Talk To a Convicted Warez Guy

Chris Tresco is one of those evil "software pirates" cybermoms warn you about. He was a sysadmin at MIT, and also a member of "the secretive Internet software trading ring known as 'DrinkOrDie'" who got caught by the DoJ's Operation Buccaneer, got convicted, and was sentenced to 33 months in prison on August 16. Chris has a little time left on the outside before he goes away and has agreed to spend some of it answering your questions, so ask away. (Usual Slashdot interview rules.)

Comments

Couple questions

[BoneFlower]

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?

Re:Couple questions

[evilpenguin]

I have jaywalked. I have made mp3s (and lately ogg files) of CDs I legitimately own. I have sped. I have got tickets. I paid them becuase I was guilty. I have never sucked a cock, although as a teenager I probably tried to reach my own. I am not self-righteous. I am righteous. There's a difference. People justify themselves by saying "everyone does it" and they hate no one more than someone who does not, because it makes them examine their own behavior. They sometimes even show up as abusive AC's.

I don't care what you do. That's your own business. That what makes me righteous as opposed to self-righteous. All I am doing is calmly trying to point out that there are people who do NOT steal intellectual property. I am a member of the EFF. I fight the growing DRM efforts and the DMCA by writing my congresscritters. I hope you do the same. Also, if you download mp3s and rip warez as an act of civil disobedience, I admire you. Your willingness to go to prison for your beliefs is admirable. I'm not willing to do that.

How serious was your crime?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:How serious was your crime?

[0x0d0a]

People like to look down on cracking (of software and computers) as being evil or juvenile once they're a sysadmin/security analyst. While I'm not going to call them wrong, I suspect that a very large number of the more knowledgeable sysadmins, system coders, and whatnot out there, have at one time or another spent some time freeriding, and learned one or two technical skills in a not-so-legitimate manner. I don't think I've talked to a UNIX guy (and I'm talking about serious sorts, not the type churned out with an IS degree and little idea what they're doing) yet who's talked about this and said "No, I've never pirated software/cracked software/broken into someone's server".

I spent a lot of time cracking software back in the day. Never distributed it, and it did eat up a lot of time. However, I'm now happily using the skills that started there to do systems work. Poking at people's servers, in the same vein, breeds better security types.

You just have to realize that boys will be boys. Sure, there's mischief when you're a kid. Just because some kid defaced a web page instead of spraying graffiti at some point and the company victimized claimed tens of thousands of dollars in damages doesn't make the defacement worse than the graffiti, IMHO. As long as you learn to grow out of it, and channel what you know into useful areas, things are fine.

This is one reason I'm kind of sad to see the slow death of the freewheeling, "protect your own computer", wide open Internet. Legalisms, laws, and whatnot are showing up left and right. The laid back, long-haired sysadmins of ten years ago have become suits. The emails that techie friends and I used to regularly spoof to each other, coming from Santa Claus, the President, or others, would now land us in a federal prison. Policy is taking the place of technology, and it makes the world a less fun place.

Just my two cents.

What was your motivation?

[Kaypro]

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?

Warez's future in light of DRM

[Mdog]

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?

The Economics Of Warez

[gotroot801]

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?

Re:The Economics Of Warez

[kootch]

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

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

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

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

Re:The Economics Of Warez

[mcfiddish]

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

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

Re:The Economics Of Warez

[Ioldanach]

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

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

Physical theft is not the same as copyright infringement or trespass. The manufacturer's cost of creating the disk is indeed the cost of printing the cd and jewelbox. However, they also require compensation for what they created to put on the disk, independently of the disk itself. If I purchase a piece of software and hack it so I can run a backup copy when someone's kid breaks the original, that should be legal. That's covered under copyright fair use (barring DMCA, of course). If, however, I then give someone else a copy of my cd, I've just committed the crime of copyright infringement. Note that this crime has its own name, since it is separate and distinct from theft.

In your analogy above, you wouldn't have committed theft. You would've committed trespass. Multiple times, in fact. The first time through unauthorised access to their systems, and the rest by showing up to a class when you're not authorised by the property owner to be there. The first case of trespass, of course, might be debatable in this form, but I'd say it is an accurate description.

Do DOD convictions show DMCA et. al. uneeded?

[WECoyoteSooperGenius]

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"?

Put on a white hat?

[HisMother]

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?

Copyright this!

[Foofoobar]

Ok, here is my question: Congress is considering making hacking punishable by life imprisonment, you are getting time that is equivalent to a rapist (as another poster commented).

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?

"The Bust", WarGames or Matrix?

[msheppard]

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@

Re:Was it worth it?

[Jester99]

I call logical fallacy on you. Shame, shame.

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

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

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

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

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

Why?

[MrEfficient]

What's the attraction of "pirating" software, especially with so much Free Software available? By illegally copying proprietary software, in a way you're actually supporting the companies that end up burning you (having you arrested and put in jail). What I mean by "supporting" is that the more people using proprietary software, legally or illegally, means less people using Free Software. Why not pour your time and effort into software which you won't get arrested for using?

average guy?

[dextr0us]

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?

What was the prosecution like?

[Irvu]

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?"

Was there a feeling that DoD was to big?

[crunnluadh]

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?

Were you offered a deal?

[dmuth]

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?

Re:Were you offered a deal?

[Rader]

I'd like to follow up on that question as: Did anyone take a deal and cough up information on you??

I'm guessing that since you got the most time, you were the one they were after. (as the grand prize)

Feelings?

[Sebastopol]

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.

Stealing?

[bellings]

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?

Who does the programming?

[Trepidity]

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?

Highlights

[Savatte]

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?

What kind of time?

[xtremex]

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

Re:Do you wish you'd raped someone instead

[glesga_kiss]

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

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

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

What is your opinion of free software ?

[Billly Gates]

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?

Fair

[geekoid]

Was it a fair trial?
why or why not?

If it wasn't about the money, what was it about?

[wackybrit]

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?

Re:Do you wish you'd raped someone instead

[ceswiedler]

According to the Bureau of Justice statistics (Federal), the average sentence for rape is 117 months, serving an average of 65 months. The stats are below. The first number is the average sentence in months, the second is the average time actually served in months. The average percent of time served for all violent crime (all this document covers) is 48%. Therefore I would guess he will be released (on parole) within 16 months or so.


Homicide 149/71
Rape 117/65
Kidnaping 104/52
Robbery 95/44
Sexual assault 72/35
Assault 61/29

Friends.

[Rayonic]

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.

questions from a fellow cracker

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Swapping things with your inmates

[Subcarrier]

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?

Rise of P2P?

[Rayonic]

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?

What is MIT doing to you?

[Nelson]

I'll also ask the same question as everybody else. Why? Let me qualify that, you're clearly a sharp guy being at MIT and all. We're definitely beyond the "economic argument" becuase you were wholesale stealing far more software than you could possibly use. It's kind of a bs argument anyways. Is there some philosophy under it? Do you try to convince yourself that there is? Do you even think you did something wrong?

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?

Prove me wrong.

[_xeno_]

I want you to explain if you disagree with the following and if so, why.

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.

Decide your fate:

[dr_dank]

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)

Re:Do you wish you'd raped someone instead

[ftobin]

The only law being broken is copyright violations. Copyright violations are not theft of service.

Once you realize that copyright is artifical chains that the public places on itself for a certain goal, and not a 'right' of authors, then you'll realize that the morals aren't quite so clear cut. Industry's reframing of the copyright debate from "quid pro quo" to "we must have absolute protection" has caused the issue to become twisted and unrecognizable from what the foundations of the US were built on.

Furthermore, the copyright law as it has been implemented is clearly not in line with the generic arguments for it. Copyright has been modified several times over the last century, each time designed solely to protect the industries solely at Congress's bargaining table and to lock out up-and-coming industries, as well as the public. This has caused the US implementation of the law to become quite sick.

Learn your copyright history. I recommend reading Jessica Litman's "Digital Copyright".

Plans for your stay?

[zbuffered]

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.

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

[clary]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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