Slashdot Mirror
Inside the Shadow Internet
Paladin144 writes "Wired has a report about the mysterious 'pirate networks' that obtain new movies, music & games before they are released and spread them throughout the net. It's not as simple as putting a movie on LimeWire. These people are highly organized and very paranoid about secrecy. They maintain a hidden network of top-level FTP sites that get the best files first and allow them to trickle down the pyramid and into many a slashdotter's sweaty little fingers."
Well, that's a great way to portray yourself to the world. Yep, sounds like Linux users are a bunch sweaty, movie-stealing, game-theiving copyright-infriging hairly smelly hippies.
Nothing like reinforcing a stereotype on a Saturday night.
Without the threat of piracy, its a good bet that CD's and DVD prices would be 50-100% higher than they are today.
If economics and history teach us anything, its that producers of any product, whether its widgets or music, or movies, will raise the price as high as they can in the absence of any competition.
Since Government sponsered "Intellectual Property" is a defacto monopoly supported by the government, the only relief we have is to just grab the stuff if they charge too much.
"elite IRC channel"
Shut the fuck up.
" so many problems for our friends at Valve"
Valve is a business. They're not your pal, they're not your relative, they're not the cool people next door.
They're a business that is out to make money. Never forget that about any company. Even Apple.
.. not 'shadow internet'.
Virtual Private Network.
The oh-so subtle difference between positions (shadow internet vs. VPN) is that if someone does a google for VPN, they'll realize just how damn easy it is.
"Shadow Internet"-way just sounds comic-book super-hero, and as we all know thats as literary as most peoples thoughts go, it won't be obvious that 'any joe can build their own private and secret Internet on top of the Internet'.
(Not just 'elite techno-psycho-fascist' types hell-bent on destroying 'systems'. *Anyone*.)
Obscure, eh?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Don't make me laugh. Anyone who belives for a moment that geeks racing each other to crack warez are going to defend their 'turf' with contracts against journalists is a fool.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Menace to society, indeed. Maybe they'd do better to pick up programming and write free software rather than cracking someone else's, but I think you've hit the nail on the head; it's not even about the software or movies or music being pirated, in my opinion, when one gets in to the degree these folks have. They get nothing out of what they do but they get nailed harder than spammers or spyware purveyors.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
And by that I mean AGE old struggle.
Every pirate eventually hits puberty, discovers girls, and suddenly has better things to do then rip off "da man". Just like almost all those hippies are now lawyers.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
That, actually holds true in this day and age.
Usually the time to when the law would catch wind of something like this and act would be like, a couple of months, maybe three. These days... ehhhhhhhh, more like 2-4 weeks, tops!
The ack-acks have the law enforcement groups running their donut-encrusted behinds off on on things like these, so the best way to let others know, is not to be hasty about it.
Swelled egos + big mouths = big trouble down the road.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
With what's left of P2P from the glory days, what do you expect from a bunch of ppl not wanting to get sued.
This was brought to you buy the Department of Redundancy Department
While these are the same people that were involved with the Valve incident, they are also the people who actually began distributing movies/music/etc and made BitTorrent and other P2P so popular. Peer-to-Peer has always been a good idea, but it could have been another decade before it saw widespread adoption if not for these groups.
In many ways, these people are also responsible for there being a fight against the **AA in the first place. If they hadn't made piracy such an issue, laws would have continued to have been passed behind our backs.
This isn't to say they don't do harm, or that aren't many people fighting the good fight legally.
The first rule of referencing Fight Club is to NOT reference Fight Club. The second rule of referencing Fight Club is to NOT reference Fight Club.
The real truth of the matter, as the article also reveals, is that these people don't *care* that they caused so many problems for Valve or any other company. They also don't care about breaking media monopolies, changing distribution paradigms, and only just barely care about possessing and using the media and programs they pirate. It's all about getting attention and respect, and being online lets them reduce the chance of getting caught and ignore any side effects their "races" cause.
Am I the only one here old enough to remember Bulletin Boards and the 0-day-warez BBS's that cracked C=64 games on the day they were released?
In those days you had to be ElYte! to download at 1200 baud and you had the famous upload/download ratios.
And their system was usually even more secure and secret than what these so-called hackers have now -- usually because you had to know the sysop personally to get on those BBS systems.
However, if you were a decent social engineer, or just a decent chatter, you could usually talk you way into those places.
So really, what is the difference between now and then? The downloads are larger, the bandwidth is higher, the networks are more connected, but that's about it. It's basically the same stuff that been going on since the mid-80's and even before that (when people copied paper tape).
Why does "Wired" have to play it up like it's some cool new thing? Because piracy now is mainstream, and everyone wants to get into the action?
It's only a matter of time before we have a reality-TV show about this kind of lifestyle. But what the real dummies don't understand is that this is the same culture that has existed for decades.
How lame.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
What's the motivation? Is is just self-importance?
Reading this article kinda made me feel sick, as if all these people were so addicted to all these horrible hollywood releases (Hellboy?!) and RIAA crap, they were compelled to share it like tape traders of old.
Seems like a huge waste of time and talent to bust your butt and possibly face jail time for the new Good Charlotte or Linkin Park.
I'm hoping the scene does this "because its there and it can be done" for this 99% or so terrible content. But the piece on the people making a "Netflicks content" server implies otherwise.
I'll choose mine.
Businesses may have a primary aim of making money but they are made of people too and those people do have an effect on how a company behaves, especially in smallish companies. There's no harm in supporting and appreciating a good company. At the very least it gives them some encouragement them to keep being good.
I don't know much about Valve and I've never played one of their games but they look like people trying hard to produce good software. There's no shame in liking that.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Do you refer to disc space as "memory"? Faker.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Elder statesman? He sounds like a poseur or wannabe that might have known someone who might have sortof known of someone else that was a courier for one of the second rate cracker networks who distributed their warez to ftp sites, newsgroups and other BBSs in their network.
It's somehow strangely comforting to know that not much has changed since I ran a dial-up BBS as well as the fact that Wired is still doing retreads of old news.
Thus spake the SysGoddess
Criminals stick up convenience stores. These people are more like the mafia, what they do is illegal but they do have some class.
Wow. I agree with Jericho4.0. Kids. And fairly stupid kids at that, several steps below your average script kiddie.
For some reason I'm very strongly reminded of this line :-).
Some of the bits from the article were pretty revealing too - one of the group members who was failing a CS degree because he never went to lectures and never studied (too busy "ripping and burning"). I'm guessing he didn't do the exams either :).
And of course, who could forget that very scary and extremely serious and realistic </sarcasm> threat to the author of the article: "You do not need some 350-pound hit man with a Glock at your front door." Someone's been living a bit too much in movie fantasy-land, methinks.
Did anyone else's bullshit detector get pegged by this?...
...Specificly, the "almost a year of reprogramming" part.
It seems that when people hear that the HL2 code was "stolen", they interpret that in the literal sense. It was "taken" from Valve so they had to "reprogram" it because they didn't have it anymore. This bogon seems to appear even among people who should know better (like Wired reporters).
I guess Orwell was right: Control language, control thought.
Imagine how productive OSS developers would be if they didn't "give away" all of their source code with every new version.
I never realized how sad and pathetic the warez scene really is. A bunch of kids with only goal in their lives: to release warez! The saying "get a life" really takes on a new meaning. Hopefully, they'll all go to prison.
...because it's not about a book, it's about whether you care enough about her to go get that book.
And to think, it only took 19 years of marriage for me to learn this.
That letter is what anybody would get who is caught sharing copyrighted material over a P2P network. There is nothing to see here folks. Move along.
The mafia beats the shit out of the convenience store owner if he doesn't buy his stock through their distributors.
Time to shuck off some romantic notions, guy.
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
... Doing a "user graph" like you say could be done, but it wouldn't be that easy. Think of how much data is going through the Mayes, or other major "junctions" of the Internet (big "I"). Granted every individual packer will have a source and a destination address, but the sheer number of packets going through these routers makes it difficult to do such large statistical analysis. That's not to say its impossible, just rather difficult.
Not to mention the legality of doing something like that. Courts don't issue search warrants for fishing expiditions, and although the government may be able to get into a Maye without a warrant, when two private ISPs meet up, they might not want to let them in.
And you can say Carnivoure all you like, but it looks for specific things and logs them. It examines everything and discards all but a small portion. Thats very different that keeping a small record of everything.
Encrpytion also makes any scrutiny irrelevant. Not to mention that most people want a privacy policy saying that not everything they do on line will be observed by Big Brother.
It's possible, but if it were simple, the Feds would be doing it.
CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
I have no romatic notions; however I think there is a difference between people who pull guns on people and use only violence to commit "dumb" crimes and those who scheme a little and have some sophistication to them. It's the difference between a carjacker/joyrider and a professional auto thief. If you think their's no difference it is you who are disillusioned.
"...Specificly, the "almost a year of reprogramming" part."
Depends on what was "reprogrammed"? Maybe since piracy effectively reduced the value of the product to zero. They spent a year putting value back into the product.
"Imagine how productive OSS developers would be if they didn't "give away" all of their source code with every new version."
OSS developers aren't a business, and aren't constrained by it's precepts.
If you're not one of them how the hell would you know what their social lives are like?
That's not entirely true. It might be different now, as I've lost touch somewhat with the goings on of the "underworld" but it wasn't like that in the old days.
I know a lot of guys who were big in the amiga scene some ten to fifteen years ago, and they all have pretty well-functioning social lives. One of them now works for a major computer game developer, others are completing various educations (and not necessarily comp.sci).
There is a vast gulf between disagreeing with how copyright is being used by big business, and disagreeing with the fundamental premise of copyright.
Whether they know it or not, the vast majority of folks here on Slashdot would not object to copyright if it embodied the original ideals under which it was created, rather than the bastard system we have now that big companies hide behind to line their pockets at the expense of the true innovators.
I don't see that as being hypocritical.
Robin Hood didn't take from the rich and give to the poor; he took from the tax collectors and gave to the taxed.
Now, it turns out that most of the taxed were poor and most of the tax collectors were rich (or those working for the rich), but Robin Hood did not steal from, say, merchants and traders, who were better-off than average, nor did he give to beggars, who were worse-off than average.
Robin Hood should be romanticized because he fought against unfair taxation, not because of the rich-to-poor myth.
(Also, when he finally (re)gained his earlship, it wouldn't surprise me if his moral outlook changed and he engaged in some taxation himself.)
Note that the actions of these "pirates" and their cheerleaders has actually caused unfair taxation in places like Canada and Germany, in the form of tariffs on CDR media, computers, etc.
They should not be applauded.
Please do not take the above as an endorsement of the RIAA and MPAA and their non-American equivalents, who have engaged in some very scummy, immoral, sleazy, unethical, slimy activities.
Deciding who to root for in this conflict is like trying to decide who to root for in a conflict between the KKK and the Black Panthers in the 1960s and 1970s, or between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s, or between Bush and Gore/Kerry in the 2000s, or between the Israeli Defense Force and the PLO at the current time, etc.
Oh, one final thing: the copyright violators do not "take [steal] from the rich and give to the poor"; they steal from rich (??AA executives and lawyers, movie and record studios, A-list actors and musicians, etc.) and poor (non-A-list actors and musicians, extras, grips, concession stand operators, roadies, grunts who work in your local record store/DVD rental place/movie theater, etc.) alike, and give to all, rich or poor (but not too poor to be able to afford computers), who are willing to compromise their integrities by downloading copyrighted material to which they are not entitled.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Clearly you don't see the danger in DC++, which is the same danger as torrents, Kazaa, or almost any other P2P network. DC++ broadcasts your IP address just like everything else. There's no way to completely hide who you are. There is always going to be at least one other person/site who knows your real IP address...and anyone who is high enough on this "dark pyramid" is going to be watched, and eventually caught.
The best way to get free stuff is to stay at the bottom (or at least mid way down) where you blend in with the other 1/2 million users. They won't be watching you as much, and you only have to wait a couple of days extra before getting the goods.
With the MPAA and the RIAA on the rampage, it won't be long and they will know most of the top sites. Rather than chop the head off of the beast, they should just get the distro FTP sites one level lower down, which should be easy once they have the topsites. Taking out the topsites is pretty pointless, those people have enough resources to rebuild and start over somewhere else...the people below them probably do not. And once there is no lower level to puch stuff to, the topsites won't matter.
There is no doubt distributing material which you do not have the rights to do is theft. This is wrong and illegal behavior. But like prohibition, when enough people do it the only answer is to make it legal to do it, but the key is to profit and control it. Liquor stores and distilleries now pay taxes. And in most US states (but not Kanada) it is legal to distil for personal use. The rum runners and gangsters, even the Kennedy's went legit. So why does the industry not allow us to download movies in an open format that works on Linux, OS X and Windows? Perhaps sign our name into the copy on download and allow us to download it for the cost of a DVD rental and allow coping to a PC or video player as needed providing it is for your own use? And do it so the customers like it. Hey, this maybe good for another useless patent? RIAA and MPAA SS tactics only cost money and keep lawyers and macavellian types happy but is doomed to fail because it does not address the social causes of the issue. And they are not always right. If they detect a lot of VPN traffic from my system and I copying as video or uploading a Linux or Solaris ISO images? But the whole industry needs to look at why people are doing this and adapt their marketing model to suit. Might I suggest plain old ISO DVD images or MPEG for download? You could have an image and stego the licensee into it and in years to come players could display the "Licensed to John W Smith... report violations to 1-800-123-MPAA". I sure would not let my images get out as I could loose my download privileges. Make it attractive. I hate going to Blockbuster when it is -29 degrees Celsius and snowing to return videos or eat late fees. My bet is if I could download first run movies for $5.00 and get older ones for $1.50 to $2.50 then I would call it my movie source of choice. It would also be worth $12 to download a season of Star Trek. Keep in mind, SBC and others make money at nicles but billions in the bank as so many us it. Change the business model
I also love the quote: Valve stood helplessly by watching its big Christmas blockbuster turn into a lump of coal
Ease up on the melodrama man, Valve is doing JUST FINE.
As Stallman (Free Software, Free Society; pp. 190-191) said, calling it piracy implies that unauthorized copying is tantamount to armed robbery, kidnap, and murder on the high seas. They both involve theft of a sort -- but are vastly different. Copyright infringement generally involves cheating someone out of their rightful royalties; piracy involves depriving sailors and their employers of life, liberty, or property (maybe all three!) without due process of law. I'd say that copyright infringement is not morally tantamount to this.
Somehow I doubt that was the toplevel site. Those used encryption and were "super secret." If the MPAA got in there, somehow I doubt it fit those categories. That is like them dishing out the files from insiders and then their buddies busting you. Does not make logic sense to be a top-site that you got busted from... IRC is not very secret though compared to other concievable methods.
_
Free 27" Sony WEGA TV
"The truth of the matter, as the article reveals, is that it's people like these that caused so many problems for our friends at Valve and are responsible for most of the other irritating leaks of software. "
Too bad Valve is punishing you for it.
Did anyone read the article?
Think about how they are slanting things; the article gives the impression that the vast majority of new material is being initially provided by these shadow networks.
Back in the day when I was dodging sundevils (a cookie if you get the reference), that was essentially true.
In the current picture, it's a vast overstatement; yes, there are "elite top level" groups, but they are mainly kiddies; the majority of app and game files circulating on the 'net are either done by 1 person who figured out the crack from standard deprotection tools, or from the established cracking houses like paradox, class, etc.
The wording and, um, flavor? of the article is to create a scary thing on the internet that even the relatively well informed have heard of remotely or even been a peripheral member of, much the same way the Bush administration manufactured links between 911 and Iraq, and for essentially the same reason.
It IS obvious right? if you stop and think about it? This is just a step down the path of making us accept fewer online freedoms, as a necessary aspect of the war on cyber-terrorism.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
"Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth's biosphere to return to good health."
Nowhere on their website do I seem to be able to find a reason why the good health of the biosphere is both mutually exclusive with and more important than the continued survival of even a reduced-population human race.
+++ATH0
They are, indeed, the closest thing we have to romantic pirates. They also purchase the majority of the software they crack and distribute, ironically. They do this as a philosophical movement, and do not believe in copyright law or IP law.
And I'm supposed to admire them for that? Would they mind if I broke into their house, stole their computer, and left a note saying I didn't believe in private property?
So, for all you Slashdot readers who have partaken in the middle of this operation (i.e., a "distributor") or higher (not just a downloader), how much money did you actually make in it?
The point being, the spammers, the junkmailers, etc., even though they are really just human cockroaches, ultimately make fist fulls of $$$ from their petty little endeavors. $$$ means that one or more of them might have enough sense in their heads to hire competent lawyers.
Competent lawyers means that it is not a trivial effort for the FBI, Dept. of Justice, etc. to try and per...er, prosecute them, because it will cost THEM too much time and energy for very little PR value, and certainly NO support for them (or their political...leash holders) when the next election cycle is around.
So they go after these networks.
Not only do they sound much better than "a spamlord was busted in suburban Detroit yesterday for allegedly sending out 1 beeleeon spam messages per month. Meanwhile, he's out on his own personal recognizance awaiting arraignment" vs "a secret cabal of movie pirates was busted yesterday by a huge interagency, multi-state task force that has worked for over 3 years to crack into, gain and ultimately betray the trust of those involved. Spec. Agent Murphy says, 'well, these activities only lead to bigger and far more nefarious criminal elements acting in our borders, not only against you and me, but other counterfeiting operations, etc. We hope their testimonly will allow us to catch the really big fish.' Meanwhile, bail on the 17 accused has been set from between $500,000 and $1,000,000 each."
Ooo, these must be REALLY BAD BASTARDS if they have bail like that!
No, these nets are just sexier targets than the spammongers, not only because they sound much better in a soundbite, but the perps tend to not have a bunch of money burning a hole in their parents' pockets to hire a good, agressive defense lawyer or to have made prudent past political contributions.
Only and until AOL, Microsoft, and several of the other ISPs in the US decide that the loss of customer good will these simps cause everyone, and the additional work of their corporate customers, and fund these kinds of raids ala the MPAA/RIAA, then it just won't happen.
But we've seen at least what AhOL is doing now, really, just marketing noise. AOL I think still makes too much money for selling subscriber lists to really make an effective "this shit is going to stop NOW" stand.
The other part of it is that some of the people in the neo-money set have also figured out various semi- or quasi-legal schemes that make them lots of money, and combined with whatever other zealous drives or needs they have, makes them a bit more politically connected, compared to your typical working stiff. They protect their own, because if the spamschmucks go down, they could be smoked out too. The only difference between the spammer and the successful timeshare or RV salesman is really the job title (oh, and maybe the house, and car and multiple T1 connections in the house, and...).
I suppose you could fit a lot of small and family-owned businesses in there as well (taking wholesale goods from the store/shop/market for use at home is probably a common one. it's not a big deal if it's a few rolls of bumwad, Sticky-Notes and stuff like that or those cheap-ass Papermate Stic-pens. But using the company, and other peoples' jobs as collateral for personal/family loans probably should be a big deal)...
Also, when a "legitimate" group like the RIAA/MPAA feels it has to stoop to using spyware and other things to help "fight" that which it has deemed the Ultimate Doom and Evil (P2P), well...
WWJD? No, the wristband to have in 2005 is "LWSHTJ - Look What Still Happened To Jesus!"
I think that "The Matrix" was one of those movies that everybody had weeks before it came out. You probably had the screener (work print?) that was missing music in the club scene where Neo goes to meet Trinity for the first time.
From what I'm seeing right now, the time premium you get by getting a direct FTP hookup vs BT is maybe a few hours. The top BT sites will have most everything online ASAP, it's not really worth it to hang out with warez losers just to get stuff a bit earlier anymore.
A few examples:
I think the writer desprarately tried to write something interesting and almost failed. Then he spiced it up so badly that it seems a pale shadow aof reality. He should have kept writing about desalination.
You are sadly mistaken. I used to be a courier for a pirate group (primarily software) back in 97. I met some interesting people in college, became friends, and they let me in on it. Between us, we had over 400GB of MP3's on backup tapes, and almost another terabyte of software.
That is, until the FBI came and confiscated it all. But, in 97, all they did was scare you and slap you on the wrist for it. None of us got in any trouble. Needless to say, the stuff was around in 97 in massive quantities, you just needed to know the right people.
Your analogy is off, too. You're thinking in terms of the medium itself as the final product, and thus "building your own" means burning a CD or DVD yourself, rather than buying one from the store. However, the medium is just the distribution mechanism. The software/movie/music on the media is the final product, and you're not "building your own". Nobody's stopping you from writing your own software, recording your own music, or filming your own movie, and if you were to do any of the above it would not be illegal. Taking somebody else's software/music/movie and burning your own CD/DVD is absolutely not the same thing.
Don't buy the product if you don't want to give your money to the "media cartels", but that doesn't mean you can still use their product. There's no right to "free music" or "free software" or "free movies". The "media cartels" aren't selling you something that should be intrinsically free. They're selling a product, that you may or may not buy. If you want to "stick it to the man", then boycott their product entirely. By pirating their product, you're not really making any statement at all.
Intellectual property is still a relatively new concept in the grand scheme of things, especially since only recently (the past few decades, since the tape recorder and VCR) can you easily "steal" the product without "harming" someone else. However, that doesn't mean that intellectual property is invalid. The old distribution methods cannot keep up, and new methods are only now coming into play (iTunes and the proliferation of online music stores, direct-sale platforms like Steam, streaming movie services). It's fine to get pissed that the *AAs are trying to keep everyone stuck in the past, tied to a dieing industry, but "stealing" their product because they won't embrace new technology is not the way to combat them. Artists still need to feed their families, too, you know (yes, I know, artists get paid crap by the *AAs, but crap is still better than nothing when it comes to putting food on the table).
Hmmm, if by "had all the good movies" means shitty grainy CAM AVI's that in no way equal the experience of viewing the movie in theatres, then sure.
Sure, you can go right ahead and have a molecular copy of my computer, but don't litter!
Oh, and if you need support for your new computer, or you need a custom mod, don't hesitate to call; these value-added unique services are valuable by virtue of being actually-scarce in nature vs artificially-scarce under draconian life+75 copyright law.
Power to the Peaceful
Note that the actions of these "pirates" and their cheerleaders has actually caused unfair taxation in places like Canada and Germany, in the form of tariffs on CDR media, computers, etc. They should not be applauded.
I'm always annoyed to read things like this. The only people who caused unfair taxation are the lunkheads who actually passed the taxes into laws. They're the ones who should get 100% of the blame.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Did not cause unfair taxation in Canada. CRIA or SOCAN did.
Secondly, with what justification do you feel you are entitled to anything, specifically music on optical media you have purchased?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
* Re:Well.. (Score:4, Insightful)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 01, @11:16PM (#11236376)
"elite IRC channel"
Shut the fuck up.*
how the fuck is this insightful?
that's exactly what these "undercover networks" that wired refers to are... circles of people that mostly know each other through irc - with several 'inside' people who run almost the whole show co-operating with suppliers and others.
though, they're not that hard to get in to bust as you might think - just tempt them with insane amounts of bandwith or other perks... there's just so many of those that most never get busted before the guys running them just get bored and "get a life".
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
From the article:
Does Slashdot really need to publish rubbish like this ? The whole article reads like the writer had infiltrated the Mafia (oh, sorry: "criminal conspiracy"), when in reality he simply interviewed some copyright infringers.
For those who can't tell the difference between real criminal conspiracies and copyright infringers:
Please note: I am not protesting the information content of the story. It actually had some interesting parts, like the joyrney of new files into consumers. However, I must protest the writer calling the warez people a "criminal conspiracy" simply to try to give the impression that he was infiltrating a real criminal gang.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I'd be surprised if they didn't use their own client/server software programs, along with their own protocols, to (re)distribute their software across the 'net and things like BitTorrent, Kazaa, http, ftp were left to be used by those along the bottom most rungs.
At least in times gone past, I've used other software specifically written for pirating software on the 'net and I can't see why it wouldn't still be used today, except enhanced with encryption (of course.) That way it isn't susceptible to accidental discovery by someone who hacks a ftp/http server with the latest sploit posted to bugtraq.
Back in the early to mid 90s, when archie still worked, it was easy to find unprotected ftp pirate material if you knew the right kind of strings to search for. Sigh, I miss archie. Web search engines aren't a (and don't look likely to be) replacement for it.
"In reality, the number of files on the Net ripped from store-bought CDs, DVDs, and videogames is statistically negligible. People don't share what they buy; they share what is already being shared - the countless descendants of a single "Adam and Eve" file. Even this is probably stolen; pirates have infiltrated the entertainment industry and usually obtain and rip content long before the public ever has a chance to buy it."
Assuming that this statement is true, then the RIAA and NARAS have got the whole thing backwards. While they devote prosecution dollars to individual users, the real players in the industry are playing behind a curtain.
Without question, the RIAA suits are then like the DEA going after individual users instead of focusing all efforts on those who are doing the real dirty work.
So, the big question- do these shadowy corners actually help or hurt the film/software industries?
When I needed to get to software before release, I had an insider who knew just where to go. Major magazines can get material before it is released through the same illegitimate channels that the pirates use. And, it's better for the industry for the pundits to have the stuff in hand before release- do you think that those industry "just released" articles on releases just materialize out of thin air? No sparky. There are others who snoop with impunity.
Oh, and there is not a problem getting films before their release. It's an easy scoop for a reporter.
befuddled (noun) 1. Unable to create a pithy sig
anyone who is high enough on this "dark pyramid" is going to be watched, and eventually caught.
I suspect the opposite is true.
Lets take a perfectly-organized hiearchy example: Each person on the pyramid gives their files to exactly 10 people below them. The person at the top got there because they have contacts, and the 10 people below that person are best buds and know what they're doing (encryption, etc). Now, 4 or 5 levels down the pyramid, you've got one guy who's just there because someone on IRC told him about the scheme, and he's running his encrypted client. And chatting on IRC about the latest releases to trickle down to him. And running kazaa to see what else he can get. Oops.
The MPAA shows up, kicks in his door and seizes his computer. They find the pyramid client and note the IP address it last connected to. Nobody notices this guy disappear. Repeat up the pyramid until they get close enough to the top that someone notices the disappearance and the group dissolves, and the trail ends (assuming whoever they got last is unwilling to point fingers to continue the witch hunt).
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
> What's with the very young kids sharing files?
It is simply a question of economics.
These young kids have computers, or access to computers, and a whole lot of time.
Unlike adults with paying jobs and disposable income, these kids have the motivation to enter the piracy scene: They want a game, a CD, or a movie, but they don't have the funds.
In time, that motivation become expertise.
"These young kids have computers, or access to computers, and a whole lot of time."
What's that about idle hands being the devil's plaything? Maybe the Amish (and others) are smarter than we think.
Unless the projection operator cares about the entire chain (maybe because they get a reasonable living out of it - there may be other ways, but that seems the easiest option) why not mandate that everyone who has the ability to leak your "crown jewels" is appropriately rewarded for that responsibility.
Otherwise, any leaks are all your own fault.
That doesn't excuse anyone for stealing the stuff, but it is a reason why it happens - get a month's wages for 2h work? Most people would go for that deal. It's human nature.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re