Slashdot Mirror
The BSA Going After IRC Warez Channels
Nova The BSA is
cracking down on the IRC warez channels. I tend to think that its sorta like a game of wac a mole, you squish one channel, and another will pop up. But then again, I'm not selling any software (or for that matter, pirating any).
But why, that is the question.
don't get too worked up about this: it's just a wheeze to get into the papers..."Evil Internet Ruins Business" "Pirates use bit of internet also used by paedophiles - shoot them both"
that sort of thing
quite clever in a pandering-to-clueless-journos sort of way
I think the Boy Scouts of America should stick to tying knots.
*cough* How long until somebody gets clued and realizes that since there's no way to prevent information from travelling between countries (and hence have different laws!) on the 'net? These aren't physical packages, and you there isn't a single point of control.
Sounds like another 'war' on something. The war on drugs, war on crime, war on... ever noticed that every time politicians declare war another one of your rights slip away? Wierd. Why don't they just call it what it is - the war on privacy, the war on human rights....
--
Stupid Boy Scouts shouldn't be getting into this anyways ;p
I'm from the government, I'm here to help you.
Of course I'll respect you if you sleep with me on our first date.
Microsoft is an innovator.
Har, matey!
Why worry about US piracy.. Go worry about china and their CD houses.
Keep'n it Real,
-Malachi
"Life is all about strategy, mathematics and psychological perceptiveness."
It would be soooo difficult to patrol even 10% of the warez channels. Besides that, many of the kiddies involved are not within their jurisdiction. I think they do this entirely for publicity, and as a lame scare tactic.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
..really well. After all, trafficing in warez completely stopped after "Rusty'n Edie's" BBS was busted in 1993.
-=Maggie Leber=-
Am I the only one who read this and thought "The Boy Scouts of America are monitoring this stuff now? Wow, things have changed a lot since I was in scouting." Of course, BSA could stand for Black Student Alliance too, that's what it called at Iowa State University, anyhow. Do I get bonus moderation points for posting this from the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport while I wait for my connecting flight to D.C.?
---
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
Try to enforce it.
They'll just move. And become even more antisocial and organized for it. Particularly against members of the BSA. Anyway, post the JP interview already. I'm bored.
Well, it's about time they realized that IRC is a huge median for pirating/trading, etc. It's too unfortunate though that are trying to crack down on chat rooms. Reading the article on the BSA cracking down, I guess they have already slapped some suits on a few members of the #warez4cable room. But even if they were to suceed and clear IRC of anything illegal, there are so many medians available. I bet they would go to trading via ICQ or some other IM. What cha all think about this? irc.jaxn.net
Software piracy on IRC is nothing new. I'm surprised it's taken them this long to start going after it. I don't think it'll be easy for them to go after the people who do it privately, or in +i channels.
However, if someone did "infiltrate" a channel, it would probably be rather simple for them to get more information on the people doing the transferring.
The problem with public offers is that anyone can see your ip, and easily contact your provider to get the account cut off. But there are an abundance of shell providers out there, so I don't see how they'll make even a small dent in the issue.
From what I've seen, there's a greater abundance of software on IRC freely available to the public, in public offers, than there is on most public FTP and Hotline sites.
Regardless, if this gains publicity and a few people go down, it'll get a little quieter and people won't send others software without being a bit more cautious. It's easy to say "no" to someone who comes in asking where all the "warez" are.
For those of you who read 1984, I would have to say this is humerously similar to the 'spies' that all the children were a member of, in which they would rat out their parents to the thoughtpolice. haha,
seriously tho, while piracy isnt good, and the script kiddies and warez d00dz and whatever other 'leet names they make up on IRC are easily some of the most irritating people in the world, what do the boyscouts have to do with this?
Rakshasa
Don't any of you read the link before you post? This BSA is the Business Software Alliance, not the Boy Scouts of America (also BSA).
-JeremyH
Actually, a lot of punishment in the legal system works the same way -- more as a deterrent to others than actual reformation of the "wrongdoer".
*Sigh*
I remember considering myself quite the little pirate back in the late 70's early 80's copying out my TRS-DOS and Apple games... trading them over 100's of floppies... :)) but I started to understand the harm I was doing to the programmers... I was cheating them out of recognition and $$$$
Then I started learning how to program and realized the ramifications of what I was doing, I felt like crap after a couple of my programs that were picked up by BYTE magazine and the like for some contests had the source listed on the magazine.. yeah I had a little recognition (not bad for a 7th grader to get a letter from Broderbund
Now Fast Forward to our Free-as-in-beer vs. free-as-in-speech software movement.
Granted I like picking up free stuff, and testing it out.. But now if I REALLY like something I'll go buy it. Case in point, I picked up half-life after borrowing a friends CD for a week to test it out.
Nothing is really going to crack down on piracy and warez on a full force level IMHO except a shift in how the end-users perceive themselves. Do they want to respect others, or just believe that they are getting a one-uppance on everyone else.
Now that I'm done rambling.... what's next?? going back to the days of the little cryptic disks (aka Bard's Tale III and AD&D games) that you had to match up the words and symbols or look up the nth word on the nth sentance on the nth paragraph on the nth page??????
OKOK -1 me allready I've rambled enough
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
This is probably off-topic... but this is one of the reasons I switched to Linux/opensource products. Why pirate when you can get GPL's software -- legal yet free products, which often is higher-quality than commercial equivalents? Before I knew about Linux and opensource, I was a frequent WaReZ visitor... (How else would a poor penniless student be able to afford the latest games and apps on windows?) Not anymore, because I've found better things. (ie. opensource software). IMNSHO warez channels are for those poor people oppressed by the "M$ regime" who have no choice but to pirate in order to survive. Let them see the beauty of opensource! :-)
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
After all, the porn buisnesses are the most profitable on the net, so they can't stop that (even though they've tried), so no-one's making money from pirating stuff, and as someone else said, it looks good in the papers, cos at least they're trying to do something about it, even if there's nothing they can do. Does anyone else remember the article on how Lusacarts lawyers chased pirate copies of TPM across the net and "that time was running out for pirates, cos there was nowhere they could hide"? Now that was a funny/clueless article. iain
I write software, and I make a living off selling my software. When I see someone pirate _any_ form of software, it makes my teeth cringe, knowing it's maybe my paycheck they're taking away.
And don't start saying 'Microsoft is plenty rich, I don't need to buy their software'. You forget about the economic roll when you say this. Think about the companies that make money from Microsoft: Printers, CD-ROM duplicators, software wholesalers, retailers, etc... They all lose money if you pirate software.
IRC Channels? There are so many warez servers out there, and most of them are run by kiddies who have no clue. If we start busting them, they'll be afraid. One less opportunity to obtain illegal software.
On the other hand, if I buy a car and that car crashes and does not perform as I expected it to, I will return the car to the dealer for a total refund. And if there is only one car dealer in the world and I have no choice but to buy their car, well, that's another story. Bottom line: some people pirate software because they don't have any choice but to use that software, but they feel they're being ripped off by paying hundreds of dollars for crap.
Seriously, if someone pirates commercial software and offers it for sale (or for free) on a public forum, it's hard to feel sorry for them if they get caught.
I'm also having trouble shedding any tears for those who buy or download warez. If you want to get unsupported, unmaintained, bug-ridden software for which you don't even have the source code to either fix or link to newer libraries, that's your business.
Given that the alternative is to download Open Source for free, have it maintained for free, have the source for free if you need it, and have all the features (and sometimes more) than those commercial closed-source warez packages, I think anyone who does that needs to check into the cost of white jackets, but that's just my opinion.
If you get caught with warez, when you could have been using an Open Source alternative for less and gained more, legally, what's to complain about? It was your choice. Nobody pointed a gun at you and said "You Must Pirate Office 2000!".
Yes, there are unusual cases (such as "Frontier: First Encounters" and "Elite"), where there are classic programs which simply don't exist on the commercial market any more, and for which no Open Source equivalent has ever been written. These I can understand, and I doubt any commercial vendor would chase up on these. If they did, they'd get a lot of ill-feeling from the people they depend upon for sales, without making a single cent more money.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I've already seen several of the inevitable "Well, the warezers will move somewhere else" posts. Yes they will, but that's not the point.
The point is that if even half of the 25 lawsuits that have been filed come out in favour of the software industry, it will not only frighten a few people away from piracy, but it will also set some legal precedent.
I've been on IRC for six years now. IRC is rife with piracy. I'm glad that someone is trying to do something about it. I bet there will be several posts complaining about this; complaining against the software companies. Why? I don't know. I can't figure out why people, several of whom write software for a living, would want piracy to continue...
- Drew
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
The BSA knows as well as you and I that cracking down on 1337 w4R3z h4X0r5 in IRC channels will do nothing whatsoever to combat the "problem" of software piracy. At best, raking IRC chanels will net you a few 12 year olds trading copies of software they'll never use like baseball cards.
The real "threat" to the BSA in terms of lost revenue is organized, commercial piracy, and they know it damn well. Even if you somehow counted up all the Hotline and IRC transfers of pirated software, you'd come nowhere near the supposed billions in revenue they "lose" every year.
What the BSA is doing is playing the Public Relations game. This is all a big, flashy show intended to attract a lot of attention and give us all warm fuzzy feelings about them combatting software piracy. At the same time, this is intended to distract us from the real issue: they're powerless to actually do anything about it.
Large scale pirates duplicate and re-package software en-masse, and sell it. This is what the BSA should be worried about. This is also very hard to track, and even harder to prosecute because (to my understanding) it occurs primarily in other countries.
Busting script kiddies trading video games on IRC and claiming this will help stop piracy is like busting a stoner for posession of a dime bag and and claiming this will stop the flow of illegal drugs into the country. It just makes no sense.
Anthony
^X^X
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
Information cant be kept locked from the general public's eyes.
Megalocorps can't keep charging huge amounts of money for each and every game.
Someone will always find a way to get what he wants for free and then a way to disturbute it.
Combine all of this and you can see how pointless and stupid the BSA persuit of dangerous "pirates" is.
(common IRC quote:
"Captain> Arrraghhh Mates, lets crack this here Windows 2000....
Scoutee> HO NO!!! It's the dreadful BSA! ABANDON SHIP! ABANDON SHIP!
Captain> NOOOOO! My life's work is ruined! Quick, we must return to port!"
[I can go on and on...])
To the fool, he who speaks wisdom will sound foolish. ---Euripides
And they're *just now* getting around to the IRC channels?
Sounds like a PR move. And really bad reflexes.
"Anyone who thinks that they can hide behind the anonymity of the Internet to commit copyright infringement had better know that the law gives them no quarter," continued Kruger.
Surely if you're hidden by the anonymity of the Internet, the law doesn't know who you are, so it gives them lots of quarters.
I guess he meant to say "partial anonymity", but then it's not very hard to have total anonymity if you really tried.
IRC does indeed have useful software for trade, etc, but how many IRC servers are there? They're going to go after ATT/Undernet? OK. Then there's Dalnet #movie-central. Each transaction on that channel is a $10,000 fine. OK, then there's EFnet... there is just WAY too much to do anything. My roommate's an ircOP and he pirates software like there's no tomorrow. I know people that have not paid for software in years, and that don't intend to start now. They're not scared. At most, they're amused. Long Live Silent Bob and 901United ~zero
sig?
This will have no effect on piracy overall. But I expect to read about a bunch of students losing their computer equipment, getting kicked out of school in some cases, and that kind of thing. In some cases they may not even be guilty.
It's not that I condone piracy. I just hate the fact that the BSA is probably going to come down hardest on the people doing the least damage and would have a bright future otherwise. But the BSA has to justify it's existence in one way or another if they want to continue siphoning their "share" from the technology boom.
If they bust kiddies that are just being kiddies, the punishment should fit the crime. A small fine, maybe some community service. Not hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. Save that for the big bad pirates are totally devastating the software industry.
numb
--
Let's talk about game piracy. I apologize in advance to all the game programmers out there whom may be offended by this rambling comment.
:-)
I'm sorry, but I just don't see how "Warez" can hurt a companies bottom line by that damn much.
Let's say you publish a game that's not pirated.
Figure how many units you sell. Now, add the fact that your game is pirated. How many less units do you sell? My answer: not that damn many less, probably more.
Your game is more popular, reaching a wider audience (warez d00dz have friends too) who may possibly buy the game. But, even if they don't buy the game, if they'd never been exposed to it, they sure as hell wouldn't have bought it previously.
In other words, the only time you lose money from a pirated game is when a person who would have been a buyer does not buy.
Of course, in reality there's no way to measure that. So, instead, they estimate total copies of the game and say,"Hey! All those people would have bought it if it wasn't pirated! No fair," even when this is clearly bunk.
I have pirated many many games. There is not one that I kept that I wouldn't have bought. I bought Quake. I didn't buy Q2 (i didn't like it, so deleted it). I would NEVER buy a game without first pirating it and playing it for a week. Because all too often you play a game for a day and a half, realize it's total crap, and delete it. At least you're not out 50 bucks this way, eh?
Yes, game companies deserve money for their work. No, they do not deserve my money if I'm going to delete the game in 2 days. If I don't play, I won't pay. Plain and simple.
I bought Warcraft. I bought Starcraft. I bought Quake1. I'll probably buy Quake3, but I'll damn well pirate the whole game first, just to be sure I'm not getting ripped off.
Now I admit, many people who might otherwise buy the game won't, because they get the pirated version. But not as many as the game companies want you to believe. Most of these pirates are kids with no spendable cash in the first place. Just remember that.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
(Keep in mind one of the big menbers of BSA was Microsoft)
The effect of this BSA action will be:
The public trading will go down.
BSA will then go to its members and say
"See how hard we work for you! Piracy is down! Give us more money."
The 'small time' pirate has nothing to worry about. For, if s/he is caught, what is the court going to do? Bankrupt them? That is why piracy continues. Until the software industry adopts a 'no tolerance' policy, AKA suing EVERYONE who pirates, forcing local DA's to press charges, the piracy will continue.
The NEXT group to go after the IRC channels will be, the Recording industry. When bandwith gets great enough, the film industry. (College campus trading of films show this)
And when IRC becomes burdonsome, yet another on-line method of swapping bytes will happen.
Its a loosing battle for the producer of bytes. The only way for them to make money is to offer better service. And, with Microsoft held up as the model of how to be a software company, I don't see quality or service improving anytime soon.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
The BSA needs to wake up! 1) They will never control software piracy. The mechanisms by which it works and the nature of the 'net make it impossible to police effectively. 2) Software piracy losses are exagerated. I can't speak for everyone who pirates software, but it seems to me that the majority of software trafficked on the net is traded and not sold. Furthermore, I don't use pirated software that I would consider buying, so they're not losing any profit from me. I just think its ludicrous to charge $50-60 for software that I need to use once, or a couple of hundred dollars for software that I NEED for my already costly education. Hopefully the Linux/OSS movement will make old school software companies realize that there can be profits made without gouging the public by charging exhorbitant prices for software. With this realization piracy becomes less and less of an issue.
If you can't get commercial software for free, you might as well get non-commercial software for free ;-)
Seriously though, I think this is a good thing. There are lots of very active channels out there, one channel I used to use had over 200 Gigabytes of traffic on peak days, sometimes up to 400GB. I think that is worth going after.
is at Intel. Hardware on occasion too.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
there I said it once and I won't repeat myself. Anyway, I'm going to do my part to help
---
an interesting point......
How popular was doom2??
Could it be because it was easily pirateable?
Same with quake, and most of ID's games.
Is ID software broke, because there are about a billion copies of quake 2 floating around that haven't been paid for?
Nope, they're the most respected and in my opinion the best game makers out there today!
and all their games don't require a CD in to be able to play. Isn't that great?
Piracy makes games more popular. quake has about a million unlicenced copies, but about 6 million registered (of which i own 2 - i bought one and lost it, and a replacement was only $10)
~zero
sig?
I guess I have outgrown warezing but I remember it from my younger days. Nowadays, I don't fancy warezing that much but there is a soft spot in my heart for kids who trade warez, because it could have been much worse.
Most warezers are probably between 10 and 20 years old and in an age where hormones flow and one has to oppose adult society in one way or another. Some kids find that opposition and rebellion in drugs or violence, while others trade games and expensive office-cd's knowing that the big corporations hate them and that they have the (albeit small) risk of getting busted by dumb cops.
As all rebels they form subsocieties where they have their own "secret" languages and codes. Warezers are not unlike hackers, crackers, addicts, rednecks, etc in this respect. This gives them a place to belong to which is important in that age I guess. But warezing by kids is really mostly harmless compared to alternative ways teenagers have rebeled earlier and a lot healthier. (OK, maybe staying 20 hours a day in front of a monitior is not awfully healthy :-)
Leave the kids alone and go after the corporations and government-offices who pirate programs. Though, BSA, is probably not an organisation that appeals to intellect so expect raids on #warez* channels.
I remember a well written and level headed article by Dave Pogue in an older issue of Macworld. He talked about some kid named Jake who had cable, a burner and heaps of warez and traded them freely. Talked about Hotline and IRC aswell. The interesting thing to note was that since Dave had a good idea of what this was really all about, he shared my viewpoint. Software companies don't lose hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars a year to piracy. With warez kiddies it's more like collecting baseball cards. Instead of having Babe Ruth's rookie card, they have the newest gamez or 3d Studio Max plugins. What do they usually do with them? Not a damn thing. So how can software companies lose money to people who get their programs but never install them? For warez kiddies it's all about bragging rights. Sure, there's a small percentage of warez traders who actually use what they leech. And a percentage of these guys go buy the programs they can afford which they used for free until they liked them enough to buy them. Half Life is a good example. It's internet play was so broken after being cracked alot of people loved it and went and bought the full game. I know I've done this type of thing on one occasion, and will do it again. I'm not ashamed. I think fully functional demos are wonderful (hats off to Macromedia). Whatever your take on this, you should realize that it's gonna happen no matter who steps in. There have been so many FBI operations in the past to take down warez traders, and guess what. Whoever falls gets their place taken by someone else. As long as computers exist, and software costs money, this will go on. If you use warez, do the right thing. Buy something eventually.
i think there's too much porn on IRC as well, i don't care about warez (i'm on 56k), but do a /list *sex* and you have hundreds of channels, and there's +i and others without *sex*. Instead of going after some kids that download w2k, US gov must do something for all the sexual deviants there's in USA!
--
http://www.beroute.tzo.com
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
When I was in high school I pirated some games, more as an act of rebellion (and because I had almost no money) than anything else. Many weren't very playable without the manual. Once or twice I may have actually gone through the effort of xeroxing a manual to a particular game, but that costs money too, so why not just buy the damn thing to begin with. It generally it wasn't worth the trouble, so the pirated game usually ended up rotting on the shelf and was never being played. Someone compared this to trading baseball cards -- a very accurate analogy IMHO.
It didn't take long to learn that piracy was at best useful for previewing a game which, if it was good, I went ahead and bought in order to have (a) the original media and (b) the docs necessary for really effective play. Piracy is a juvinile behavior most people quickly outgrow, for pragmatic reasons having nothing to do with draconian laws or big-brother gestapo organizations such as the SPA and BSA.
Ironically, the gaming software industry probably came out ahead financially in the additional game sales that resulted from our piracy at the time, however inappropriate or illegal it may have been. The makers of Wolfenstein 3d, Doom, and Quake (id) as well as the makers of Descent obviously learned this lesson and put it to very good (and very profitable) use, as have others.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Why are the Boy Scouts of America concerned about this?
"BSA has filed a lawsuit against twenty-five individuals allegedly participating in the 'warez4cable' IRC channel"
I assume "participating" in an irc channel means more than your presence there, otherwise they wont get far with this lawsuit. Secondly, I dont think a log of the channel will be considered criminating unless you break down a door and actually find the software at someones house. A channel log where a guy says he will send a piece of software to another one is not proof that the transfer did in fact occur.
I assume transfers are done by DCC which establish a direct connection between clients anyway - so checking server logs wont do much good either.
The thing they -might- do is to go after the ops, trying to scare people from running channels like this, but I dont really see this working. An Op can be no more responsible for what people do (hidden) on the channel than root on your server can be for the content of your mail.
So - that means we are left with "sting" operations, infiltrating the channels and bust people that seem active. The thing is - you only catch small fish like this.
so, lots of smoke and no fire? Atleast that has been the rule so far in related issues.
-- gunzip-howto.tar.gz
i think that the bsa is full of crap.
they put out ads comparing copying software to shoplifting. the problem is that they are wrongly identifying the criminals.
the real crime is making a profit from leveraging shitty software onto people.
--Danka, who likes kids, but wouldn't want to eat one
The "booming economy" may be helping rich people but it isn't doing a thing for the average working person.
BeOS isnt free? I am gonna find that guy who let me download it and tell him ASAP.
Why pirate an entire game when you can just get a legal demo of most games on the Internet for free?
I know for certain it has nothing to do with bandwidth. Downloading the Quake demo is going to be a heck of allot quicker to download than trying to download a huge 60MB compressed pirated game file.Why do you need the entire game to discover how the gameplay is on the first level? The first three levels should be enough to convince you how the gameplay is. I doubt anyone who ever played DOOM needed another 32 monotonous levels to see how the gameplay is. It was basically the same for each level. Kill monster, get key, leave level.
And if you pirate games just to see if you like it why don't you just read a on-line game review of it or just download the demo? I doubt they go through all the hard work to make a demo just for you to pirate the entire game.
Playing the full pirated version then saying "I don't like it" is ridiculous. Try stealing someone's car, use it till the gas is empty, it needs a oil change, the tires have nails in them, then set it ablaze saying, "I didn't like it." Who are you to say? It isn't your car to be burning. It's just as bad to pirate some company's videogame use it till your through with it then delete it saying "I don't like it." I suppose that means I can steal someone's car then pay them later if I like it? That's just ludicrous. That's why car dealers let you test drive a car. So you can see if you like it or not! Not so you can steal it and maybe return it someday if you like.
/End Rant
No, no, no. It's:
!!!!! W4r3Z d00000dz !!!!!
3l33t FtP w4r3z 51t3! 5 GB 0f W4R3z 0nl1n3 @ 127.0.0.1! C0nn3cT3d bY 4 T3 f0r ph45t d0wnl04d5!
W4nT 1n? R3plY t0 tH15 M3554g3 w1tH y0uR 3-m41l 4dDr355 f0r 4 l0g1n/p455w0rD.
;-)
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Warez channels are lame, and so is the BSA. BSA, get a life.
Pman - playa@linuxpimps.com
InitZero wrote: When I was a scout, all we did was tie knots, hike and tell stories
When I was a scout (in the REAL scouts, the original British ones, not any of this namby-pamby foreign stuff), I was the first scout EVER to do and get the Computing badge (would have been 1981/82 I think, wrote a program on a Sinclair/Timex ZX81 and passed a knowledge test). Little green triangle with a computer monitor on it.
Unfortunately the rest of scouting involved getting beaten up in so called "character-building" games of British Bulldog (like rugby or American Football, only without the ball... or padding or medical facilities for that matter). So unsurprisingly I quit. I think the scoutmaster later got done for fiddling with children, luckily not me though.
Anyway, BSA is the UK Building Societies Association, dummy.
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
They do it all the time :-)
Anyone remember STAC software? Drvspace == stacker. STAC sued; Microsoft bought them and then closed the company.
As far as I can tell most frequenters to warez channels are younger people, often in their early to mid teens. They are going to have a fun time cracking down on the thousands of 12-18 year olds exchanging software on IRC, as most of these people would not feel bad about putting a DoS against the BSA site in a while loop or being otherwise annoying to the enforcers. They also have by invitation channels and will kick enforcers out. The BSA will have a fun time. An analogy is that lone 60 year old teacher you all remember from elementary school who would come break up the schoolyard fight, and then have the fight turn on them.
OFTC: By the community, for the community
The more I see Linux growing, the more I realize that it's finally reached the masses. I'm sure any of you could argue that you could set up a Linux-based PC in any setting (home, business, etc) that could be fully functional and usable by just about anyone. That's what it's come to. Instead of spending hours and hours online trying to pirate the latest offering of Microsoft Office, we can download a fresh copy of StarOffice guilt-free! What a deal! And we'll even sleep better at night!
--SpookComix
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
At the request of slashdot readers and warez channel operators, the SPA has raided the BSA and found numerous discrepencies in their software licenses.
In a bizarre coincidence, BSA agents raided the SPA offices simultaneously, noting a nearly identical percentage of unlicensed operating system and office-type software products.
All joking aside, Joe's Business Inc. probably uses WAY more illegal software than any warez kiddies. Most of the warez and cracks I've seen are just people trying the software out, or looking for a little excitement. Often the cracks only work for awhile, and the sw crashes a lot and they give up.
On the other hand, I've been in companies with hundreds of computers, all running software installed from the same set of CDs -- companies making upwards of $20M or more a year.
So give me a break -- this group of idiots (the "BSA") is just giving a small group of people a hard time to publicize the issue and get their name in the press.
The 'net needs more privacy.
Honest people with enough money can and will pay for software; the booming software industry is a testament to this.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"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?"
It's kind of hard to illegaly copy free software ;-)
Moderators, please mark the above post as insightfull.
Aside, if business were really concerned about Piracy, they would list it as an offical loss of income on their Financial Statements.
It's too bad that this world is so capitolistic. If you look at pirating in another way - people wouldnt pirate software that sucked. obviosly these companies are making good software, or people wouldnt bother to pirate it. This is the same thing with mp3's. If the music was bad, would people download it? Something to think about.. It's too bad our society is this way, but everyone has got to make their dollar.
=--- - flux@aub.com Network Engineering Microsoft is not the answer. Microsoft is the question. NO (or Linux) is
Don't know if it helps, but two years ago, the BSA staged a raid on a shop down the street from where I live. I believe with the collusion of the local police, gov't agents, etc - I hear a lot of Microsoft money changed hands (i.e. bribes to local gov't officials, "donations" to government offices) in order to do these raids. A major computer school franchise was also raided at the same time.
:)
You probably saw one of these, picture of mounds of confiscated CDs, fake boxes, etc, etc. I agree - publicity is everything. These raids are calculated to instill the fear of piracy in other schools, universities, computer shops.
The problem is, they're too clueless to actually make a dent in the infrastructure. (The local papers trumpeted the "major piracy ring busted" line, and said that poor shopkeeper down the street was the ringleader of the piracy ring, just because he happened to be a foreigner (Belgian). Heh.)
At that time, I just left the local warez scene (I knew who the major suppliers were, I knew people who could ship you Microsoft Office CDs in quantities of thousands, etc, etc.) That shopkeeper was just a customer - he used to buy CDs off me before I got out of the biz. And the raids didn't touch ANY of the big fish, just the small, end-of-the-line shops.
Anyway. Back to the shop down the street. Two weeks later, after a few small bribes to the local constabulary (to get the confiscated equipment back) it's back in business, but this time they're turning away anybody who looked like a suit. They're a bit more careful, but that's all.
Nothing will change. Not until Microsoft gets permission to train and equip its own storm troopers to actually conduct the raids (though, judging from the marketing personnel they've got running the local office, they'll probably do worse.
Since then I've bought Doom, Quake and Quake2.
I've copied loads of tapes from friends in the past, and have now bought CDs for about a half of them.
The reason? When I was younger I had very little money, I couldn't have bought them. Now I have a job and I can - so I do.
Right or wrong? They haven't lost money. They weren't hurt. They didn't even know. Why should I not enjoy myself when those around me can, just because their parents can affort to give them money and mine couldn't?
I realise the last question ignores many issues, but those issues mean very little to those with no money. I have money now, and I pay my way. I wouldn't like anyone stealing from me, so those issues mean more to me now.
The problem comes in when you're as big and mean (read the findings of fact!) as Microsoft or the record companies. It's not about the little guy anymore. I figure piracy doesn't hurt a megalith like M$ nearly as much as, say, its stock losing 25% of its value, no matter what they say (keep in mind that most of Microsoft's employees have stock options); as a matter of fact, it keeps Microsoft in clover because the unlicensed copies sell licenses for other copies, generally by either word of mouth or skittishness on someone's part. The fact that Microsoft's products are (generally) highly proprietary and of mediocre structural integrity doesn't help, either. And the record companies try to keep their subjects at bay by slapping excise taxes on blank media, suing people (even the artists themselves!) that try to distribute work their artists recorded in a way Mr. Executive doesn't like, screwing artists on royalties, and trying their best to eliminate MP3. Also, the stuff they put out isn't that great; most CDs in the past few years have at most 2 or 3 good songs on them, the rest is filler, and since singles aren't common anymore, you generally have to get all of it and pay through the nose for it.
To sum up:
-lee
PS: The BSA has a reputation of being in Microsoft's pocket. I've seen horror stories of BSA making people with any unlicensed software do multi-thousand-dollar "upgrades" to Microsoft products, or face a possible 7-figure lawsuit. They're evil.
I'm having trouble thinking of many more categories of game, so either I've never played this 90% that Open Source doesn't have, or that 90% isn't 90%.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I know for certain it has nothing to do with bandwidth. Downloading the Quake demo is going to be a heck of allot quicker to download than trying to download a huge 60MB compressed pirated game file.Why do you need the entire game to discover how the gameplay is on the first level?
:-)
You don't. You need the full game to determine how good the gameplay is on the other 30-40 levels.
Of course a company is going to release the best or more hooking, addictive part of the game as the demo.
You need the full game to determine if you can beat it inside that week.
If I can beat a game in a week (can some, others not), then I don't want it. Because that meant it was pretty easy and therefore something I'd delete. I won't pay 50 bucks for a product with a shelf life of 1 week.
If the netplay is good enough, I'll go all out, buy the game, just to have a copy on a cd, on a permanent medium. To have documentation. In the case of Half-Life, as someone pointed out, to get a key to play on network servers. (I bought Half-Life.. EXCELLENT single player story and game, but way too hard at the end.)
And if you pirate games just to see if you like it why don't you just read a on-line game review of it or just download the demo? I doubt they go through all the hard work to make a demo just for you to pirate the entire game.
Did you read anything I said before? These things tell you nothing. Reviews are worse than useless, because often they're simply hype. The demo is worthless as an indicator of the rest of the game play (excepting most of id's games).
You liken a demo as to test driving a car. But when you test drive a car, you have the whole car; you don't have 3 wheels, half an engine, and no seats.
Anyway, the comparison of stealing software to stealing a car is pointless. A car is a physical object. Software is not, unless you want to talk of bits being physical. Show me a bit. Hold it in your hand. Lick it, go on, I dare you.
Let's assume, for arguement's sake, that no matter whether I pirated a piece of software or not, I would never have bought it.
If I then steal a game, then delete it, without having ever run it or played it, is it theft? Answer me that question. Either way you answer, you're still wrong.
Now, if I do run it, play it for 1 minute, then delete it, is it theft?
How about playing it for 2 minutes? Three? Where do you draw the line, personally? What defines theft? What have I stolen? From whom? Where is the monetary damage? I couldn't have possibly bought that software anyway, mind you.
Just something to think about.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
So here's something near and dear to the hearts of you slashdotters - warez helps microsoft, and hinders open source.
I work in a third world country. Years ago, WordStar was the dominant wordprocessor, Lotus 1-2-3 was the dominant spreadsheet. Microsoft made DOS, and little else.
All pirated of course. We were much too small a market for Lotus or Microsoft to set up shop here.
When Win95 and Office came along, every single office with computers upgraded to it. Warez, naturally - everybody just bought CDs and installed 'em.
So now 1-2-3 and Wordstar are but memories. Every single PC is loaded to the gills with Office 2000 and Win 2000 beta. Microsoft suddenly decides to expand their market presence, and what do they find? Hundreds of secretaries, office workers, and PHBs who already know Word, Excel, Access and Powerpoint.
See, now it's hard for Linux to compete with free copies of Win98 and Win95 floating around (oh, sure, the warez shops also copy Red Hat, but they do it so badly that most Linux CDs here are worthless (they burn under win9x, resulting in broken links, unbootable cds, missing files, etc). Our local LUG has found that the most reliable way to get Linux is to burn it ourselves.
So. Helping the BSA will help Open Source. Think about it.
(Disclaimer - I'm an ex-warez kiddie turned sysadmin. I think the BSA is powerless, in the form it is in right now.)
USENET would be even harder crack down on due to it's lack of point to point communication as is the case with IRC. And unless providers start hacking news server software to log who's downloading what articles from what newsgroups, which would cause major backlash among the lurkers of political, pr0n, and anonymous support groups, it ain't gonna happen. The best they'll be able to do is scare sites into dropping alt.warez.* but by censoring those groups it implicitly stamps a seal of approval by the ISP on all the remaining groups, which could law their ass in lawsuit hell. Ya see, that's the trouble with censoring. Once you start, you have to censor EVERYTHING and de facto approve whatever remains. ISPs don't want to be in that situation. It's just not worth stopping pirates that may or may not even subscripe to said ISP.
I'm not so sure most of the arguments laid out above, about people wouldn't buy the games anyway. I often get a game from a friend and test it out. If I find it to be very good, I'll buy it. For example StarCraft, Alpha Centauri, Baldurs Gate and others. The reason I do this, is because I'm a programmer. I don't earn a living being a programmer (I'm a student) but I recognize there are those who are, and how much I want to have Open Source and free-as-in-beer software, I do realize that these people need money to feed them.
My friends don't reason this way. Even though they think a game is great, and would buy it, they don't as long as they get it pirated. I think it has alot to do with how you perceive the single programmers role in the final product.
Anyway. My basic conclusion is that even though it's probably incredibly blown out of proportion, most people WOULD buy more games if they didn't pirate.
Quoting from the article:
In the past week, under the supervision of U.S. Marshals, BSA
carried out unannounced inspections of computer equipment at
residences in Sacramento and Downey, CA, and in Troy and West
Bloomfield, MI, seizing five computers. Under U.S. law, all
twenty-five defendants named in the lawsuit are potentially liable
for damages up to $100,000 per copyrighted work infringed.
Now...unannounced searches? I don't read anything about a warrant! Hello, alarm bells!
I think that everyone should have secure OSes and encrypted mass storage to discourage this kind of crap.
There's a lot of talk on this thread about how "WaReZ channels are okay because..." or "WareZ running hurts industry because..." when it's not that simple. Sure there are going to be some responsible folks who "demo" a game illegally via IRC and then go out and purchase it, just as there are those who don't. Would these people have been exposed to the game in the first place if it hadn't spread prolifically across the net? What is the net effect of sale losses due to small time pirating vs increased revenue due to free advertisement for the game spreading itself across the web? Is that measurable or quantifiable in any way?
There are so many ways in which this equation for "lost profits" due to piracy can be skewed or manipulated to support one side or the other. It's all just meaningless conjecture without hard data to back up these claims, and a decent way of interpreting that data, all personal anecdotes aside. Of course companies are going to due something about piracy if they percieve they're losing profits, and of course users are going to defend their rights to "free" software in whatever thinly veiled way they can.
There are pros and cons to piracy from both a coporate and an end user point of view, though coporations would probably deny this. Piracy spreads the particular software package's meme and brings it to the users consiousness as effectively as any other medium (print ad, TV ad, etc.) which can direct interest to the company and next time you're at the software store or shopping on-line you're more likely to buy that product. But piracy unchecked will undermine the software profit margin, prices will go up and more draconian software protection measures will be inplemented. A certain balance must be struck. Anyone who believes that piracy is all bad or the converse has a much too simple view of the dynamic here.
Copyright Control Services tried to do the same thing with audio warez, with little to no success. The fact is that there are no real means to shut down these irc channels. The servers are wide and far, the channels limitless, and irc warez hounds have the upper hand when it comes to IRC related technology.
And what does it take to get a shell in a country that rejects international copyright? Not much. What is the BSA going to do then, with no legal grounds for stopping it?
I can see channels like #warezdcc and those vanishing for awhile (but not for long) and I doubt many in the warez community consider the BSA much of a real threat. I know the audiowarez community regards the CCS as a joke, and they pretty much are.
The trick is how dirty BSA will play and how close to skirting entrapment they will come, much like CCS. Setting up fake FTPs, faking logs of what is actually on a ftp, etc. None of this will stand up in court btw, computer logs are not exactly what you need to succeed at burden of proof!
The sinister mister earache.
What does it say about the culture we live in when people go to such extents to provide complete strangers with free stuff at their own expense?
to me it says alot about how the average joe feels ripped-off by large software companies. the only way to stop warez is to change the way people feel about the crimes they are committing, this means make the consumer feel loved again!!!! people are willing to spend money if they feel they are getting their $$$ 's worth, just look at every other market (cars, clothes, sneakers, soft-drinks).
bottom line:
you cant stop warez by force, the only way to stop piracy on a mass scale is to make the consumer feel good about spending 50$ for a game.
"The importance of using technology in the right way has never been more clear."
British Small Arms A10 Super Rocket. When the chase is on...
**>>BELCH
I used to feel somewhat guilty for pirating software. I claimed 'i'm just a kid in high school with no money, so it's not like they would be losing anything anyways...' and so on. But now I know better, the truth is pirating is good. Pirating promotes good programming: If I pirate a piece of software thats poorly made, I won't use it. I'll trash it, and not look back. But if the software is good, I'll use it, and probably eventually buy it. They'll get your money: Piracy helped put Microsoft where it is today, especially in the world market. The reason Win98 is in control of the OS market is because EVERYONE USES IT. right? Part of the reason it's used by everybody, is because of its rampant piracy, especially internationally. Another case in point is 3D Studio MAX. I'm an animator. I went to school to learn how to animate at the Art Institute of Seattle, who teaches MAX and Softimage. I think that 99% of the reason I went to the school, was because I was able to get a pirated copy of 3d Studio in high school and really dug it. Therefore I went to a school that taught 3d Studio, where the school dumped tons of money to Kinetix, and went on to work for a company that uses 3d Studio (not primarily, but whatever). The point is they got my money, and they'll get yours. It's not about how many copies they sell in these cases, it's about POWER. If they control the market, then they'll get their money no matter how much kids are pirating their software in IRC channels. Another thing to point out is the difference between Softimage and MAX. Softimage has a really hardcore copy-protection in place. Pirating it is not fun, i've never tried getting a copy because no one i knew was able to get one to work. I think that in the end this really hurt softimage. 3D Studio is used by most game companies, because that's the software everyone knows (because they pirated it) and very few use softimage, because nobody knows it. Another case to look at is CoolEdit, the sound editing software by syntrillium. A very impressive, powerful sound editing tool. Cheaper and more powerfull then the professional software you'll find in most magazines. Syntrillium doesn't know how to market, though. I've only seen it for sale in a trade magazine once, and no ads or anything. In my opinion, those people wouldn't be in business anymore if it weren't for radium (thanks guys!) pirating all their software for them, no one would ever use it! Ok, i better quit or no one will read in regards to the size or my post. Uhm.. -Andy
"America, I smoke marijuana every chance I get."
Microsoft et. al. don't go after piracy nearly as hard as they could because a degree of piracy can actually help, so long as it is kept under control.
How many people out there have MS Office on their computer at home that they installed from a cd they borrowed from work? Chances are they'd never pay +$300 for a legal copy. But the fact that they use Office helps to ensure its dominance, because "everybody uses it."
Those of you who are over 18 will remember when all software came on floppies and was often copy-protected. There's a reason that isn't the case anymore.
Of course, piracy can really gut a small vendor who can't afford to let 10-30% of his business just float away. That's when the moral side of the issue definitely means something.
-cwk.
I don't hangout in "warez" channels but I must admit that I do pirate software that would otherwise cost thousands of dollars. I just recently "pirated" HP unix. I don't have a license nor will I purchase one. I also pirated several versions of Apple's MacOS (why I don't know). I've told several large companies that if they didn't help me get a multi-thousand dollar operating system or application that I would pirate it. Some chose to be decent and help while others had their software pirated just like I told them I was going to do. Hey, I'm just a guy who likes to fuck around with interesting hardware and learn new operating systems/apps. I'm not costing these huge software makers anything because 1.) the software cost for just the operating system alone almost always exceeds the value of the hardware and 2.) I would not spend $1500 on an a piece of software because I don't have $1500 just laying around to totally waste it that way. Now I might buy an O2 with $1500, but if it doesn't have Irix on it, either SGI is going to give it to me (or sell REALLY cheap), or it's getting pirated.
I know a lot of people here like to bitch about Sun, but I think their current offerings of Solaris for non-comm. use is a step in the right direction. They know that hobbyists will not spend a large sum of money for something they'd just like to toy with, and it has the positive effect, for them, of making Solaris more widely known to the public, and hence more likely to be recommended in a commericial setting by those who've had the chance to get to know it a little.
I really think it's the BSA who needs to grow up a bit. Pirating a $50 game is a little lame, but then again I can't imagine just going into a store and blowing $50 on something and having it turn out to be total shit. You don't buy a car if you can't test drive it do you?
The big thing that pisses me off about these people like the SPA/BSA is that they go after people with force. I'm not hurting anyone so therefore no one better try and hurt me. Force deserves force. I hope someone teaches them a good lesson.
-Legion
People in the US don't realize it, but .us is the United States top level domain.
One might safely presume they are only targeting EFNet, or perhaps the Big 3, or maybe just whatever mIRC connects to by default.
Maybe they will stumble across blatantly advertised nets like, say, "WarezNet" or "0DayNet". Big maybe there.
Do FBI CCD wannabes troll alt.irc looking for new nets? Do they use ircII or BitchX? Doubtful. They get mIRC, go to #warez4free on EFNet, and its a turkey shoot. They make a bag or two, publicize it, and get good press showing everyone how well they're keeping software prices ridiculously high.
Meanwhile, every cheezball courier group (full of people who cant make the script kiddy cut) will probably s1T b4Ck 4Nd L4fF h0h0h0!!!!1111
Two words: alt.binaries.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Why do I get the feeling that this post is going to get labeled "offtopic" or something? I seem to attract mean and pissed-off moderators like a lightning rod or something.... Ah well, such is life.
Now I use Linux. I don't have ANY pirate software here, although I did disable a nagware message on a program or two. The only program I'd even CONSIDER buying [a registration key to] is "blender" anyways. (and IMNSHO it's WELL worth the price. Even though it would be really simple for me to crack, I refuse to do so on ethical grounds, it's just TOO GOOD.)
But then maybe I'm getting soft in my old age ;)
> But then again I'm not selling any software (or pirating any)
Or releasing any for that matter...
Denny - still waiting for Slash v0.4
Police State UK - news and
1: But now I know better, the truth is pirating is good. Pirating promotes good programming: If I pirate a piece of software thats poorly made, I won't use it. I'll trash it, and not look back. But if the software is good, I'll use it, and probably eventually buy it.
2: Piracy helped put Microsoft where it is today
These are mutually exclusive sentences, if you know what I mean... And, why pirate Photoshop if you can get The Gimp for free? I think the greatest blow to piracy is being dealt by Open Source...
JM
Besides, what you think of a game is your opinion. Whilst you are entitled to your opinion, that does not make it fact.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
At first glance I thought this was the Boy Scouts of America, who use the same initials BSA. I find that quite amusing...
This is not offtopic it is a reference to hotline, a ftp-like/chat client that many people use to trade warez much the same way that irc does. He is asking if next there is going to be a crackdown on hotline, another point to point way to chat and exchange files, see how that is not offtopic, don't waste mod points on something if you are not sure about it. Take a clue from the actual post,
he/she says it has a bbs feel to it. Please don't waste you points, just cause you have them don't mean you have to use them. If you don't have anything to moderate/post then don't do it. Help make slashdot the best self regulating community
of nerds there is.
The main thing that concerns me is not that some warez kids got busted - bfd. It's not exactly a human rights event. What *does* bother me is that the law enforcement agencies were easily able to obtain personal information about the warez pups in question. Not that I have much to hide, but out of curiosity are there any decent shell providers you can pay cash to, preserving your anonymity? I think that there is a time and place for such things, particularly as 'controversial speech' will undoubtedly become more and more as a threat. It'd be nice to see a cash-only shell provider that had a TOS that would for instance prevent what is commonly known to be abuse (spam, etc) but basically take a hands off approach from there. I guess the idea of a haven gets messed as soon as you start imposing rules on it though... oh well, just an idea...
Freeciv is far from lame. Have you seen it? Get a clue, please.
heh, good thing i traded #warez (dalnet) for a nickname last night.
The shareholder is always right.
If you are familiar at all with the warez scene, you'll know that practically any piece of commercial software (especially for the Windows platform) is available for free, if you know where to look. The situation has been like this for quite some time now, lets say 4 years.
The main benefactor of this situation has been Microsoft (a lot of people buy computers so they can play games, and run apps that they basically know they don't actually have to pay for.) And of course, since the OS is bundled with the PC, MS gets their money no matter what.
In fact, i'd go so far as to say that the biggest reason Windows is so successful is the incredible range of pirated software available for it.
Linux is (and will be more) popular for the same basic reason. You can get software for free. In the case of GPLed and otherwise free software, you don't even have to break the law.
However, software sales have not decreased, and in actuality, most people who find a program to be genuinely useful, or who base their careers on the use of a piece of software, usually are quite happy to pay for it.
I buy games i know i could simply rip off an FTP server if i wanted to. I don't like buying games or apps that i can't try out first.
I do use several 3D apps that i have openly pirated, but only because the price tag on that software is genuinely far more than i can afford. I don't use the programs in a commercial capacity, but if i do i will certainly be buying them. If those programs hadn't been available through piracy, there would be no way that i could have become proficient with them and hence no way i could afford to base a business on my use of them. thats one less potential user of the software, and hence, one less potential sale. Do you count that as lost revenue?
The whole idea of 'software' encourages and in some ways makes unavoidable the issue of 'piracy'.
If a vendor of a product was really committed to eliminating warez, they would sell the product along with custom hardware to run it. If the product is that useful to their customers, then they should have no problem selling it. The fact is that this makes it so expensive to produce, that the market shrinks too much to justify production in the first place. Making your product easily piratable guarantees wide consumer acceptance and distribution, leading to greater potential sales.
This will probably raise howls of protest from developers of commercial software, but thats the way i see it.
The fact is, consumers demand the ability to pirate software. Piracy fuels 'innovation' and growth within the computer industry, not to mention facilitates the education of an entire new generation of future programmers etc.
How many 15 year olds can afford the $21,000 a year, for example, for a license to Side Effects' Houdini or a similar package? but if you put a thousand 15 year olds in front of it, and somehow 10 of those 15 year olds finds it to be a useful tool, making cool stuff with it, and grow up to be great computer artists, then thats 10 more seats of Houdini that they'll buy in future, as well as generating major interest among their peers etc., perhaps leading to further sales. If those 15 year olds had never even seen Houdini, then thats 10 possibly great computer artists, whose talents go to waste.
thats my 2c.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
I'm not the only one who read this as the Boy Scouts of america going after warezers. General Journalism Rule of Thumb: Eschew unfamiliar or potentially ambigouous acronyms.
Thank you. This has been a Public Service Accouncement (PSA) by dannyman.
Security is only as powerful as the people included. You can encrypt, but that doesn't stop anyone from just joining the network, gathering IP adresses and becoming a nark.
You do not understand.. He is not talking about security through obscurity. He is talking about a system where *statistical* security is inherent, i.e. there is nothing I can do to keep them from busting me, but the system is such that it dose them no more good to bust me then anyone else and it requires a LOT of work for them to bust everyone.
Example 1: My friends and I all run daemons which talk to each other and broadcast lists of Warez/MP3s that are available. Now, my friens have friends who I don't know and I can requests files from their lists through my friends, but I do not know the identity of the system from which I am ultimatly requesting a file.. just the ``direction'' it lies in, i.e. which one of my friens I need to send the request to. It is a network with a totally local network routing system. Finding everyone on the network is craploats of social engenering.. hell if you don't mind it being a bandwidth hog you can set it up so that there is not even any way to count how man systems are on the network.
Example 2: Move files at random between diffrent machines.. anyone can put any file into the network and anyone can take a file off the network when it is physically sitting on your machine, but no one can prove that you put a file on or removed it. Now, you the sysadmin should be protected by common carrier status since there is no way for you to monitor the traffic that moves through your site.. well.. execpt for those 50 burned CDs of music you leeched of the network as it moved through your system.. but hey your shit is your problem.. encrypt it or soemthing.
Piracy can be made safe.. and it's not really to hard.. the hard part is making it safe and user friendly. Maybe Example 1 + a CDs catologer for people to make requests for you to rip CDs you own.. now that would be cool.. especially if it was all automated. The daemon just requests that you insert bla and it rips it.
Jeff
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Why try to pirate a $700 program like Windows 2k when you can get a better, more stable OS for free. But if you realy want a MS product and think its cool to pirate it then be yourself.
Did anyone else read the BSA's article? "under the supervision of U.S. Marshals, BSA carried out unannounced inspections of computer equipment at residences in Sacramento and Downey, CA, and in Troy and West Bloomfield, MI, seizing five computers." I'm not taking a position on warez, but the article makes it sound like the BSA is some federal government agency. What it IS, is an association of private software companies, and I don't like the idea of them having the power/political influence to come into my house and investigate my computer because they saw my name on some IRC channel. The BSA can file all the lawsuits they want, but in the case if internet piracy, it scares me that they're doing the enforcing too (as opposed to the FBI).
Show me a bit. Hold it in your hand. Lick it, go on, I dare you.
Easy for modem-er's. Dialup to your ISP, connect another RJ-11 cord into the other port on your modem. Lick the connector at the end. It gives this wierd tingly feeling in your tounge. (mmm, electricity)
Just so you know, im not a phsyco who goes around licking electricly charged wires. One day i was hooking up a computer system and was short one hand. I decided on the phone cord of the mouth useing the reasoning "well the computer isnt plugged in...", causally neglecting the fact that the phone cord was plugged into the wall...
About Piracy: I noticed someone mention that you had to have some sort of proof of purchase along with all orignial packaging etc. I bought half-life from a friend of mine, his original cd, box, manual, etc. Is this piracy by "their" definition? His computer couldnt run half-life, and he doesnt have a way (or the know-how) to copy a cd.
--Eraser
yep. M$ also made stacker incompatible with later versions of DOS so that stacked drives would be corrupted...too bad for all those who bought the stacker DE105 co-processor hardware board.
Oh, it was a nag-screen, not a limitation. Removing a limitation is a bird of a slightly different color. Just the same, since the program had NO EULA...
Maybe it has something to do with the screwed-up laws in the USA. Makes me glad to be up North.
Oh, nevermind, you're calling me a "priate [sic]". Nevermind, forget I mentioned it!
Pogue was the only decent columnist MacWorld had when I stopped reading it.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Most piracy is by kids. They pirate the software because they can't afford to buy it. Trust me, if most kids out there who pirate games could afford all the games they pirate, they would buy them. Who want's a program that they have no documentation to. Most of the programs pirated are ones that the pirate would never buy. If they wouldn't buy the program anyway the software industry has lost no money.
Tell me who wants to spend 45$ on a game only to find out that it sucks, it's poorly designed, buggy, and crashes your computer every 5 minutes?
What highschool student is willing to pay the price asked for microsoft office just to use it to create a couple of papers for school. Most people that I know who download pirated programs will buy the program if they like it just to get the documentation and all of the stuff that's left out on the pirated version. Ever wonder who would want to download a 7 cd game over a dialup? No one so the people that crack commercial software take out some of the fat to make the programs more easily downloaded. But who wants a copy of the latest game only to discover that after you save the world you don't get to watch the supercool animation at the end of the game because that had to be left out.
The ones that should be prosecuted are private buisinesses and schools. Schools are very bad about pirating software. This only shows students that it's ok to pirate software. Buisnesses should be held accountable because they can afford to buy the software that they are pirating and therefor are costing the industry money.
In short we should quit going after people who are not costing the industry anything anyway and can not afford to defend themselves. Go after the source of the problem. Don't let schools get away with pirating and young people will see that they should not pirate software. If a company is kept from pirating that not only helps more then going after a few teenagers on IRC. If companies don't allow piracy that will help shut off the flow of high quality commercial apps that really costs the industry money.
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
While I don't download warez, I can completely understand your POV. I'll download a distro and test it out on my workstation, but once I throw it up on a server, I'll go buy the release...
I guess as you test out warez and then delete it, I kind of do the deleting before it even has a chance to sit on my drive. As you can probably guess by my above statement I'm still a gaming freak. I would rather do my research and buy a game I think I would really enjoy that has updates etc.. than to grab on the latest flash in the pan that hasn't matured yet... hmmm I guess the same comes to all the software I use OS's included
oh well Its too early for this
chown root coffee
or is it
chown coffee root
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
ok ok I admit it.. You got me. :)
As I was re-reading this I realized the inevitable was going to happen, catch myself in my own words.
True enough. I borrowed a CD Which is the same as copying, which is piracy... But mayhaps the entire system should change. would my friend then have to pay for a multiple user license if I went to his house and used his program???
OK I realize this is going over the edge, but thanks for the insight. I DO agree there are much better things for the government agencies to do than to go pound on warez channels...like try to remove there anterior regions from their posterior region
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
Exactly my point..... Yes. I agree... except as I found in a lower posting, I just do it via borrowing, not downloading.
Same thing with shareware... I won't even try to stay on top of a soapbox when it comes to shareware....
what % of people do you think ACTUALLY register WinZip or CuteFTP, etc.......
Yes you should try software before you buy. I whole heartedly agree... but as you and I both seem to do, if you are going to use it, show your appreciation and buy it.
But I also feel that individual piracy is not a major issue, I'm more worried about the international piracy. I've heard from some friends of mine in Belaruse that you can get software for around 20% of the going price in the U.S. Do you really think these are legitimate copies????
Do yourself a favour.. Go to the next computer show... take a CLOSE look at the CD you're buying
does it have an "educational" license. Does it say "not for release in the U.S.?" I've found this to be true not only for games, but for full blown OS/office suites/ etc....
Thanks for your time and efforts in getting through my rambling
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
No. EvilNET started out as a joke between me and a buddy of mine. Unlike Evilnet.com, I'm not about real evil or whatever they are supposed to be.
When it came time for my friend and I to register a domain name for our server, we took the joke an extra step and wound up with evilnet.net.
We're basically a small IRC and web-hosting server. Nothing more.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
..you're a gimp. Why do I say that, you might ask? Easy:
1) I am currently inside of the borders of the country known as the United States of America and I have known that .us is the top level domain of aforementioned country for quite some time.
2) You're making a blanket statement that basically says that everyone in aforementioned country is a raving, drooling idiot.
3) Um, do you really think that the example used by Signal 11 was a real domain name? Are you really that damn stupid? Is it that hard to figure out the point he was trying to put across? Do you think net.personality is a domain name too? Did you lose your thinking cap?
Goddamn.
~ Kish
Wow. thank you. very much. My karma and feelings were hurt. I thought it on-topic....
when Push Comes to Shove