developing and 'duplicating', small cost as it may be). Anything on top of that is profit.
What I fail to see is why people can justify copying something, physical or not, that the owner/creator chose the price for, and say that you deserve to own it without paying the asked price. If I create this software and I put a price on it, I want people to pay for it, not gip me out of my request as the creator because they think they deserve my software.
Now, if I went through a 3rd party and they decided the price for me, and I got a fraction of that, then I might have less of an issue, but I'd still want compensation for what I'm selling.
I wouldn't consider anyone deserving of my product if they don't pay me what I ask for it. That's not up to you to decide. If you don't like the price of the product, then don't purchase it. Make a point. Part of the product is the price. If you don't like the price, then from my point of view as the creator, you don't like my product.
THAT is why software piracy is completely wrong and illegal in my view...
What are you biggest concerns about spending time in a federal penetentiary?
Although this is a technical community, I wanted to say that although you broke the law, I do not agree with the current penalties for computer crimes - they are way too harsh! I wish you the best of luck, my sympathies are with you.
www.enthea.org
would you go back to doing it once you are released?
I *think* I might know the answer to this one, assuming he wants to have a chance to get out on parole one day.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
What percentage of the Jury owned and used a computer on a daily basis? If it was a small percentage, do you feel you were really given justice by a jury of your peers?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
It's been some time since the court proceedings and sentencing.
Have you considered what you will occupy your time with in prison? What are your plans for after release?
Would you have bought any of the software if you had the money to pay for it? The rising costs of software have led me to look elsewhere. You'd think that with the high price of software, you'd at least get a frickin' warrenty like any other high dollar purchase such as a car or home audio components. Games for example generally cost $50 new. I rememeber buying Half-Life in '98 for $34.99 at EB.
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.
A lot of people are asking about the technical ramifications of your conviction, but I'm more interested in your state of mind.
Are you scared about being incarcerated?
Do you see it as a new start? What I mean by that is that once you're out, you have paid your debt and can move on.
Every 2 or 3 years, we hear about how it has to be "oldschool" again, and security has to be tightened up on site, channels, etc within the scene.. But it always seems to revert back to the point where anyone with a hut.fi or a good supply pipeline can gain entry into the most prestigous out there (DoD being no exception). In your opinion, what will the major games/utils groups need to do to ensure the survival of the scene in the future?
was it careless-ness? or no-way-i-was-gonna-get-out-of-the-trap-they-set-me ?
any advice for people who don't want to get caught, but still might want to trade warez, for economical (poor college kids) or idealogical (all software must be free! as in beer!) reasons?
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Considering DRM, CD key, and other methods of
copy protection. And the piracy which may/may not be a response to these inceasing copy protection measures.
What method of copy protection would you suggest which would provide a balance between ease of use for the user and the need to protect a copywritten work?
Also do you think actions like this continue to re-enforce the idea in the minds of people that open source/ free software is substandard in copmarison to it's retail counterpart?
And finally, while you were doing this did you ever consider that you might be prosecuted for it?
You Are Going To Prison
sulli
RTFJ.
I was wondering why you think the Feds placed so much attention on DoD. In my opinion there are groups out there causing much more damage such as CLASS, Razor 1911, Divine, Paradigm, etc... These groups crack mostly games and have much higher profile to the ordinary warez monkey. Can you explain how DoD compares to these groups? And why the Feds went after DoD first?
Where the Music Matters
Holy Crap!!! I just misread how you misread the whole thing about you misread that thing about CmdrTaco. Wow, where will this ever end?
I would have loved our IT classes if they proceeded like that
Googlefight "Slashdot Troll" against "BSD is dying" 303:229. BSD thus cant die.
Was it worth doing what you did for the mostly anonymous recognition you recieved?
Who cares? He's a big boy, no need to be politically correct about it.
- Chris
Did you crack programs to allow people to use/try the full version of the program? Or did you crack the programs as a defiant 'Bring it on' type of statement?
I am going to re-invent the wheel, and this time I will make it round!
Do you think there is any chance that your going to jail will influence any current warez traders to rethink their actions?
1) What are the specific crimes you were convicted of that stacked up to 33 months in jail?
2) What other crimes have you been convicted of in the past? (aka Are warez offenders common criminals who commit all sorts of crimes?)
3) Given the sentence you are about to face, do you see yourself getting envolved with warez again in the future?
4) What moved you to help others steal software? Did you receive any benefit for your actions?
You are receiving this message because your browser supports Slashdot Sigs and you have Slashdot Sigs enabled.
What was your most popular release ?
When considering the crime youve been 'convicted' of; my question is simple: Why goto jail at all? If you are presently on the outside, why not skip out of the country altogether?
Ive considered it in the past, going to jail is simply not an option for myself -- Why dont you go down to Mexico and get out of North America?
As a SysAdmin at MIT you were in a job that many slashdotters are probably envious of, and I imagine that it took a great deal of hard work to obtain such a position. I noticed your age, and so I wonder: Since you are so young, and you'll be barely in your mid twenties when released, have you given any thought to your future career prospects? Do you think this experience could make you more desireable as a programmer, or security consultant, for instance? Or do you think it will be virtually impossible to work in the IT field again? Have you received any offers? It would be a real shame if you weren't able to put your skills toward a legitimate project when you get out. I wish you the best of luck.
In a world bent on clamping down on every possible means of copyright violation (including traditional fair use), how can the warez scene survive? The real scene is already underground, operating on private FTP sites and so-on. Will it have to dig deeper still? Does this call for a new type of program, one which can resist traditional snooping tools?
1) Send some sort of warning to other potential pirates about the seriousness (perceived or otherwise) of their actions, or
2) Make the best argument you could about corporate greed and its influence on America's legislation, or
3) Something entirely different.
And, since you now have that chance,
What would you say?
What about the rest of the warez scene? When you were questioned, did they ask you alot about the other groups who crack a lot more titles in recent years?
Will you recommend the scene to quiet down and think about their chances of getting caught too? Are the feds digging well into different groups and soon will hunt them all down?
thanks
Don't forget that this guy was only distributing binaries. Not a line of source, not a semicolon. Doesn't that make him evil?
I draw the line at profiting from warez, but I don't see much morally wrong with helping out a few friends. Next thing I won't be able to lend books to people (yes, I know this is also technically illegal, but who's ever been prosecuted for it?).
Plan to keep in contact with your friends in the Warez biz, even if you yourself never re-enter it?
I've been under the impression that the warez "scene" is more about status and human interaction than anything else.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
I am a cracker from a fairly well known group, living in the US. We take normal precautions (encrypted email/irc), but there are clear vulnerabilities that cant easily be eliminated (topsite accounts and the possibility of trojaned supplied software, etc.). The dod bust stunned all of us with the lengths of the sentences, which seem out of proproportion to the crime. I find myself asking more and more whether the risk is worth the fun. We are all in it for the commaraderie and the friends (and the access to files); of course none of us are making any money from it. My question is, if you had it to do over again, would you stay out of a group, and of the scene? Were there risks you took that you sholdn't have? What were they? Any advice to someone still in the scene who wants to stay but worries about being caught?
That is completely erroneous logic. Completely. Did he remove the publisher/developer logos in the programs, place in his own images, and re-SELL the software? NO. There goes that (tell me if you recorded the Simpsons, remove the commercials put in your own adds and rebroadcast it, is it theft?) one.
Did he re-make the software using reverse engineering or the source (if you owned a furniture store, it is semi-plausible you might catch a glimpse of your neighbor's blueprints), then distribute that? NO.
Yes, he committed crimes. Yes, he violated copyrights. But no, neither of you accurately described the situation.
--- What
In prison you will have to barter for every little luxury. Having something of value to trade can be a matter of life and death.
Do you think your experience with swapping things will help you fit in?
What are your strongest assets on the prison market place?
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
How does someone get 33 months for 'stealing' digital bits. The unique pattern of 0's and 1's are still there for everyone else to have: he's just made an extra copy of them.
Isn't this the same as reading a book if you have a photographic memory? As you read, you memorize every letter and word in the book. So, has your brain committed copyright infringement? Isn't this about the same thing?
Besides, if he really did copy the software, isn't that just a civil claim for damages?? Why does he go to jail because of this vs. being sued because of this??
I was convicted in Georgia 1 year ago for deleting my own software (i owned it) off of my former companies computers (I was the IT Director) and was given 4 years probation because I pled guilty (lack of money for defense). You were convicted for 33 months (15 months less than I) for giving away other peoples software. Doesn't this strike you as disproportionate?
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
It's such a pity that Adobe lost all that money to the Something Awful kids, who would all have legally paid full price for Photoshop if all these pirates hadn't shoved it down their throats. nonsense.
- Chris
Why is antipiracy.org registered by you? Seems abit ironic ;)
Greg
There\'s no place like ~
And can I have your eyepatch? Arrr...
Karma for Cryogenes then.
Interesting, then to see that you are paying for something you seem to more or less have given up. I mean, if you don't get first releases any more, then you're just nobodies in the Warez world. How do you feel about going down when the top hackers in the Warez scene now are still free?
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
In jail will you have access to the net at all?
Greg
There\'s no place like ~
will the jail time stop you from pirating software, or do you think you'll be back at it upon your release? (after all, in 33 months, everything you currently run will have a new version and you might want to get everything up to date)
How do you feel about the rise of P2P and it's affects on the Warez community? Do you think it makes it safer (safety in numbers?) or do you think that it'll bring down the fist of the law even harder?
Which P2P networks did you prefer, if any?
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Were you loaded up on Robitussin when the FBI got you to sign a confession admitting to the defacements of RSA Security, cwc.gov?
Er, sorry, wrong case.
2. Do you know what kind of prison you are going to? Are you going to a "cushy" white collar place, or are you being locked up with harder criminals? Are you afraid of the abuses we hear about all the time via the media and amnesty international.
3. Will you have access to the internet in prison?
1)How did you defraud the United States or one of its Agencies?
2)How much did you spend on a lawyer, or did you use a public defender?
I thought Corporations weren't considered part of the US government.
--Greg
Sec. 371. - Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States
If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
If, however, the offense, the commission of which is the object of the conspiracy, is a misdemeanor only, the punishment for such conspiracy shall not exceed the maximum punishment provided for such misdemeanor
When work feels overwhelming, remember that you're going to die.
Tresco should be forced to pay MIT, at retail rates, for all the bandwidth used by his servers. Heck, he'd have to pay an ISP for it. I think it's only fair.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
MIT has just about everything a student needs, you didn't need all of that stuff. Are you a kleptomaniac? I'm not trying to beat up on you, I'm just curious how you slept at night or what you told yourself to sleep at night. And if you didn't have any problems sleeping at night do you stay awake at night now wondering why your sense of right and wrong didn't or doesn't conincide with the laws of your country?
If you had such high bandwidth bills, what the hell are you posting as an AC for, rather than posting with full links to your software and trying to shame a few people into registering?
And anyway, as stated in the post above, the whole point of shareware is to get rapid distribution and use, even at the risk of people using the software without paying for it as long as they recommend it to their friends and colleagues. Your bandwidth bills are sky-high because your payment model relies on free distribution. If you want to lower your bandwidth bills, don't sell shareware. If you want to recoup them, get a good rating on CNet and strike the right balance between fucntionality and registration-nagging in your product.
- Chris
Will you write a book about your life in drink or die and the subsequent bust? If you did, would you be able to profit from it (IANAL)?
Greg
There\'s no place like ~
Have you practiced picking up dropped bars of soap with your toes, so as to not have to bend over?
DrinkOrDie always seemed to be a bit frat-boyish to me. Where'd the name come from?
"Science Explores, Technology Executes, Man Conforms." -1929 Worlds' Fair
Does it scare you that being sodomized nightly by your cell mate will be a big part of your life for the next 33 months?
So is the prison a white-collar resort prison, or a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison?
If you killed someone, isn't that theft? Yes. You shouldn't kill people. If you drive faster than the speed limit or smoke pot, isn't that theft? Yes. Those things are against the law. They are theft. If you sell alcohol to minors.... etc.
Not everything is theft, as some people would love to think. Specifically, your two examples involve copyright and/or trademark infringement.
The case at hand should have been settled by the affected parties suing the individuals in the warez group. It should be handled without criminal charges. That way, the offenders would still be punished, and the companies whose IP was improperly copied (i.e. NOT stolen) could have a chance to recover financial damages. But no, since the feds equate IP infringement with theft, this guy gets 33 months (a sentence which in no way fits the severity of the crime), and the companies get NOTHING.
This is an interesting perspective to hear from,
Were there any claims to your actions that you feel were unfounded (value of software, actions, abandonware/shareware/freeware in the list of programs in question, etc.)
How did they treat you in the arresst and conviction process?
And did you feel the witnesses, prosecution and judge were sufficiently knowledgeable to handle the case?
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
and staying with the Zapatistas? The U.S. economy probably won't be growing much in the next few years anyways, esp. if Dubya gets his war (the Economist predicts a high probability of worldwide recession if that happens). Good opportunities for someone with your skills may exist moreso in the developing countries. Starting from the ground up could give you the opportunity to implement cool new ideas (e.g. XCP). Changing your identity would be a cool hack, too.
How much?
Kevin
"It's not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in" O. Nash
1.)Post an article on Slashdot, asking about Warez, hoping that many people admit to pirating.
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.
how many people here have downloaded an mp3? or lent out a game to a friend to install on his computer? if you're the ones telling chris that he's going to federal pound me in the ass prison, i suggest you take a look at your own irony.
... should others continue for the same reasons you did? would you go backto help?
anyway, my question:
as piracy was only shut down for a few days after operation buccaneer, do you think that piracy will ever cease? every copy protection to date has been cracked (minus online cdkeys, for online play)
Runnin' On Empty
Raping celebrities would probably cost him more than 33 months in a "pound me in the ass" prison. You see, the usual laws don't apply to them. If they do something to someone, they will probably go free, or get a very lenient sentence. If someone do anything against them, they will get a very harsh punishment. Feels like we're back in the good ole dark ages.
Although it is not "fair", I don't see any real fix, do you? People with money or power always get privaleges. Do you think high-ranking Soviets had to stand in line in the rain for food? (Plus legal system favors that are harder to track.)
I know everybody likes to complain about such, but there is just NO side-effect-free way to fix it. If you eliminate money, then smhooz-power becomes the currency.
No government or large community has *ever* found a revolutionary solution to an uneven legal system. Never. Thus, if you have a great alternative, please lets hear it.
OJ did not win by bribing judges and juries, but by hiring aggressive hound-dog lawyers that dug up potential doubt in every crack and crevice and were expert sweat-talkers.
You want to pass a law banning good lawyers? Even if you put a *fee cap* in place, celibrities could still get the best just by their social influence.
You can't pass laws against being "popular". (Well, at least not in this country).
Table-ized A.I.
It's called copyright infringement. Different crime, different law, different punishment.
The ocean parts and the meteors come down
Laid out in amber, baby.
Two part question: 1) What was your future plan if you didn't get caught? Keep warezing forever? 2) Now that you have been busted, what are your future plans? Doing something in computers? Are you worried that there will be some Mitnik-clause to your eventual parole that will keep you from computers?
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
What, in your estimate, is the number of warez-trading FTP servers in existence?
Nice one. If I can't pirate a game I'm quite happy to rip the security tag off, buy a magazine and stick the game box in the bag before I leave. That's because I recognise that stealing is stealing to a certain extent, and because I have few morals.
Make of that what you will, but I'm honest with myself about it. I've downloaded rips of an awful lot of shitty games and thanked my lucky stars I didn't buy them (thanks to the memories of paying £30+ for appalling NES games back in the day), and I've paid an awful lot of money for games which I consider to be worth my cash, too (Diablo 2 stolen: expansion bought; boxed set bought too, so I have two copies of the expansion - Blizzard deserved the cash).
Almost all the money I have earned, begged or saved since my adolescence has been spent on CDs. Overall the software and music industries are making a hell of a lot of money from me, which isn't an escuse but certainly makes me care less about the insignificant loss of a single CD sale - which may in fact turn out to be two bonus sales if my mates buy it on my recommendation.
But yeah, I still see it as stealing, because it is. I don't care. If they were distributing on a different policy, it wouldn't be stealing, and then I wouldn't be a bad person at all and they wouldn't hate my using their software so much. It's up to them to change, not me.
- Chris
run linux and you wont be stealing software! .... there are no browsers out there besides mozilla ones that do popup filtering (doesnt the new konqueror do it?) .. and now that money is no longer an issue for me anymore.. i still have no plans on using windows.. I had originally switched to linux because i didnt want to mess with having to crack the new M$ OS each time i wanted to install it... i sure as hell wasnt going to buy it... i funally took the plunge and i've been legal in terms of software ever since... --- my laptop even came with a *legal* copy of XP pro --- and first thing i did was kill it and isntall linux... after a couple weeks (suitable burn-in time) i peeled off all the "XP' related stickers.. -- i find that i buy a lot more software now than i ever did before... -- because i DONT HAVE TO buy everything...anyone ever called M$ tech support? i know i havnt... --- spending a buttload of money to have them tell you to reinstall windows.. that's just BS (almost as bad as RTFM -- except RTFM is a lot more usefule --- (sometimes) --- for questions like "how do i make a linux server" --- not many people have the patience to hold your hand through that... and there are too many components ---
since i've been running linux, i can now finally claim to have no illegally obtained software on my computer...
If i see a game i like, i test it with wine and if it works, i buy it..
nice little filter... i know the OS itself isnt illegally obtained... i know the many apps i use aren't illegally obtained... -- and all apps are now (as of about a year ago) now better than the commercial conterparts.. IMHO i still have yet to see an email client out there with better filtering than sylpheed-claws
and i love tabbed browsing and all the apps that use a tabbed interface (gaim, multi-gnome-terminal, etc)
now that i know the powers and advantages of linux (bsd, and all related systems) i dont think i'll be going back to windows any time soon
here's a proposal new rtfm format:
RTFM:net3-howto
moral of the long-winded rant ----
if you're addicted to software piracy... do something about it.... getting caught sux!
p r m t h s
And the authorities will be waiting. To lock your ass up.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Do you have time to crack off a copy of Unreal 2003 before you go in or are those days behind you now? :)
In short, does the prison system work for this sort of crime? If so, is it overkill?
I am a Karma Library.
Can someone explain to a non-USian how it is possible to be at liberty one full month after being sentenced to prison time? Are the US prisons so full that convicts have to wait for spaces to open up? Or is this some kind of break for white collar types: "We know your schedule is busy, so why not take advantage of our convenient Slammer-when-it-suits-you Program"
A couple related questions...
How do you feel about going to prison? (I hope it's minimum security)
Do you think your 33 month sentence is fair, or do you think a different sort of punishment would be more appropriate for breaking copyright law? Or, do you feel you did nothing wrong and deserve no punishment whatsoever.
How do you feel your own sense of morality compares to those who prosecuted you?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
what level of prison is it? max? min?
My understanding of this is that you were involved with the illegal distribution of copyrighted works, depriving the potential owners of money for the works (possibly - the reality may be "probably not," but...). You then received 33 months of jail time (or just under 3 years) which seems to me to be rather fair.
Based on the Operation Buccaneer information, you received counts of felony (criminal copyright infringement, probably), and conspiracy (to commit criminal copyright infringement, probably). (Both probablies are guesses based on the document.) This seems to be in line with what one would expect for charges against a ring of people whose sole goal is to steal massive quantities of software and redistribute them to as many people as want them at no charge. (The fact that there was no charge probably reduces the sentence to a degree, but the fact that it required specialized skills and involved a large collective of people acting together to commit criminal copyright infringement probably both outweigh that.)
So... why should I feel sorry for you? You got what you deserved. You stole from people and gave copies to as many people as you could. Based on the MIT press release, you illegal utilized systems you were supposed to be administrating for the purposes of illegally distributing software. As far as I can see, you got exactly what you deserved.
So - prove me wrong. Demonstrate that my understanding is flawed or that I am misunderstanding the crime. Demonstrate that it should not be a crime. Or - accept my view. Explain if you feel sorry for your actions and believe that you did indeed commit the crimes. Or come up with another response that does not fall directly between agree and disagree.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Hey, national Talk like a Pirate Day is the 19th, you're 2 days early.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
How important was the amount of money you had
;-)
available to mount your defence? Was there a
sliding curve where more money increased your
chances of getting off? Which, do you believe,
has a stronger corelation to being convicted,
being guilty or not having enough money?
Was the prosecution and police made up of idealists
that want to clean up the world, or by opportunists
that would commit worse illegal acts than yours if
they knew they wouldn't get caught and it benefits
them in some way?
Was the evidence circumstantial? Or, did they
see your fingers on the keyboard?
-Gearspring
Gearspring didn't write these questions, I figured
out how to use his account without his knowledge.
Incriminating, but great!!
Forget the morality plays, forget the remorse, you did it cuz you liked it.
Now, waht did you like best?
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
If you were the judge, what kind of sentence would you have handed down to yourself?
(Lets be reasonable, no 100 hours of "community service" breast exams at the Ford Modeling Agency)
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
I couldn't agree more. You get into M.I.T., and the best use of this wonderful opportunity is to get arrested for more than 2.5 years trading pirated software. Good luck getting a job with your CRIMINAL RECORD after you get out! Oh and good luck getting into another university with that same record as well.
Bet you don't think you're so smart now huh Ivy League boy!?!?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
wH4+ i5 Y0uR 0p1n!0n O|V l33+ sP3@K? 15 1+ 4$ 4nN0y1N9 Ph0r j00 4$ !+ 15 F0r THe R35t 0ph u5?
Where have you been? There have been numerous recent articles explaining that companies no longer hire ex-cons for IT security positions anymore and for 2 very important reasons.
1. After Sept 11th everyone has to be squeaky clean.
2. Since the IT market is in the dumps, any job offer gets hundreds or thousands of replys. Companies no longer have to scrape the bottom of the barrel when it comes to looking for talent, even in the security field. And those ex-con hackers are just that, the bottom of the pile.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
dod.nfo
33 months may not be an injust sentence. We need to distinguish from people who swaps warez and people who build an (illegal) business -selling- warez CDs( for example Twilights and so on).
to actually answer questions frankly? Or do sentencing committees/parole boards/etc. still have enough influence that even if you don't feel that way, you would have to state that you believe you are guilty of a heinous crime and your sentence is fair?
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
What is the dollar value that prosecution gave for your crime and why is that different from say, an MIS manager or CIO, allowing $250,000 of operating systems and applications go 'unrecorded and unpaid' for.
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
> Why do people copy, or want to copy, proprietary software illegally when they can legally obtain copies of Free and Open Source software more easily (without doing cracks etc.), usually free of cost, and without risking fines or imprisonment?
Because it's hard to resell freeware? This guy was convicted of redistribution, but most software pirates who work on this level are reselling cut-rate dupes of commercial programs.
Virg
This isn't flamebait. Comments should not be modded down simply because they unmask a painful truth. Some of these "Freedom Fighters" DO need to take a look at what they are fighting for (the right to pirate software) and whether its worth the cost. (Several years of potentially AIDS infected anal rape.)
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I'm looking for both your opinion and what the court rullings thought (or didn't think of thinking about):
My personal belief on 'pirating' software is that it's 'really bad' if I make a profit out of the product of the software (such as creating website designs with Photoshop and selling them, or say writing software with MS Dev Studio and selling it)...
Big companies like Alias|Wavefront are now giving out free personal learning editions of their software (full blown software)... and they definitely aren't being affected by it. So what's the rational?
This obviously doesn't apply to certain products like DVD players, and games, but I doubt those are the real reason why these people have proverbial guns pointing at hackers. And OSs are a special case too... (and I admit I don't really have a clean ethical POV for that).
What's your thoughts, and did the court even consider such a thing?
What were the final charges and conviction?
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.
Correct me if I am wrong, but technically "shareware" does not stop working after the deadline. I think that is called "tryware" or something.
I remember these categories (at least):
1. Tryware - expires and stops working after deadline.
2. Shareware- keeps working past the deadline (you are still in violation of copyright/license after the deadline, just no hardware enforcement.)
3. Nagware - keeps popping up "trial version" messages in the middle of stuff.
4. Crippleware - does not include all features of pay version.
Table-ized A.I.
do you get conjugal visits???
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
No, but there are a few things we could consider to try to make things a little better. Lately I've had this idea of making ALL lawyers government employees (albeit well paid ones). The government would pay them all by the same wage scale and that way, no matter how big or small a case, now matter how rich or poor a client, they would all get the same amount of money.
You could still hire lawyers for consultation, wills, etc but for actual court cases, the law would be that all lawyers in those cases were public lawyers, assigned randomly to procecution or defense (likely you would have 2 pools, those who prosecute and those who defend depending on which area they wanted to work in). That way if a company wanted to press charges, they would not be able to buy a high priced sleazy lawyer, but be stuck with whatever the state gave them. This lawyer might be more inclined to be impartial and work within the law instead of busting his ass to find a way to end run around it or abuse it. After all, no incentive if you are paid the same no matter how hard you pursue the case.
Now this was just an idea I had out of the blue and I'm sure there are problems with it, but it is also possible that this system could work with careful thought and trial and error trying to implement it in real life.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Also:
Did you ever think about the money that you were taking away from honest people who work hard and rely on the profits they generate from software sales or did you only think about yourself while committing your crimes?
Warmest regards,
--Jack
Wagner LLC Consulting Co. - Getting it right the first time
As being curious to where one should and should not hang out, where should you not "hang out" on the net to avoid trouble? Certainly, if you had to do it again, what would you have wished that you have done that you wish that didnt do?
Are you aware that to get on an airplane, you now have to pass database checks against "terrorists," and that while they're at it, there's a good chance they'll be checking for convicted felons, fugitives, and deadbeat dads for that matter?
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Did you have an exit strategy?
I'm curious as to how long were you expecting things to last. Did you have plans for getting out or were you hoping that things would proceed indefinitely till you got caught?
Did you ever consider the possibility of getting caught?
Firstly, this is the 2nd time that this has happened at MIT. Do you think that software piracy is/will still happen on a large scale at MIT even after these events? ;)
And secondly dude. If you even remotely have the technical knowledge, I strongly suggest you create and operate a free Copy Protection advisory website from prison. It might just hold you in good stead when the time comes
I have read (Stephen L. Carter, Integrity), and agree with, the following definition of Integrity:
Acting with integrity consists of
Do you believe you acted with integrity when committing those acts you were convicted of? If so, why? If not, where did you fall short?
[A note to potential critics: Just because someone acts with integrity doesn't mean what they did was right. It simply means that they were intentional and thoughtful enough about their action that discussion of the act and the reasons for it can help to elevate the awareness of others to the issues the action was meant to address. It also means that they were probably acting at least partially without self-interest.]
How can we afford to ever sleep
So sound again
--ebtg
if he can add me to the Warez list?
WTF? Over?
I have been wondering about this quite a bit lately (I just watched the first season of OZ), what kind of internet access do you have in prison? Is it different for you because of why you are there? (Do other prisoners have more access)
And if so what kind of latentcy do you get there (Would playing over there up my fraggs)?
George II -- Spreading Freedom and American values, one bomb at a time.
EXTRADITION TREATY
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Don't you just hate the pathetic questions that this so called "community" is preparing for you? Don't you just wish them all to go to the can with you or better yet instead of you?
Why don't you just run from the mother-fuckers? Fuck it all. Let them look for you in Canada or somewhere in Europe. Don't you have DoD frien^H^H^H^H^H links all over the globe where you can find safety? Don't you think that the US policy and lawmakers should get their asses ripped by some fucking rapists in the places you are going to. and not you? Fuck 'em all. Just take off man.
You can't handle the truth.
What is the best book on reverse engineering and learning about assembly?
How did you get caught, from your point of view ?
Because that involved the FBI and a lot of people worldwide, there should have been some indications that troubles where coming, or did they manage to stay in stealth mode until they hit?
From what us non-insiders know of, a hacker group is somewhat organized with different isolated layers, and very few connections between those layers, but the one needed to make it works. This ends up beeing a kind of CIA-like organisation, more or like.
Of course, the very nature of internet greatly help that, but i'm wondering : from an insider point of view, did this kind of organisation just "emerge", or where you briefed by someone else?
Of course, the lwa-enforcment greatly over-estimated the importance of DrinkOrDie. They need to justify the tax-payer money they are throwing out of the window: see some interesting file.
But overall, how was your oragnisation preceived by its peers cracking groups?[Pruneau
I have found that a better outlet for my disgust at the high price of propriatary software was to find a piece of Open Source/Free Software that worked similar and use that. It seems to me that pirating software is counter productive because it artificialy inflates the popularity of a piece of software, causes prices to go up (or at least is used as an excuse for high prices) for ligitimate users and detracts from the use and improvement of Open Source alternatives. What is the appeal of using unlicenced software over Open Source?
Several serious questions:
How has this CONVICTION affected your life? How do you think the prison experience is going to affect you personally? Have you thought about what it means to be included with a small percentage of the population that are convicted felons? How do you think this felony conviction has affected your career? What about the people closest to you (your wife, girlfriend, significant other, and children (if any))?
Obviously prison is not a place for personal growth. Besides being scared out of your wits, what do you think you're going to think or worry about while being in prison?
I suspect that homosexual activity/behavior is prevelent in prison. Have you thought about how you're going to prevent Bubba from *LIKING YOU REALLY WELL*?
Do you NOW have a better understanding of right and wrong? More respect for the Law? And more respect for a legal system defending capitalism in general, intellectual property, corporations, and individuals through license agreements?
(* He [Osama] used his political and monetary influences to bring about the change he wanted. *)
I mean less violent solutions: Peaceful protests, mass pamphlets, work walk-outs, etc. Study Gandi and Martin Luther King.
(True, some of these may be illegal in Saudi, but they do not kill people.)
My point is that you try more legitimate and/or less violent approaches to bring about political or economic change. Osama used the "reptillian approach" to problem solving: charge head-on into whatever pisses you off. The problem is that approach does not scale to large populations without creating mass suffering.
There are milder and/or more legal approaches to attempt to bring about change. We can't have a civalized society if *everybody* used looting and bombing to bring about change and/or make a point, especially on piddly things.
If the milder approaches do not work, then perhaps too few people care that much, in which case you were simply "out-voted" and must live with it. It happens.
There is a "ladder" to bringing about social changes:
1. Legal, pleasent means
2. Legal, but annoying means
3. Illegal means
4. Violent means
One should try the lower numbers *before* trying the larger numbers, and ONLY try the larger numbers in extreme cases. The software issue is *not* an "extreme case". You don't bomb the IRS because they F'ed up your taxes.
Table-ized A.I.
What percentage of the warez was Microsoft?
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Do you consider yourself a "Hacktivist"? If so will you continue hacking in more legalish domains such as enabling free speech?
Good luck and keep your chin up.
=== from share reactor ===
eDonkey Server raids i Danmark! (17.09.2002 14:41:44) from ScareCrow
Sorry for not writing this here in english, but i want to make sure atleast all the
Sent i går aftes var APG på farten igen igen igen... - Denne her gang har de set sig sure på folk i Danmark som har en eDonkey server kørende...
Der kan læses mere om det i forummet og på http://www.siffan.dk (en af de folk som blev ramt igår)
Så til jer danskere som har kørt public eDonkey servere.. - måske i skulle overveje at få dem pillet ned til stormen er ovre, da jeg personligt selv tvivler på at APG er færdig med deres ture
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
"33 months is longer than the average rapist"
To put it quite simply, no it isn't.
Do we need to translate our questions into d00d speak?
http://www.eskimo.com/~mvargas/hax0r.htm
j00 @r3 31337
can I get a bootleg copy of the latest RedHat distro?
How long have you been in the scene, and how much has it changed in the years since you joined an elite group? Additionally, do you believe that five years ago an operation similar to Buccaneer could have happened? Is Buccaneer a direct result of the internet and the exposure of the warez scene to the "general" internet public?
Many archive sites contain 2,000 gigabytes or more of pirated software, equivalent to approximately 1.4 million, 3.5- inch diskettes of copyrighted material.
I can imagine this poor FBI sap setting behind a PC [in/e]jecting disks.
In other news, the Bush Administration, along with Att.General Ashcroft, today released a new budget for the DoJ. "These monies will help protect our fellow Americans against the terrible crimes of copyright
The biggest security hole sits between the keyboard and chair.
-Andrew McAllister
Any tips to the future warez'ers?
1. how does one avoid DoJ detection?
2. how does one obfuscate the software package for plausible deniability?
3. what common techniques are used in obfuscation?
the longest thread with the most AC's i'm sure. :)
Ave Molech Setting
stupidest idea I have ever heard. if all lawyers are paid the same, you take capitalism out of the system that creates lawyers.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
One of the things about jail is that you have nothing but free time. So what do you plan to do? Study for a new career? Work out constantly? Plan your escape? Learn to speak Sanskrit?
When you get out, you will have had 33 months of basically no real responsibilities. If you find a nice, cushy prison, you can get some real work done. Are you going to use this time to make your life when you get out of jail better?
Also, when you get out, what do you plan to do? Something in the computer field, or do you plan to change your path when you get out? If I were in your place, I think I'd just get fed up with computers and become a florist or something.
Synergy is your friend
I have run across alot of companies getting pissy about people pirating software that they no longer support. Do you believe if a company is no longer supporting a product, that they should have license to it, or should it be open sourced?
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
were j00 a l33t haX0r. Did j00 mak3 th3 s0ftwAr3s c0mp@n13s j00r b1atch. r u P1mP. d1d u get 0ff 0n th053 k-rad war3z
Is it illegal to make copies of software? Well, that depends on how much you actually copy. Is is wrong to make copies of software? Well, that's up to your personal ethical code.
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.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
It seems that warez is basically an attempt to "free the software", as in free beer. Though you are only in your early 20s, I wondered how much Richard Stallman's philosophy of and reasons for Free Software, as in freedom, influenced your actions (even though releasing binaries does not meet the definition of free software)?
Many of my peers and I were involved in warez before the open-source movement came about. We were young, penniless and still trying to explore the different aspects of computing and we needed warez to do this. Now we use open-source software to do the same things we did before with warez.
How do you feel the warez movement helped invoke the Open Source Software movement?
"It's a very tangled subsystem." --Windows kernel guru
Will you have a T1 line in your cell or just a crappy 56K modem?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Considering Nate Newton was caught red handed TWICE within a month trying to smuggle nearly 400 POUNDS total of marijuana into the country, and is sentenced to three months LESS than you are?
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
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.
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
And I think to say that you had a political agenda is a cop out.
Which is why I beleive he did it becuase being bad feels pretty good!
Wether its becuase afterwards he says "I'm smarter than you!", or he has used cognitive therapy techniques to interpret fear as excitment, or if he was dropped on the head as a child, I don't care.
I think he did it for the kicks.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Did you make and money as a "software pirate"? If so, how much? If not, what was your motivation?
What's the biggest lesson you learned from this experience?
/. audience to learn from your experience?
What's the most important lesson for the
Andy
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
I have spent time on both sides of the 'piracy' conflict...and I've seen all sorts of justifications.
...and then I got out of piracy, and finished up school, and a little while later I ended up in the video game industry. And I got a really fast reality check. Y'know what? Yes, a lot of the game publishing companies can make Microsoft look like a happy-fuzzy neighborhood store. It's all well and good to say that piracy screws over the publisher...but in reality, it screws over the developer.
/does/ directly hurt games companies, believe me. Even better is when the pirates call the tech support lines (which the games companies are usually paying for, too) and want tech support for the game. Sometimes even before the game is in stores! So you not only have the lost revenue, but you have them putting a drain on the paid tech support lines. :(
"Information wants to be free" (which I agree with, but I don't think of games as 'information' in the same sense), "I wouldn't have bought it anyway" (then why are you using it?), "It was a neat technical challenge to crack", and so on. Which was your reason?
When I was in school, I downloaded games (on my blazingly fast 14.4k modem!) and played them, and I didn't really see much wrong with it at the time. After all, I figured, I was just a broke high-school girl anyway; it wasn't like I was going to buy the games if I didn't download them...right?
Then I got into actually working to get around protections; not to distribute anything, but because 'code-wheels' and other irritations annoyed me, and I thought it was an interesting programming challenge.
The short example is, imagine that under a specific deal, on every copy of a game sold the publisher gives maybe $10 to the developer. Now let's say the publisher gave them $1 million in funding to develop the game (not all that uncommon for multi-year titles). Maybe they have to pay back $750k of that. So the $10 the developer gets goes towards paying that back until they've met that goal. So in this example, $750k / $10 = 75,000 copies of the game sold before the developer sees a profit.
A lot of games barely make that...developers end up in hock to the publisher, and become more and more entwined legally. It's why so many developers end up being bought up by publishers or else going under. And then gamers lament that games get cancelled (when a publisher won't fund anymore), etc. I can't speak for application companies, because the games industry was my main experience from the 'other side' of piracy...but piracy
--Rachel
I haven't seen this one, so I'll ask: did this (apparently very large) illicit side job interfere with your sysadmin job? Did you do this stuff while on the clock, or was it entirely on your own time?
Put identity in the browser.
Life in prison?! And I thought 33 years was rediculous.
Is your kind of gullability and inability to read the cause of wild internet rumors?
Life in Prison -> if your hacking KILLS SOMEBODY. It is essentially a murder conviction it's just (redundantly) making the use of a particular weapon to do so a distinct crime, like vehicular homicide. Your comment is something like opposing vehicular homicide laws by saying: "Life in prison, just for bad driving?"
33 MONTHS not years.
What were you convicted of "stealing"?
and why didn't you just get it from the MIT tech department?
Bugs are just features that have been fixed.
Lately I've had this idea of making ALL lawyers government employees (albeit well paid ones). The government would pay them all by the same wage scale and that way, no matter how big or small a case, now matter how rich or poor a client, they would all get the same amount of money.
Random government lawyers? You just shot fairness in the ass. Might as well let a Roulette wheel determine the virdict. Paying gov workers more money often does not result in significantly more effort from them either. There are too few or too political of feedback systems in place in most gov reward systems.
Plus, it does not make sense to have the same level of lawyer on a small-claims case as on a murder case.
Table-ized A.I.
Assuming you have time and ability to choose what you do while inside prison, how do you plan to fill your free time?
Do you have plans for how you might change your life after you get out, or what productive things you might do with your life then?
Are you angry?
Ahead of serving the time, do you feel this is an effective enough punishment to deter you and others from similer action in the future?
How has the experience changed you, your attitudes and opinions?
Your opinion of the US justice system?
What's the deal with all the silly competition between warez groups? (Our release is better than their release... That group broke the file limit rule... Their crack is broken... etc... (how the hell do you agree on file limit rules anyway?) It seems very juvinile at times and it looks like ego is a big part of the scene. What's the average age of DOD members anyway?
But... so long and thanks for all the warez.
What kind of shock did you experience upon hearing the sentence? What kind of prison are you going to be LIVING at for the next 33 months? Minimum security? Maximum security? SUPER MAX? How will you be traveling there, state trouper, sheriff, prison bus, state marshall?
What personal items can you take with you, besides a bible?
I think there was a prison-oriented periodical called "Prison Life". If it exists, are you going to subscribe to it?
When you were standing before the judge and court and first heard the sentence, did you feel a cold numbness permeate through your body? Did you start to see grey around the periphery of your field of vision?
Are you sorry for what you did, or sorry you were caught?
How many hours will you be in lock-up during the day? 23?
How will you be taking showers? Every two or three days? Communally? With shackles on?
How do you feel about the government putting chemical tracers in prison food, which you will eventually eat, that can be used to track you should you escape? In case you're wondering, No, they don't ever leave your body. You are branded a criminal for life.
If you could take a webcam into prison and aim it towards your prison cell, would you be opposed to people watching you through webcast for demonstrating to others the seriousness of your crime?
Have you been issued an INMATE NUMBER yet? If so, what is it?
What are the conditions of your parole? What happens if you get caught pirating software again?
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.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Screw all the squares!! Software is way too over priced nowadays. Back in the day software cost only around 3% of the purchase price of a PC. Nowe it's around 30%! Bill Gates is too huge, it's time to take action and demand lower prices!
OK, I'm ready, flame me!!!
I am BLaRG!
Let me qualify that, you're clearly a sharp guy being at MIT and all.
Perhaps this is a sterling example of the difference between Intelligence and Wisdom?
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
Do you write any software? Do you give it all away for free, or would you like some compensation once in a while?
...In which case, how is ANYONE supposed to make money, if they can't sell what they have created?
He did steal. Software is intellectual property, like books. It's like photocopying whole books, which is also illegal. Time and effort went into creating them, and they are sold to the general public to recoup for the losses incurred by the author (which in the case of software, can be a company) and the publisher.
Or do you think that books should be free, too?
Have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
First people overuse anything that doesn't have proportional costs, and you would end up with people bribing, or using influence on those who assign the lawyers to get better ones. There is no way to make a system that is completely fair, we have chosen something that tries to make things as fair as possible, by using money as the method of exchange. While money is a close approximation of talent and desire, it isn't distributed fairly. Finally the current system keeps alot of baseless cases out of the courts, becuase those who would like to bring them can not afford it. These people could bring suits, are you ready for a lawsuit each time you annoy someone. Even if you always win, you still have to appear in court and defend yourself.
Not that I like all of the philosophies exposed in it, but I have been reading Atlas Shrugged. One of the main points it shows is the problem with a society that removes money at the currency of accomplishment. Influence quickly replaces it, and nothing changes.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
No it's not a slippery slope. We as individuals decide what we believe to be right and wrong. Collectively we come together as a society and determine what things we, collectively believe to be right and wrong. Our society has come to collectively believe that it's wrong to murder and eat somebody, and hence it being codified in law.
That doesn't mean it's wrong in any absolute sense though.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Or at least mentioned.
How does his crime sentence compare to other crimes that involve copying? I wonder how it would compare to, say, wholesale duplication of $100 bills? Everyone always compares piracy to software theft, when in reality, it's much closer to counterfeiting. Both the copyright system and the monetary system rely on government imposed scarcity. The hard question that some people here on Slashdot need to ask themselves, is can the economy survive if that artificial scarcity is removed.
In my personal opinion, I believe the world would be a much better (and radically different) place if copyright is cut short. In this hectic information age, can anyone imagine a world where copyright only lasted 5 years from publication? I'd love to see a reasoned debate on this issue.
And, for my question to the convicted pirate... What is his personal view on the politics of copyright, and what his views (if any) are of what life would be like under such a system.
Bork!
and my comfort of 125,000 mp3's.
Nowhere does it say that he was an MIT student. He was just the sysadmin for the economics department.
I know people who will buy an expansion pack, and be totally oblivious to the fact that they need the original game to play it. When they find out, they just toss the $10 expansion pack in the corner and forget about it.
I also have to wonder how they counted the sales. Did they count the number of people who bought the game, or did they count the number of copies sold to stores? A store like WalMart may buy a bunch of expansion packs without any idea how many copies the original game sold.
This guy wasn't a *student* at MIT -- he was just the sysadmin for the economics department. There is a big difference.
I doubt they make that much... Every college I have seen pays their computer people nearly nothing compared to the real world, because labor is so cheap with all the students to choose from (especially at MIT). Colleges pay very poorly for almost every position, actually.
There is simply an abundence of adequate people, so a large supply decreases demand, and hence the wages.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
In a given situation each action you take is right or wrong depending on the context. That is, it is right and wrong within my own personal moral context, and it is also right and wrong within a societal context.
Is it wrong to copy one piece of software for a good friend? Is it wrong to copy it for a hundred friends? Is it wrong to copy for a thousand strangers? Is it wrong to copy for a profit? Each one of these questions can be answered differently even though they all fundamentally address the ethics of copying software.
Don't get me wrong, i'm not going to sit here and suggest that we can have no law in our society because none of us is of sufficient moral stature to judge anybody else. The fact of the matter is that in order for civilization to function, we have to come to common understandings that we can codify. It's a simple matter of majority rule (or perhaps these days, majority of the money rule but I digress). That's why we have a law that says if I copy more than so much software I can be punished for it. I may disagree with that law, but neither the law nor my personal belief has any bearing on some absolute definition of wrong. But that doesn't mean I'll be surprised if I egregiously violate copyright law and get thrown in prison.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
What kind of sig is this???
What do you think of this random string of characters?
As a SysAdmin at MIT you were in a job that many slashdotters are probably envious of, and I imagine that it took a great deal of hard work to obtain such a position. I noticed your age, and so I wonder: Since you are so young, and you'll be barely in your mid twenties when released, have you given any thought to your future career prospects? Do you think this experience could make you more desireable as a programmer, or security consultant, for instance? Or do you think it will be virtually impossible to work in the IT field again? Have you received any offers? It would be a real shame if you weren't able to put your skills toward a legitimate project when you get out. I wish you the best of luck
<slashdot>: So, are you doing any kind of warez again now?
<interviewee>: H@H@H@H@H@H, WH@T, j00 TH1NK TH@T AH M SO3M K1ND 0F F3WL BY3 @NSW3R1NG TH@T?
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I had over 4000 MP3s before Napster was even a glimmer in anyone's eye. I've lost count now because they're all spread out across CDs and there's been so many times where I don't have an MP3 I want nearby, or forget that I have it so I download it again. I know I have something like 40 CDs so I figure that's like at least 25,000 and then I've got a bunch on my computer too.
Some time in the mid 1990's, congress eliminated parole in all federal prisons. Since copyright infringment is a federal crime, I don't think Mr. Tresco will be getting out on parole.
The real rub is whether something is "right" or "wrong" only depends on your GPS coordinates at the time you did it. So I guess morality is dependant on X,Y,Z coords in space/time.
Why were you targeted for operation buccaner?
Who/what was the weak link that allowed the feds to track you?
Were any efforts made by DoD to minimize the amount of damage that would occur if a member was busted?
Did you have any forewarning that this was comming, or did the feds just walk in one afternoon and walk off with your computer?
What do you think the future of the scene is? (especially in regards to what happened to you?)
Do you think that using IRC is a safe medium of communication for couriers/groups?
>> ...doesn't mean it's wrong in any absolute sense though.
So what? The law doesn't recognize anyone's "absolute sense" of right and wrong, even if such a thing actually exists. You can't defend or justify an illegal action by claiming that you have an absolute sense that it is not wrong. There are lots of people who thought the murder they commited was morally acceptable. That doesn't make it legal.
You're simply trying to justify an action that society as a whole considers as wrong in order to provide a sliver of rationalization for the action.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
LOL.
"Whatchoo waiting for?!"
1) While in the can, will you have access to computers and the Net? If so, do you know the details of how it will be monitored, etc?
2) First, some background:
When I was a lad, companies were releasing software with copy-protection pretty much as the rule. Thanks to disk munchers and such, most of the protection schemes were handily defeated. It became obvious to many software publishers that the reason their software was cracked and copied was because of the challenge it presented: it was fun for us youths to crack it and feel like we outsmarted them.
It then quickly became the rule that copy-protection on media was pointless so companies stopped producing copy-protected media. As a result, many softwares were not copied because there was no point in it...no challenge. A lot of crackers basically didn't care about having piles of copies of software lying around...they just did it because they thought they were smarter than the suits.
Now, that being said, how often do you think cracking and copying software is done nowadays simply because of the geek-challenge it presents?
And, along with this, do you think the current rise in companies' use of copy-protection mechanisms has actually increased cracking activity simply because it provides a greater challenge?
And, if so, do you think all the efforts to introduce harder-to-crack copy-protection mechanisms will backfire on them?
And, if so, do you think that if companies halted these efforts and just said: "those who'll copy will copy" and only went after folks distributing for profit that cracking activities would actually decline?
Now, I realize that there are certain companies with enough "ill will" against them that no action they take will stop people from cracking and copying their software just because they want to fuck those companies...so these questions don't necessarily apply to them.
But if there's a small company releasing a small title, do you think that by including copy protection mechanisms they would only be begging crackers to have a go at their product?
Or could they still count on rampant copying regardless?
Apart from pirating software, are folks dealing with large scale warez also inclined to be involved in other illegal activities (I mean non-trivial ones)? As far as you saw (and are willing to admit) were there ties between this scene and other organized criminal activities? Did people who delivered warez also deal in coke on the side, for example? Would you, on a personal level, trust the other people in the warez business? Are they reasonable folks who happen to have an illegal side business, or are they generally not very reputable?
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
I can't guarentee it, but I suspect an estimate of $0 USD wouldn't be far off. Folks involved in the warez scene (those truelly involved) donate their time/resources to furthering a belief that they hold. I'm sure that belief has already been well debated in the forum, but I'll tell you that selling stuff on the streets (or where ever) is in direct conflict with that belief. I'm almost willing to bet that he didn't make a single dollar being a 'software pirate', and never attempted to.
Describe what Marcellus Wallace looks like.
The Pjammer Chronicles --
According to this table, people convicted under DOJ's domestic terrorism program in the US were given a median (half got more, half got less) sentence of 37 months. Do you think the actions you were convicted for are comparable to the actions of those convicted under domestic terrorism?
Your right, exactly! It's not a justification. You may feel you did the right thing, and you may end up spending time in jail for it. Law need not have anything to do with one's own sense of right and wrong (but it usually works better when they aren't completely at odds).
This isn't about justifying. If you steal and you feel that you are in your moral right to do so, then fine, do so, be happy. This isn't to suggest that when the cops come around you should be surprised or expect that your belief that it was right should effect their opinion of whether it is legal.
My original point was that it's silly to say that any particular act is just plain wrong. Legal or illegal, sure, that makes sense, but your own personal sense of ethics on the issue is just that, personal.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Has the popularity of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks made your job easier (easier to develop new ways of cracking, easier to distribute your work, easier to contact others in your group)?
Have you noticed a rise in the interest level in hacking/pirating by others who want to become developers?
Have P2P networks been a good thing for pirates or have they brought far too much unwanted attention?
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
Warez are an economic problem: warez distribute expensive software to people who wouldn't otherwise buy it, giving it more market share without eating into profits. It's a great mechanisms for differential pricing. The losers are competitors trying to enter the market with a comparable product at a lower price because few people care: those that pirate are going to pirate #1, and the people with money pay the extra 30%.
I buy pirate software everyday because it is so damn cheap and those shops are still making a margin. Even if I wanted to buy originals there is a 100 % tax on books and software, there is no choice, you have to wait months for new releases and if you try to order from internet most shops will reject your indonesian credit card.
There are a few shops selling original DVD films for 17 to 30 US$. If they were lowering their price to 5 or 6 US$ maybe I would reconsider buying original. VCD originals costs around 4 to 6 bucks and I used to buy mostly original copies befor DVD became popular. VCD quality sucks so much I don't buy any anymore.
For software, it is another matter. Microsoft licenses are the same price here as in other places of the world because the only people who can afford buying licenses are big companies. Even if you call Microsoft to buy an individual license they will not be able to forward you to a distributor who can fulfill your order. (I made a bet once, we really tried and I won).
Average monthly salary in Indonesia is 45 US$. If you're among the lucky 3% of wealthy locals, you won't even be able to order software or buy porn from internet since Indonesian credit card are blacklisted on most payment gateway for abuse.
Internet is so damn slow and expensive that you can't download much. Ironically, it is more expensive to buy a 7 cd debian 3.0 distrib (14 US$) than most pirate software since they charge you a fixed price per cd regardless of the content. It is quite cool I can buy my free software online and get it delivered by BMX messenger.
Thanks to software piracy poor indonesian can still get access to technology, learn skills, pass certifications (a CCNA costs 40 US$) and get jobs.
The WTO would like to see copyright protection instituted in the legal systems of 3rd-world countries -- precisely the places where warez godz can operate with impunity. Do you think information-age countries should expect a different IP standard from the 3rd-world, for the purpose of innovation and development?
In other words, did they demonstrate, to all present, that your actions caused them a quantifiable loss of money which they would have received had you not done what you did?
I take it that if they did, then those companies involved made the proper notations on the quarterly SEC filings? And if not, wouldn't that be similar to the fraud of hiding losses to inflate gains for shareholders?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
You're starting to get into a discussion of the purpose of the prison system.
And, unfortunately, the answer is that society is confused.
One group wants prison to be punishment. You break the law, you get punished.
One group wants prison to be about reform. You break the law, you get taught the error of your ways and you come out a nice productive member of society. (This is why prisons have libraries and educational courses.)
One group wants prisons to be simply "lock these horrible people up and never let them out where they can be dangerous again." This is where the 10-20-life and "Three Strikes" laws come from.
Which is right? Ahh, that's where you get the nifty arguments. Reform sounds better, but is very expensive. It also gets into other societal areas outside the prison system. Lock up forever is also expensive, and gets very high percentages of the population behind bars. (The US has the highest percentage population behind bars of any 1st world country.) Punish seems to mean that, when released, most convicts will commit worse crimes. (Revenge on society for how they were treated inside?)
No easy answers.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
any advice about replying to these questions? After all, if you say, "I have no remorse about anything I did" and this web log finds its way to your parole hearing it may not be a good day for you.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
In hindsight, were there things happening in the days or weeks prior to your arrest that should have tipped you off that something was not right?
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
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.
Ceci n'est pas un post
Could you lay out the foundation of starting a release group? How to find providers, how to find couriers.
How permanent (and secure) are DoD's official backup FTP servers? Are they still out there? Or did all the convicted cought them all up?
Did any of you get away from Operation Buccaneer? Obviously there were more people involved, but did they get all the main players?
Do you think they have other Operations going on out there? DoD seems like a dent in the wall compared to all the ones that are STILL churning software out.
What about movie releasers, or new music releasers? Are they under scrutiny, or was warez at the top of the list. (Why??)
Is it a minimum security conjugal-visits-type prison, or is it a federal-pound-me-in-the-ass-type prison?
--
Mac OS X--Unix without the assholes^Whassles.
So was pimp your warez worth it? =]
Prestige is definitly one of the aspects of why people pirate. You say "People in these grups need to keep hidden" .. yeah from the eye of the public, but the underground scene is a whole different story all together.. If you are in a group such as DOD you get respect from 1000s of people.. and for some odd reason.. even though its just online, that sort of respect means something..
40 cd's is only 28 GB. At 3MB a song, that only comes to 9,333 mp3's. (A 1/3 of what you guessed)
I only mentioned this because I've got 1100 CD-R's, and it only comes to 139,000 songs or so.
The Feds are cracking down! I'm going straight home and delete my pirated copy of KDE3!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
There *is* a difference, though. When you steal a physical good, that good is relatively scarce (in the overall system). If you steal a car, that's one less car that can exist (given a finite amount of steel, plastic, etc.).
An infinite number of people could pirate software, and you wouldn't "run out" of it.
I'm not making any judgements about the relative rightness or wrongness of these two types of crimes, but trying to stay they're not different is just not correct.
Chris -- http://www.bitter.net/
You're simply wrong. We can make value judgments about moral rules just as we can make value judgments about actions. That does not imply, however, that there is only one right moral rule that can apply in every circumstance equally well. When you say that a rule is good, you also need to say, "good for what?" We acknowledge that people have many different needs, therefore we must conclude that they can have different moral rules that are perfectly legitimate for those differing needs. What we hope, when we discuss moral guidelines, is that there is some common core of moral rules that will be good for most cases.
Ceci n'est pas un post
I have a friend fo the family who just went to prison in AZ (bad place to go to prison in btw) for killing someone when driving drunk. The kicker is, the other driver was just as drunk, and driving over the speed limit in sunglasses at 2am. The kicker is, he only has a 24 month sentence...
Clearly he did it for the women.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Neither question requires a public answer, but they are questions you may find... useful.
1. How will you take your revenge?
2. Why on earth would you sully yourself answering juvenile and self-serving questions from the Slashdot crowd?
I would suspect commercial vessels would be difficult to board, but less so than airplanes. I had not considered the possibility of a homemade raft.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Do you find that the more intelligent that a person is, the easier it is for them to rationalize doing what they really want to do, even if it is wrong?
Cost to produce (in both money and time) have also increased a great deal, making the risk of funding a large video game project very high...
Sure, but that's talking about the symptom, not the problem. Invest less money in each game! Have a smaller budget! Make smaller game projects!
I mean, how much does FMV add to most games? And yet, most have expensive CGI (*cough* Blizzard), voice actors and a whole squadron of artists just for cut scenes. You see them once. You're impressed with the tech. And then you don't watch them after the first four or so times. How much bang for the buck are you getting there?
What happened to Pac-Man? The above-view shooters with a little airplane that could put out about 100 times its mass in weaponry every second or so? Platform games, like Mario? Side scrolling shooters, like R-Type? These were *fun*! People went back and played them over and over and over. And they didn't cost a hundred million dollars to make.
There used to be a lot of innovation to get the games made. People from Sillicon Beach sat outside an Air Force base with microphones to get recordings for their old Mac combat games. In Myst, the Miller brothers didn't just sit on their butts as game designers -- they grabbed a cheap green screen and acted the part of all the characters. As a matter of fact, for a long time random employees of game companies *were* frequently grabbed to do voices or sound effects. There were no huge sound studios. There weren't big engine licensing fees, and the idea of a game selling for $60 or $70 would have been ludicrous.
What happened to all that? Yes, games look more realistic. Yes, there are more polygons. But are they really, honestly, more fun?
Actually, does anyone know of a website that keeps track of the few retro-style games around? I'd like to see if I can pick some up.
Retro's gotten a bad name, because too often it translates to endless Tetris knockoffs or buggy junk. But it's the closest thing to what I'm trying to talk about.
See, "retro" isn't exactly what I'm thinking of either. Modern, low budget games would be someone different than older low budget games. There are more pixels to work with -- screens are higher res. At least low end 3d cards are common. The days of paletted colors are gone. But because you have those things...why does everyone feel the need to blow so much money making their games?
May we never see th
Do you think it will change other people's similar behaviour?
Morality is not absolute. That is evidenced by the fact that no two societies agree on a common set of morals. However, agreed-upon morals make a good basis for laws and government because the people agree about whether the relevant behaviors are moral or not. If too many people disagree with the morality of too many of the laws then you've got a revolution on your hands. This is why there isn't a world government right now. People are different and they can't be held under the same laws.
The closest we've come to that is the empire model of government, where the central government doesn't have much power to pass laws over the individual territories. That's more or less the theory behind the federal/state schism that exists in the USA. It lets people govern themselves -- because they have the best idea of which way their morals steer them and how best to apply laws to support their society.
-David
Network World, Storage Management Solutions -- hell, you name it, there's plenty of free magazine subscriptions. That should keep you well up to date. Have your friends/family post your address.
How much does piracy count for the success of a product???
crunching some more numbers, assuming that's a 4x burn process, you've spent almost 2 weeks solid JUST burning them. And it would take nearly two months to play the whole thing end to end if they're audio CD's. (likely a year and a half if they're compressed 10:1)
The likely question to arise is "why?" I have no problem with mp3 trading but I am awestruck that someone would exert the effort to collect and compile over 2/3 of a terrabyte of music. It's just mindboggling. I don't mean that negatively; I just find the figures a bit shocking.
What kind of prison are you going to? Are you going to one of the notorious 'country club' prisons for white collar crime or is your low profile keeping you in a minimum security 'assisted living home' prison. ... Hrmm.. Outside time, four square meals, workout, cable tv, private cell. Good living!
-- dK
Was it work it?
The problem as I see it is that I have no personality of my own.
Did you acquire something that you did not have access to before your theft? Yes, I got a CD/MP3
Could you have acquired that object in a legal way? Yes, by buying it at a store..
Is there any other legal way for you to have acquired that object? No, every other method of acquisition is illegal.
So we are left with this: You have acquired an object. You acquired that object without the owner's permission (owner = copyright owner). That object has value to the owner. You have not given any compensation to the owner for your acquisition of that object.
How is that not stealing?
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?
.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.
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
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'.
Umm... I'm sure he did'nt crack your stuff. My bet is that he cracked something that someone DID try to protect. Otherwise, there was nothing to crack.
SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue > 0
0 rows returned
As such, my question has nothing to do with your crime or sentence. My question is simply this -
What are your impressions about what it is going to be like? Are you afraid? When you were in the county jail, did you ask questions from the "pros" in order to prepare for your future ordeal?
I ask this because I remember my time, when I waited to go. Even though I knew I was going to the quote unquote country club, you don't know what it is like untill you get there. I'm curious to know what you are thinking versus what I was.
SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue > 0
0 rows returned
> do you stay awake at night now wondering why your sense of right and wrong didn't or doesn't conincide with the laws of your country?
Even if this question isn't selected, I would very much like to see your answer to it.
Many people casually break the law, through speeding, lying, cheating, but few have problems with it (willing to pay the ticket). I understand that pirating software can be fun and add comraderie, as well as a bit of mystery and intrigue to your life. I do want to know how you feel, and what your thoughts are about why your morals do not correspond with the laws of the land.
Thank you for taking time to answer the questions. Don't bend over to pick up the soap.
Think of it similarly to the "laws" of physics. Newtons mathematical description of gravity is accurate, but not perfect. It is useful for understanding and predicting the behavior of physical objects in relation to each other. Einstein improved that description. Both of these descriptions (Newtonian and Einsteinian) take into account a context (masses, distances, gravitational constant, speed of light, time etc.) and predict a result.
A moral code is a description of the laws of human (or "spiritual") interactions. These codes may seem to be simplistic (e.g. murder is wrong) but it is merely because they are stating the understood reality of the universe in a prescriptive manner rather than a descriptive manner. One might think of this like Aristotolean physics (bigger objects should fall faster).
As an example, one could convert the prescriptive "thou shalt not kill" into a descriptive "if you kill someone, then you hurt their family, which leads eventually to the harm of society and to yourself". Of course, we are not anywhere near measuring the human/spiritual consequences of our actions, but that does not preclude that someday we will be able to.
I personally find the moral/cultural relativism stance to be incredibly weak since it is in itself a stance. By taking that stance, one is implicitly saying that any other moral stance is wrong, thus undermining ones own position.
It is difficult and frightening to many people in western culture to examine dispassionately the possiblity of a "correct" moral stance. Part of this is a legitimate fear of returning to our dark past of intollerance and prejudice. Part of it is a similarly legitimate fear of being wrong and suffering the consequences. But the answer is not denial. The answer is an open search for truth whereever one may find it.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
Your argument is crap. You present a black and white, binary choice that forces you into acting immorally to achieve success.
This is similar to the following
"Did you tell your parents that you are gay?"
A Usenet Troll Triumphs on Slashdot
This is correct, and your point is well taken: that many things which are moral in one culture are immoral in another. Morals are not exactly the same across cultures.
That being said, there is a pretty big correlation between the morals of two societies. For example, there are things which are always considered immoral by just about every culture, and vice versa. The intersection of all moral systems is actually quite large.
This does shore up your original point, in the sense that these things which are common to all moral systems are typically those things which help a society function. For example, murder is always considered wrong, because in any society in which murder is common, you're not going to be very successful, as a society.
Come on, give it up, that's
My guess is that it took him at least 1/100th of the time to do it illegally, but then again he could earn 8 figures and just happen to be an anti-property activist, however somehow I doubt it.
My next question would be: "How often do you listen to each song, and how much effort does it take to listen to a particular song once you decide that you feel like listening to it?"
A shoebox full of burned CDs is a highly inefficient way to archive anything important enough to retrieve semi-regularly. I think it's safe to say that the individual in question would probably have still preferred pirated music even if he could have purchased the songs for 25 cents each, since it seems to me that few people would really be able to justify purchasing any songs after the first gigabyte, since he would have likely purchased them in roughly the order of his preference.
Amazing magic tricks
Skate or Die was what the voice said in the game 720 when the clock ran out. However, the BEST skateboarding game ever made was called Skate or Die, by Electronic Arts. I used to play this game daily for about 2 years on my C64. I remember that game had the coolest intro I had ever seen on a game at that time, which was only a picture of a skateboarder with really cool music in the background. Sure Tony Hawk 3 looks nice, but Skate or Die is still better in my books!
Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
Do you feel to be the victim of being "scapegoated" as an example of what will be done to us lowly pirates if we do not kneel to the US Gov and companies who have intrests in your conviction?
Do you feel as if you HAVE commited a crime? And if so.. do you believe it to be so heinous as to recieve the sentance you got?
as well do you believe the sentance was too much or to little in respect to your "crimes"?
Whats most important in this discussion is your depth of redistribution... I feel you crossed the line using your company to redistribute. How do you feel about that?
How do you feel the DoJ should treat the masses of "lesser" pirates... As in those who recieve Warez or those who use their own Software and install it on their "friends" computers?
Once again i feel you crossed the line by being a True distributer... akin to a drug dealer (not moraly, but in the supply chain of "illegeal" trades)... you placed yourself at odds with the law and MIT and these various companies by being a "big fish"... do you think that was a mistake?
Did you redistribute to be a rebel?
Or to protest unfair copywright laws?
To return the "warez karma" (as in giving back to those who gave to you)
Or simply because?
My personal attitude is a semi-robin-hood type, in addition i do not feel like its stealing... thats correct no physical object is transferred... which instinctually makes me feel as if these claims should ONLY be civil... I think criminal trials for non-malicous Data theft (theft of Bytes and bits that isnt for the purpose of harming someone directly) should be illegal... its wrong to put someone in prison as such... i believe that those caught with warez should be ticketed, those caught distributing warez should face civil lawsuits... but a criminal act i cannot see in this.
How do you feel?
This venue of discussion is highly important and needs to be resolved... because ultimately id guess most of the US is guilty of software/music theft at some level... if the companies had their way...Should we all go to jail?
3 years for an MP3 collection? (i know thats an exageration, but whats to stop them?)
where do we draw the lines?
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
How is your family and friends reacting to all this? Do they understand why you did all this? were they aware of your activities (okay this might be a bit too much to ask since they could re-use that against you or them but still, I'd like to know at least their reaction and how they feel about the system and your actions).
Thanks.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
This is slightly OT, but what the heck...
Chris, I think you might have played with Northeastern University's band once a couple years ago. You borrowed a saxophone, and we never got it back. We tried to call you, your friends, your place of work, your parents; in short, everyone we could find who had a connection with you. And yet, we never got a hold of you *or* the sax, and it was an expensive one.
What happened to that instrument, and was this a precursor to your later warez activities???
(Note: If this is the wrong Chris, my sincere apologies for accusing you of something you didn't do!)
Think of it similarly to the "laws" of physics.
So morality is all just probability waves?
How do you feel about what happened, in retrospect?
And what are your plans for when you get out?
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
similar to people who download copies of 3d Studio max each time a new version comes out. Even though they don't use it.
Read some of the stuff ex-warez people post. Either they accumulate it all for trading fodder... or other reasons they can't quite put their finger on.
Maybe you would like to explain how or why this is bad instead of simply calling it stupid?
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Can you tell us about the whole process of getting busted and interrogated? How was the DOJ able to learn about all the members and execute simultaneous busts?
How hard did the DOJ interrogators push to get names of accomplices and if you cooperated, did that reduce your sentencing?
What advice would you give to someone who finds themselves in a similar situation? e.g. ( Hire a good pre-trial lawyer. Flee the country. )
I assume that the DOJ confiscated all your servers and went through the logs and examined all the user accounts and IP addresses. What happened to the "small time users" or did the DOJ not bother to track them down?
Lastly, in hindsight if you had to do it all over again. What would you have done to stay under the radar and not get busted?
Hmm well you do point out a big problem with it, which is under the table payola.
As I said, it was just an off the top of my head idea and I never claimed it was flawless or even practical.
I'll have to get a copy of Atlas Shrugged and check it out sometime.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
:-)
Well, possibly, I wouldn't claim to know, but the analogy does not need to be taken that far. The analogy simply points out that the progress of moral knowledge may procede similarly to the progress of physical knowledge.
It is easy for us to understand that the study of physics is based on observation, intuition and inspiration and that it presumes that the universe is ordered and non-arbitrary. (Just for a little more detail: science is based on a faith in repeatability but that faith does not make it so. The faith we have in repeatability comes from our experience, not from any more fundamental proof.)
What is not so easy for some people is to have faith that morality can also be ordered and non-arbitrary. This is because history is full of examples of morality prescribed by powerful individuals for their own purposes. Moral codes should be examined just as dispassionately as physical laws: what are the effects of following/not following a moral code, or in other words, what is the descriptive version of a moral stance (see this post's parent's parent :-). (Also I recommend reading Larry Laudan's "Progress and its Problems" one of the best works on the philosophy and history of science.)
As for probabilities, it is conceivable that some moral consequences are probabilistically influenced by deeper unknown moral parameters. To use the analogy with physics a little more, one might consider that the action and consequences of a murder might be described at a level similar to classical mechanics, whereas the intonation used on a particular word while speaking with someone might have consequences that are best described using probabilities and that it is only when one agregates many of these words and intonations that once can "collapse" the probability waveform into a more "classical" result (such as insult, sarcasm, affection, anger, joy etc.).
FWIW, I totally just speculating. Again, I don't presume to have thought this out fully or know any "correct" answers :-)
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
How do you feel knowing that you were personally responsible for putting so many companies out of business? Oh wait...
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
How much I listen to, what I listen to is similar to everyone else. I have my favorites, and they fit on my hard drive. At work, I switch between the new Punk-O-Rama 7, Braveheart soundtrack, and some progressive trance tracks almost all the time. However, the only difference is, once in a while I'll try some legendary Jazz. Can't say I like it much, but I consider it an education. Plus Miles Davis isn't too bad. When I'm feeling blue, I try out my extensive Blues collection. I have found out exactly which era I enjoy (Muddy waters, et al)
...A shoebox full of burned CDs is a highly inefficient way to archive anything important enough to retrieve semi-regularly....
My shoe box is an almost-finished Mindstorm Lego robotic "contraption" that grabs the correct CD-r and puts it into an external CDROM. All the albums and which CD-R they are on, are in a MySQL database. The remote works with it, as does a web interface. As soon as DVD-R/+R figures itself out, i can move them to DVD-R/+R, allowing for more room to grow.
Otherwise, looking forward to the day that hard drives get bigger and smaller. How much memory will a portable player have in 10 years? 1TB? Probably more. Just in time for my kid to carry around all the music in the world (exaggerating) in his pocket.
Besides, as Mad Max has shown, I'll need something to trade at Barter Town.
And last but not least, collectors have a well known sickness: Collecting.
Maybe I am wrong, but maybe I am just not explaining myself clearly. I did not mean to imply that there is some simplistic rule for each action one might take. Rather, if there is such a thing as a correct moral code, then that code must take all circumstances into account for each decision. That is, a moral code must be relative to each specific situation it covers, but not relative to opinions or ideas of any person.
Also, while I believe there is a single moral code, I am not trying to prove that here. Rather I am saying that either there is a single correct way of determining whether an action should be considered right, wrong, or optional, or there is no way of determining that at all. Either there is one complete, correct moral code or zero of them.
When you talk of moral rules for differing needs, and rules that will be good for most cases, I get the feeling you are veering into utilitarianism. You reduce moral rules to those rules that, if followed, would make things come out the way you want them to come out. If you do that, then you don't have much "moral high ground" to criticize a serial killer for applying the same principle.
Even if we disagree though, we can probably get along together. You can work toward finding that good "common core of moral rules" and I can work toward discovering more of the "real" moral code.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
It is a quote from the notebooks of Lazarus Long, a Robert A. Heinlein character.
It is a philosophy of life.
It is a way of thinking that can help you have a happy married life.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
That's true, but either you admit it or else you have to find some objective basis for right and wrong. Which means either you accept both the existance of some extra-human basis for them and you have to produce an authoritative statement of tehm. Which is fine if you believe in an old-testament God.
However, just because you believe in your God doesn't mean I do. I may not believe in any god at all, in which case I will see the commandments of your God as just your preference; or I will believe in my God and we'lkl have to fight a holy war to decide which set of commandments take precedence. You can't have democratic agreement when both sides believe the matter of disagreement is a matter of faith.
The alternative, if you don't believe in God and you still want to hang on to the idea of objective right and wrong, is Utilitarianism. Even then, you have to decide who gets to do the calculations.
Objective right and wrong are like free breakfast and lunch: Objectively, there ain't no such thing.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Whoever mod'ed that as a troll should be
profoundly slapped in meta-mod.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Relative to the U.S., which is quite similar to
Nero's Rome in many respects, right down to the
fasces.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
good grief if you lump that in to illegal copying files, yer an idiot. i'd like to see what your significant other thinks of what you think about oral sex, cuz it'd be funny if u never got any for the rest of your life.
How did you get started? Was it the challenge of cracking software or was it the community felling?
PS. the BBS warez scene was a lot of fun. 0 days warez from the us was worth gold!
CIA Factbook 2002 (US):"Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households
We are on the same page. One must find an objective basis for right an wrong, or admit that they don't exist.
I do believe in God as that objective basis. That doesn't get me off the hook however, because it is still my responsibility to figure out what is right and wrong within the parameters set up by the Creator. Just look disagreements among the various world religions to see that this is not a trivial task.
Of course, it is possible that I am wrong, and that there is no Creator. Then I don't see any way of defining a purpose to the Universe, or defining right and wrong. An atheist might avoid the (icky in my opinion) road to utilitarianism by appealing to some inherent value in life, or in consciousness.
BTW, my particular religious beliefs do not require me to fight a holy war with you if you do not agree with them. Your mileage may vary.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
if you want it and don't to pay for it, lock yourself in a room for 3 years and write your own.
there are thousands of small developers trying to make a living at programming. scum like you are ensuring that only companies like MS can afford to stay in the game. is that what you want?
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
Doesn't it piss you off that people like Dmitry get the support of the EFF while copyright infringers like you get called thieves by even seemingly progressive thinkers like CmdrTaco?
I love anonymous tough guys.
The law only applies to those who get caught and in this instance, they only caught one head of the hydra while several P2P networks rose up to take it's place.
Law shma? People like you would make Hitler proud; follow the regime and don't question. Can I get a Heil in the house?
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Do you have any plans for what to do when you get out of prison?
How do you think being a convicted criminal will affect job prospects, etc?
What do you plan to do about any adverse affects a criminal record might have?
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
How does one plan to go to prison?
How do you plan to adjust to prison life?
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
i'm seconding the 'Adjustment' questions...
Except that they're about using power, extortion on other humans, other people.
"Linux is developed for free, and uses the laws to stay free."
Yeah, I like the GPL. It takes a law that was designed to hurt people and turns it 180 around.
But if that law was changed, to give people more software freedom, do you think RMS would fucking cry? Of course not. He'd be happy.
"Proprietary software is developed for profit, and uses the laws to remain profitable."
At the expense of society.
Sure, they would have to find another way to pay for the software (like the Blender fund or maybe something else entirely). The many drawbacks of proprietary software are bigger than the one advantage.
As for me being dumb: I've, as a consumer, got no interest in seeing proprietary software succeed as a business model, therefore I figure that the less people who support those companies, the better.
Warez people put their neck on the line and they bring gratis stuff to the public. Not as cool as free software hackers or free art creators, but warez people do contribute.
The example they set by "sharing" is a greater contribution than the actual warez.
i suppose another direction to ask this question might be: does the author's intent in releasing software figure differently in your thinking now? what did you think about author's intent before you were busted?
Whoa. You incorrectly corrected someone's correct logic. For shame. N(x) = x is a New Yorker
M(x) = x is an American
1. All x. N(x) -> M(x) [Premise]
2. ~M(a) [Premise]
3. N(a) -> M(a) [Universal Instantiation]
4. ~N(a) QED [Modus Tollens]
So,
I(x) = x has enough intelligence
W(x) = x knows software copying is wrong.
h = this guy.
1. All x. I(x) -> W(x) [Premise]
2. I(h) [Premise]
3. I(h) -> W(h) [Universal Instantiation]
4. W(h) [Modus Ponens]
He knew it was wrong
o = another person
5. flag o [for Universal Generalization]
6. | Assume ~W(o)
7. | | I(o) -> W(o) [Universal Instantiation]
8. | | ~I(o) [Modus Tollens]
9. | ~W(o) -> ~I(o) [Conditional Proof, 6-9]
10.~W(x) -> ~I(x) [Universal Generalization, 5-10]
Anyone who doesn't know it is wrong does not have enough intelligence.
I was wondering how you were caught? I read that there was a search and seizure but how did they catch you doing the crime?
What was the evidence that they used against you? Against other people that you know of (e.g. people in Drink or Die compared to people in RiSC, if you know anything about the other cases)
Is your only punishment jail time and a fine?
Did you plead down to a lesser sentence for some reason or another? If so what was the reason?
My little Universe is cool for the people who can fit inside it (being 250 6'4" there aren't that many who can)
I simply reject the notion that right and wrong exist outside of a context. That our personal beliefs, the beliefs of those close around us, and those of the society as a whole are what create the context that establishes whether something is right or wrong.
:)
So are just arguing about semantics of the words "right" and "wrong" at this point? If so, I'll just agree with you, I think
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
he did, albeit fledgingly. By "removing capitalism" from the system, you remove the inherent competition that refines the pool of any professional community. By removing the incentives to do well in an occupation, the members of that occupation stop performing well. Instead, they do just enough to get their cheques and move on to the next job. By granting them the incentives to win and win big, they will methods and styles to win.
Would you mind answering some additional +5 moderated posts (of your own choosing) beyond the ones that the Slashdot editors give you?
I'm seeing more than 10 interesting questions whose answers I'd like to see.
What might you call your objective basis for belief in God? You can hardly build a sturdy building on a foundation of pudding...
--------
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
This story is getting a bit old, but I haven't seen this particular question asked. A lot of people are asking "why join a release group", etc. However, I think another question is, How do you join a release group? It seems to me that the entire scene is clouded in some secrecy. You have the fserve on IRC that any 13 year old can set up, you may have some rooted XDCC bots spitting out fast serves, but the uber-elite group, the ones releasing the warez are NEVER seen on IRC, or anywhere else for that matter. So my question is, how did you join DoD? Did they come to you, did you seek them out, what sort of process was involved? And how were new members recruited?
Thanks, and be careful in prison, I don't envy that you're going there. Good luck
Once we start using 'slppery slope' arguments, it just opens the door for ad-hominm attacks, arguments from ignorance, and all kinds of general idocy.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Kinda like the yeoman farmers of olden times who had to know how to weld and do metalwork to keep the machinery all operational.
Is human slavery moraly OK? What about killing off the Jews? "society" used to think that those kinds of things were perfictly OK, so by your argument they must have been at the time?
The law does not make something right or wrong. Each person needs to make that choice for themselves, and if their decissions cause to many problems for everyone else they need to be removed.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Are right and wrong physical things? Can you touch them? Can you put them in a bottle? can you detect them chemicaly or via radio perception?
No. You can't. They do not exist. They are ideas. Ideas do not exist. Deal with it.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If you've got a little time before going to the can, why don't you flee the country?
I went to high school with this guy....other than being a pothead, he was nothing even close to having a criminal mentality. He was smart as hell, too. (which should be obvious from the fact he was at MIT) Just goes to show what getting in the way of corporate interests will do to your future, no matter who you are, what you do, or think you know.
Crimes against non-entities (i.e. corporations) should never result in a prison term. Hell, non-violent crimes shouldn't either, short of violation of sanctity of space. (breaking and entering,etc)
Good luck in prison, Chris. Remember, shank the first guy you see and you'll be alright the rest of the time you're there.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
In a lot of primitive societies this was fine, as long as the someone was from the ennemy tribe.
Can you find me a warezed copy of Neverwinter Nights?
---
I didn't want to leave this space blank.
What are you doing with your last few weeks as a 'free man'? Have you considered making a run for it?
Software piracy, the quest to be elite, is just one way of fullfilling our will to power. We all want to be elite, to be better than others, to be unique in some way. Whether you want to be a pirate, get on the VIP list at some dance club, or become a karma whore on slashdot, we all have our own unique way of striving for power and superiority over everyone else.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
In the previous scenario, the (yes, objective) rule to apply is "The end never justifies the means". This simply means that you cannot violate the collective moral code by pointing to a "greater good" that can be ultimately acheived.
The overarching governance of our moral code should be "It is immoral to initiate physical force against any sentient being".
This rule leads to the idea that stealing is OK, as long you don't do it by force. This is, in some respects, correct, but you will then start dealing with "negotiated rules", which are explicit and implicit rules of society or what we consider "deals", "contracts", or codified "laws". There is actually another, lower priority rule regarding the concept of private property that can be stated simply as "I've got mine and you've got yours". Objective moral rules governing ownership start there, and are negotiated freely.
So there may be some implicit moral obligation, well understood in most societies, not to "pirate" software, as it is considered "stealing". These rules are important, because they allow us to enforce the negotiated punishment against the perpetrators, and thier attempts to evade said punishment is viewed as initiation of force against those in our society acting in the role of enforcement officers.
Humanism in a nutshell...
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Did you or any people you know ever consider the thing you did as a service to society? Is there a notion in the scene that what you did had to be done, not "because you could" or for impressing the peers, but for serving society as a whole?
;] ?
.nfo],
i ask because i think that the warez scene has contributed a lot towards helping third world or ex eastern blok nations keeping in touch with technological progress. i don't know any specific facts, but it seems logical to assume that the last thing a developing country wants to do is to pay for operating systems on a per-license basis...
so, in other words, did you or your affiliates ever consider yourself as modern day robin hoods [as opposed to modern day john silvers
thnx [especially for all the
-strangeloop
I'm afraid I don't understand the analogy you're making in the last sentence.
Ceci n'est pas un post
Ceci n'est pas un post
Ah, there is the rub, eh? I'm exposing myself a bit in a possibly hostile environment, but I'll bite, and give you an honest answer.
I currently have a few reasons.
One, I was taught to believe from early on by people I trusted, and to this day know people who believe, whose opinions I value. I understand this as the argument from authority it is and the weakness of it that implies.
Two, from early childhood it has never made sense to me that the universe should be here if there is no Creator. Yes, I am aware of various criticisms of the Cosmological Argument.
Three, the Moral Argument more makes me want to continue believing than it convinces me. That was the thrust of my comments in this thread. A universe without purpose, without any moral standard, is to me an ugly waste of spacetime. At the very least, if people are going to talk about "my morals" and "your morals," I feel compelled to point out that what they are really saying is that morals are meaningless.
As I have grown older the weak spots of my belief have become apparent to me, and I am reevaluating the whole shebang. I suppose I might sometime conclude I have been wrong all this time. I hope not, because IMHO it would suck to live in a universe without a Creator.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
The poster is pointing out that copying software is not a black-and-white moral issue like murder or child molesting. Copyright is an artificial social policy, and many of the harsh penalties for violators currently in play (through which this unfortunate person will be made an example of) are extremely recent and morally unsupportable in most people's book when you lay out the facts.
Morality is relative but not subject to relativism. Admitting there is disonnance does not dissolve morality, and pretending that it does is a bad ruse in place of what should be good discussion about how to continue improvement of our civic policy (or in our case, how to stem the tide of it's utter destruction).
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Can you explain the information exchange / bargaining and cooperation that took place, and how those events lead to your ultimate sentence. What can you tell us about the different sentences handed out and why some people (like Target and Psychod), got off with a much lesser sentence than yourself.
The DOJ thinks taking out a few here, and a few there, even with overseas help is going to have a "sum" effect .
...
Not really, All of Eur-asia is heavily into piracy .
In fact they just don't run servers with ISO images, they have cd stampers that even mirror the holograms .
They caught truck loads of it coming into the "City of Industry" port in Cali
I honestly think they do these raids on s/w rip ppl as a gentle reminder to stop doing it .
If they wanted to get the ppl they would just start buying shell accounts on trusted servers and use Ip addresses that are not in the known list of Narcs .
Warez is not going away, and Open Source will never get the fuel of pure unadulterated greed behind it ( ie.: M$) .
The statement the United Corporations of America is too true, it's all for sale, if Larry Ellison has his way all his coders will be H1-B's that he can pay salary and scare them with threats of deportation to work longer hours .
Sun, M$, Oracle, Cisco, and a host of others pushed thru 22 million in "PAYOLA" to secure that H1-B count was dbl'd "AFTER" the decline begain in 2000 .
The Univ Cailf @ Davis Norman Mattloff went screaming into congress calling them on their corruption, C-Span did not cover all of that for some reason, LOL .
They used false information to push it thru and the good ol boy network, and cold hard cash . Dem's and Repub's both stuck there hands in the cookie jar .
hell the vote to dbl H1-B's was like 98-1 .
One of the most Unanimous votes in history .
Meanwhile unemployment was on the rise .
All of this was engineered to drive wages down, and if you want to know who to thank, you don't have to look very damn far .
I am not saying the DOT BUST was caused by this, I am saying they ignored it and pushed ahead further overseas scab labor .
Some of the ancillary and primary 9-11 ppl were H1-B's that were not properly researched .
Some were granted their visas after they rode the planes into the towers, the president went into an apopoleptic fit over this .
The rubber stamp to oil the corporate gears with cheap labor had hit a hiccup, one that shall not be forgotten for a damn long time .
So as to the morality and ethics and legality of Warez and what else, like OJ if you have enough money you can write the book yourself, and if you are replicating square wave binary pulses for data , you can go to jail .
There is alot of hypocritical $hit out there, and Warez is definitely not at the top of the list of what this country really needs to be addressing .
Our government is for sale, and the puppets have strings being pulled by the puppet masters .
Warez, m3pz, moviez, etc etc, is a joke .
Lets consider the ppl bemoaning their horrific fate, M$ who hired temps for up to 5 yrs and later got sued because the jurys were so villified that hard workers were left in temp limbo becasue they knew they could screw them .
The other holy corporate cash cows that have cashed out 100's of millions of dollars in perfect timing and drawn down class action lawsuits are the real conductors of choir of cashouts .
Micheal Milken wannabe's like the king of scum that walked out of Global Crossing with $500 million . Wonder if that "bonus" was due to his awesome corporate strategy, or did he single handedly know how it would play out and walked out with "maximum" theft but did so under the guise of semi-legality while thosuands of workers have their cars and homes repo'd . All becasue this corporate protectorate for the holy cash cow of pump and dump can send millions into financial ruin so the teflon suits can walk on , and a few that are not popular are brought to trial to play scapegoat for the hundreds that walk away unscathed .
This is about big bucks, and BS, the statement about it depending where you stand on a GPS determines if anyone gives a damn is too true .
You are "never" going to get the whole world on board unless the world is consumed by the World Bank and IMF, and those that seek to devalue the currency of every third world country on earth , and short sell it on the Foreign Exchange Currency markets, then buy it back and make money twice on the fall and rise as they ruin the lives of millions .
These are the puppetmasters that carry our legal, ethical, moral, ideology .
They use it as they see fit and bend it to meet their needs , and apply it to hold down the masses .
Warez isn't going away, and this is just another step towards Corporations ruling the world in the background, and the puppets dancing their marionette dances and partying their a$$es of in Washington and laughing at the "little" ppl .
Enjoy the ride !
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Obviously, a move to prison is going to be a very difficult and probably distrubing cultural change from what you're used to.
Have you taken any steps to help yourself assimilate? Meaning, anything physical (e.g. self defense), thing mental (prepared a reading list) and/or things spiritual (e.g. Chuck Colson's pfm.org) ?
Have you set any goals for what you want to accomplish while you're on the inside? How about goals for when you're released?
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
Rules are derived logically from some undeniable basis (not axioms), that self-referentially proves itself. One of these fundamental rules is the fact that all decisions are based on binary logic. Assuming that it could be based on e.g. ternary logic would lead to the question how to decide which of the three values are to choose. Thus, moral is derived logically and aske only whether a rule would be right or wrong, not good or bad. A rule can be right, but bad to all people. But this shouldn't matter, people should obey this rule, regardless if it's bad for them to follow it. Bad or good are attributes based on emotions or goals to achieve. Moral/ethics is not about achieving goals, but all about logic.
To admit that right and wrong are a matter of preference is to destroy any useful definition of right and wrong.
No - that is what legal and illegal are for. Society reaches a concensus on the most important 'wrongs' and makes them into 'illegals'. On the whole, everyone will agree that you shouldn't kill someone, steal their car, or bite them on the ass without asking first.
On the whole you will get vast disagreements about things that are fun. Sex, Drugs, Spitting on the streets. A lot of variations on these are illegal but it is up to the individual to determine wether they are wrong.
I think its absolutely wrong to spit on a tennis court. Its not illegal, but its wrong. I dont do it. Anyone I see doing it I lose respect for. They did something wrong.
There is no god!
Does your conviction include any bans on using computers or networks, like it is seen in hacker convictions?
If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.--David Brent
What ever happened to being banned from hooking computers with phone lines, and being forced to humbly shelf your handle; only to make friends with kids at a new school ten years later and join an elite underground hacking network to stop an evil corporate information security guy from spilling oil on penguins?
$8.95/mo web hosting
Which tools/software did you use to implement your cracking of commercial software? Were these tools free or did you pirate them too? What tools were used to pirate the tools you used to pirate the software in question? Which tools were the best/your favourite ? Thanks RJ.
Last.fm - join the social music revolution
for all the great software that I didn't have to buy to find out that it sucks. Don't let these slashdot pissants get you down!
Gur svggrfg funyy fheivir lrg gur hasvg znl yvir. Jr zhfg ercrng.
Better than 50% would be, by definition, an average wage, rather than 'pretty good'.
Why is anything anything?
I was wondering how you got caught, what did you do wrong and what evidence did the DoJ use to convict you?
The kicker is he was conviced of killing someone and got a lesser sentence than someone who made copyright infringments.
oh yeah, big part of the fact that he was conviceted was that the other driver was something like the captain of Bush's fighter escort for Air Force 1.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I was disagreeing with him. I was simply carrying on the conversation to the general audience and making my point.
:)
Yes, physical theft and software theft are two different things with obviously quite different rules. Reproduction of software costs next to nothing for material, it's not like duplicating a TV or PS2 and returning the original. So software theft imburses no one with anything. You're not -taking- anything tangible from the creator. The difference is that you're taking the right of the creator to earn profit from its sale by not buying it at the set price. So it depends on what you consider 'theft'.
IMO, when selling a product OR service, you also have a right as a business to earn the price you place on the sale. So whether the thief steals the object (property taken), or a non-tangible entity (profit rights taken), it's theft...
Now, IP... well, that's a whole other story
My sentence: 180 months, and I served 100 months (thats eight (8) years for the calender-impaired.)
Not in a 'Club Fed' either, it was hard time in real Federal Prisons, part of it at USP Terre Haute (thats what you get for having a prior - for possession of pot!)
Needles to say, it was NOT worth eight years during what should have been my most productive.
BTW, had I been sentenced under the newer federal sentencing guidelines, I would have gotten LESS time than the warezdood. Go figure!!
If it was so obvious that it was stealing...
why was he charged with copyright violation, and not with theft?
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?
This is ridiculous. For most people, life does not consist of an endless string of ludicrous emergencies of this sort. Therefore it doesn't make sense to use situations that might occur 0.001% of the time to justify a manner of behavior for the other 99.999% of the time.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
You miss my point entirely. I'm not arguing that this implies that you can't hold any morals.My point is that the parent post about the danger of relativism was completely overstated, and I'm showing how a similar argument can be constructed for absolutism. I do believe that absolutism is dangerous; that does not mean that I believe it is impossible to make or justify any moral judgments.
Ceci n'est pas un post
By artificial I imply that it doesn't follow from the 'natural' rights described in the Declaration of Independence or Constituation. It does not follow from any true right; it is merely a law created not to further rights, but rather lifestyle. A 'non-artificial' law (I hesitate to use the term 'natural law') would be one that can be derived from said natural rights.
Free Software and commercial software are not opposites. Free Software and proprietary software are opposites. It can be okay to sell Free Software.
Digital Citizen
Was there any bit of software you really wanted to get your hands on which you never could? What was it and what did you want to do with it?
meridian at tha.net
I agree very much. I am just an old guy that did in the, far-fetched, pass stack a few cards for fun. I ain't done it in many years. I hope that old 2600 folks and others are not endangered species. Some folks do reflect the best of human nature and others express the most pathetic. I am so old that I never did anything illegal (broke the law), I think.
With all the 'legalisms, laws, and whatnot showing up left and right' I expect that the younger admin and netsec people will eventually expect the government to issue all security policy and procedures. When something goes wrong many MS-admin folks blame MSOS bugs/problems these days, ... tomorrow IT/net security failures will be blamed on the US Big Internet Technology Communications Hierarchy and Electronics Security (US BITCHES) police.
PBS will produce a documentary (around 2010) about the slow death of the pirates, criminals, gangsters, scum-buckets, and perverts of the freewheeling Internet frontier and how the Internet was civilized for decent sheep. Those that win the war write the history.
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
"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."
Not so. Right and wrong are usually defined as just that. Either:
a) legally. the right or the wrong was decided by a group of people with law-making powers based on a consensus of their personal opinions on the matter.
b) socially. the group of people have no law-making rights, but they -- as a group -- label a course of action as right or wrong.
Moreover, any legal system that uses a jury is admitting that in many cases, the 'right' or 'wrong' of an action can only be judged from personal opinion, i.e. the most prevailing opinion of 12 people.
There is most certainly no hard + fast right and wrong: merely differing opinions on what is and what is not right or wrong in a given context. When you say:
"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..."
You mean:
"In the context of a given situation, each one of these actions is either right, wrong, or optional according to the previaling 'correct' moral code at that point".
(Deliberately extreme) example:
One declares the sexual abuse of children to be so wrong that it should be punished by death. Then we postulate the case where the discovered abuser of said children is currently president of a country which will almost certainly descend into civil war without his leadership, a war certain to cost millions of lives. The cost of those lives must be weighed against the lives of those, say, 10 people whose childhood -- and possibly the rest of their lives -- were ruined by the actions of this president in his private life. Which course of action is correct: accuse and execute, or cover-up?
Deciding questions like that -- being ABLE to decide questions like that -- makes us human. Obeying one moral code makes us robots.
-- Despair is an operating system that ANY human being can run, sort of a psychological JAVA --
well... just a thought..... have you all noticed how money, power and politics change all for the worse? I mean look at it this way... smbdy does something like this, and gets punished worse than one who rapes or maybe even kills. Why? Because it's about money... some company losing money seems more important in our society that human life..... I'm not saying it's right or wrong to do what this guy did, I leave that to others... but... just to make my point take this in consideration: 2 people killed during a manifestation for some political ideas may be much more mediatised and made much more important than 100 others killed in an airplane crash... Why? Because the 2 deaths can be used as a political statement, as for the 100 just sheds a little more light on the precarious state of airlines... and this, for the airlines, means losing money... so the question here is: aren't we focusing on the wrong problems? everybody's out to make money and power, and when they got it they do not even put it to good use, and for some no use at all, for that matter... is this so important? sitting on a pile of money and power? be proud you just have it? for me, money is just a tool for getting what I want. a bad tool, but the only one, unfortunately... bad because, as you see brings the worst in humans.... plz, send any replys to my email.... funkytones@bumerang.ro thanks, and let's put the first ammendment to right use this time....
Your argument implies that you are giving two choices that are set compliment. That is, you can choose A or not A.
So when I ask "have you told your parents that you are gay?", then it seems that you can only answer yes or no, though both would imply that you are gay.
Your argument implies that there are only two choices: sacrifice the innocent to the mob or let the mob harm other innocents, though both would result in bad things happening.
In addition, there is another flaw that I did not immediately see. Your argument only applies to a moral system that attempts to achieve a maximum/minimum of pleasure/pain. Moral systems of this type are easily trashed, and you have probably already realized this.
I hope you understand this now. (But I am not saying that I disagree.)
A Usenet Troll Triumphs on Slashdot
I have to agree. I make my living writing code. Lately it's getting worse and worse. I went home last week without a paycheck, for the third time now. My company is losing everything due to piracy. I not only hope you get anally raped, I hope someone kills you.
Your second point is once again obscure. My example is a common example in philosophy of something that a Kantian absolutist would have trouble dealing with. It's not a problem of more flexible systems, although those can have their own problems. It sounds like we might basically agree, but your discussions are pretty confusingly presented.
Ceci n'est pas un post
That's why the gaming software market is just full of free open source games that compete with the top seller's offerings.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
Would you do it all again, knowing what you know now?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
This was the heart and soul of the declaration of independance. You know the document that was unanamously ratified that people went out and died for. In short it says our "natural" rights end where another persons nose begins. In fact people bled and died slow painful deaths precisely because they didn't want senseless killing and random violence.
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"
This is the line in the constitution that grants the legislature power over IP. Take out the part about promoting progress and limited times and you might as well throw the whole thing out as far as I'm concerned.