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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... I used to be apart of one of the pyramids, before I got caught.
I used to have access to the Distro section of an elite IRC channel, known across the net.
They would give movies to those few, who would then take them to the regular channel.
It's really crazy, and insanly hard to get in to, but you would get stuff very early.
Also, easier to get caught, as I found out.
The first rule of the shadow internet is, you do not talk about the shadow internet. ...
The second rule of the shadow internet is, you DO NOT talk about the shadow internet.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
spending hours and hours developing contacts so you can get a copy of a movie filmed from inside a theater.
yeah, that'll hurt the industry.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Back in the day, these sites were run on BBSs whose phone numbers were non-published and which only a few people had access to. These days it's FTP sites, but the principle is the same. And frequently it's not their own FTP sites, but someone else's site which isn't properly secured, but this happens more at the lower levels.
Anyway, the networks run the same as they always have. You're either in or you're out. And most people are out.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
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.
" 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. --
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.
This article, and whoever it was they interviewed... really has some of these guys pissed off. http://www.vcdquality.com/index.php?page=nfo&id=46 020
The article didn't mention The Brains - the crackers who break the copy protections for games/apps or The Carders - people who use stolen credit cards to purchase a valid serial # for games/apps. Insiders are pretty rare.
And what's with the glorification? It's pretty boring stuff, expect when two groups release the same thing just a few minutes apart. You mainly sit in front of IRC all day long. In the Western countries it may be about bragging rights and prestige. In Asia, these releases are big business for a lot of computer stores. You feed your ego, they feed their family. What a waste of time.
So the pirate the feds arrested, interrogated, and impounded in April, but didn't file charges yet against, is the Half-life guy. That narrows it down quite a bit.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
we read this the week before it was published.
Heh heh. I'm 33 and let me tell you a 'when-I-was-your-age' story... When I was your age, you weren't even born yet, me and some friends had two C64s and two Amiga 1000s set up in an apartment. Back then, you called long distance to the BBS of interest. We used all the phreaker tricks to get free phone calls. The phone company knows when you do this and when you exceed a certain amount of time, they come to get you. And they did. Heh heh. I wasn't there when it happened, I was the hardware guy. But anyways those were the days.
"These people are highly organized and very paranoid about secrecy."
That`s why they made Wired.
The individuals this article recognizes are more commmonly known as FXPer's. These are often legitimate and illegitimate FTP server operators.
l for explanation) stole the HL2 code, was a botnet coder. While botnets are designed primarily for three purposes: DDoSing, File Trading, and Spamming, they are not used for stealing source code. Instead, this is someone that acted of their own will to use a botnet to hide their identity when stealing the source. The source was also propagated via this method.
Ago, who reportedly (see http://www.livejournal.com/users/gravito/2197.htm
The FXPer's are actually an echelon higher than botnet herders. The FXPer's have nothing to do with stealing Half-Life 2's source code. 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.
A good deal of the FXPer's also contribute to open source and are active on Slashdot.
Hell, if I ever wanted to take out a hit on someone, I'd hire a midget with a knife. Nobody would expect that. Even if the victim gets warned, nobody would take it seriously. "Dude, look out for a midget with a knife!" "Riiiight."
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
A "friend" of mine spent some time doing mp3 trading through several forums for a few years before Napster came out. Basically, he joined a niche channel on EFnet and got to know the regulars. I talked with them too -- they were really nice actually. Within a few months, he was a channel operator, was constantly invited to the "big" channels, and had access to a terabyte of mp3's (in 1997!) through various ftp servers. It's kind of like buying drugs -- you have to know when you've met the right people. Being really funny helps, too.
After all, I am strangely colored.
The Shadow Internet is just like the real internet, except we all have goatees.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
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.
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.
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