[HN Gopher] Shane Pitman, leader of the warez group Razor 1911: ... ___________________________________________________________________ Shane Pitman, leader of the warez group Razor 1911: life after prison (2005) Author : grubbs Score : 184 points Date : 2023-03-10 19:34 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (defacto2.net) (TXT) w3m dump (defacto2.net) | grubbs wrote: | Looks like it broke. Another mirror here: | https://archive.ph/2016.03.16-100508/https://defacto2.net/fi... | sedatk wrote: | I'm pretty sure that I'd have stopped with just probation, yes. | Having the feds raid your house, confiscate all your gear, and | put you through the hell of their investigations for a year was | enough of a wake up call for me. | | The gap between a sufficient punishment and what he actually got | is the harshest reality in all this. It's very similar to what | people have gone through for small marijuana related offenses. | cortesoft wrote: | This is why I never understand people who get mad at 'lenient' | sentences for crimes. There are no crimes I would commit where, | say, 1 year in prison wouldn't be a deterrent but 5 years would | be. | | If the point of prison is to deter crime, then adding longer | sentences isn't going to change anything. | nordsieck wrote: | > There are no crimes I would commit where, say, 1 year in | prison wouldn't be a deterrent but 5 years would be. | | Part of the way punishments are set up are to deter vigilante | justice. | | If someone murdered someone I love and I knew they'd only get | 1 year for it, I'd be tempted to return the favor and take | the year myself. | tinus_hn wrote: | For some people, a 5 year sentence means society is free from | their crimes for 5 years. | jandrese wrote: | It is interesting to see the raw visceral reaction to the DC | council attempting to reduce prison sentences for crimes | committed in the city. Congress even got involved to make | sure it didn't happen, which has not happened in decades. | Apparently a 14 year sentence for carjacking is not enough | deterrent, it must be 20 years according to Congress, the | President, and even the mayor of DC. | annoyingnoob wrote: | You're right. | | https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about- | deterr... | fullmoon wrote: | Consider that the secondary point is to separate society from | perpetrator. | [deleted] | linuxftw wrote: | That's why it's always important the jury be educated on their | rights to decide verdicts however they see fit. | gameman144 wrote: | I get the appeal, but this is a super dangerous precedent. If | we ignore the law and allow juries to convict or acquit based | on their personal preferences, what safety do you have when | the public hates you but you've broken no law? | Hitton wrote: | The jury is already allowed to do that. | linuxftw wrote: | > what safety do you have when the public hates you but | you've broken no law? | | How is that different from today? | rayiner wrote: | Juries _do not_ have the "right" to ignore the law. Juries | are required to follow the law as set forth in the judge's | jury instructions. Their job is just to determine the facts | and apply the law to the facts. As a legal matter, nobody | gives a shit what twelve random people think about the law | enacted by the democratically elected legislature. | | "Jury nullification" therefore isn't a "right" it's a | loophole. It arises from the fact that there is nothing a | court can do to _enforce_ a jury's obligation to follow the | law in a criminal trial. That doesn't mean the obligation to | follow the law doesn't exist. | [deleted] | linuxftw wrote: | When you consider the fact that police are lying sacks of | garbage, you don't need to nullify anything. You just find | the state's witnesses non-credible. | | I think most will admit, they have a bias to believe agents | of the state. This preconceived bias should be treated no | different than a preconceived bias to the contrary. | DerekBickerton wrote: | https://defacto2.net/file/view/ab3914? | cobaltoxide wrote: | Thank you! Why is the main link a giant screenshot? | breck wrote: | This guy is a hero. | | What he did should not be a crime. | | It's time for a Freedom to Publish Amendment: | Section 1. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of this Constitution is | hereby repealed. Section 2. Congress shall make no law | abridging the right of the people to publish or implement ideas. | paulmd wrote: | I've been on board the "patents need to be repealed or | significantly toned down" train too, but, the legitimate | counter-argument that I see is that it's going to lead to a | rise in "corporate secrets" style stuff. | | If they can't legally stop people from republishing IP, then | they'll make it hard. Denuvo, other DRM, or just go to fully | streaming-only for the first year or two after launch. Want to | play Battlefield 6, subscribe to PS Now. And this will likely | hit PCs harder than consoles since de facto there have been | near-zero hypervisor breaks of any relevance in consoles since | the PS4/XB1 era, everything is signed and encrypted and TPM'd | to death. | | AMD's SVP for datacenter and embedded has talked about how | their Secure Encrypted Virtualization and other security | features are actually coming _from work on consoles, to the | datacenter market_ these days. And now there 's Pluton coming | up too (although apparently there have been some serious | breaches in TPM 2.0 very recently that may ruin a lot of the | pluton work as well, we can look forward to windows 12 I | guess!). | | https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-sev-xbox-cryptographic... | | So far, the EU hasn't been willing to apply their rulemaking on | iphones to video game consoles yet, and tbh that is a far more | noxious case of "you don't own the hardware". And that's what | PCs might turn into if IP law vanishes, the _practical security | measures_ would ramp up to compensate. And no, consoles aren 't | being sold at a significant loss in the way people think they | are. PS5 is sold at a profit, Xbox Series consoles might be | sold at break even or a small loss, or it could just be | hollywood accounting for the purposes of making a legal | argument at the trial to get apple's ecosystem broken open. | They had a financial interest in being able to argue that the | ruling shouldn't apply to them and that their equally-locked- | down app stores shouldn't be subject to competition or user | freedom in general. | | https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/325504-sony-finally-turns... | breck wrote: | > If they can't legally stop people from republishing IP, | then they'll make it hard. | | Alternatively it changes the game on how things are built. | Building in public becomes the default, lowering the cost for | all. | | You'd expect a short term variance (downward) while the | system adjusts, but in the long run it'd be much cheaper to | produce great works, since your material costs will be lower | (no royalties) and you wouldn't burn resources on the | security and bureaucratic hoops you have to go through today | to build and integrate ideas. | | Monopoly profits would be finished though. So yes, <1% of the | population would arguably be worse off. (I'm in that group, | btw). | nunobrito wrote: | 20 years later I still use a copy of the Starcraft I from them. | | The original version requires a CD and a CD drive just to boot. | Maybe it could be emulated but as a kid I wouldn't have money to | buy the original in my country. Blizzard eventually made a young | kid happy, I've later bought the games to support them. | jakswa wrote: | Takes me back to my BF1942 days, careening around maps in planes | and tanks. I was dirt poor. I usually had to get a ride to the | video rental store to rent console games. I'm thankful to have | kept busy thanks to these groups. It kepted me interested in | computers and exposed (a little) to software dev. ...and awesome | music! Man, the music... | [deleted] | guybedo wrote: | wow i hadn't heard about Razor 1911 in a while. In the 90s they | released so many cracks | GuB-42 wrote: | Razor 1911 still has some presence in the demoscene. But though | they share the same origin and may know each others, they are | distinct from the cracking group. | vgeek wrote: | https://punctumbooks.com/titles/warez-the-infrastructure-and... | is a good read if anyone is interested in the mechanics of the | scene. | devwastaken wrote: | "The federal prison system is probably over 90% drug offenders. | Most of them are about as smart as a salt lick, and the staff, | from what I've seen, isn't much smarter. " | | If you were looking for yet more proof to add to the pile that | the fed was and is using anti-drug politics to throw anyone they | want in prison. | mytailorisrich wrote: | Very talented guys in the demo/cracktro scene. Plenty to watch on | YouTube. | teodorlu wrote: | Care to recommend a video to start with? | mytailorisrich wrote: | Here's just a few: | | https://youtu.be/0CBQI7cktMk | | https://youtu.be/N5CNlMGcARA | | https://youtu.be/gKNvLyxHTmg | | https://youtu.be/IFXIGHOElrE | malermeister wrote: | If you're talking about the demoscene in general, here's | demos sorted by popularity on one of the most important | community sites: | https://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?order=views | | Most of them have links to yt videos. | Loveaway wrote: | Oh wow found one I still remember making big rounds around | 2000. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObtPizPFMbo | | Graphic were insane and it has a really fun high energy | vibe. | teodorlu wrote: | Thanks! | malermeister wrote: | One thing to keep in mind is that it's not just about the | visuals, but about how they got those visuals to work | with ridiculous limitations. As an example, "debris", the | current top-ranked entry, has a total file size of 180kb | and was released in 2007! | vintermann wrote: | That sorting is pretty odd, and not really the thing for | someone who doesn't know about the demoscene. For instance | LFT's safe VSP demo was really high up. I understand why, | it was a really important technical proof of concept and it | explained something that had bothered demo coders for | decades, but it's not a terribly interesting demo to watch. | What impresses demo coders isn't necessarily the same that | impresses the rest of us. | | Some of my favorite classic demos are "Sound Vision" by | Reflect, "Desert Dream" by Kefrens and "Enigma" by | Phenomena. All demos that were popular enough in the 1990s | that they reached me and my brother's Amiga by way of | modems and swapping. They're all very enjoyable without | knowing much about the coding challenges. | | I'd say my favorite modern Amiga demo is "Eon" by The Black | Lotus. For C64 the good modern demos are too many to count | (and by comparison, the 80s era demos aren't terribly | interesting), but I think maybe "Lunatico" by LFT is my | favorite. Again it's one that doesn't require coding | knowledge to appreciate. | qmmmur wrote: | Ruined a guys life because of overestimated profits. Ridiculous | shagie wrote: | https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual... | | > The principal criminal statute protecting copyrighted works | is 17 U.S.C. SS 506(a), which provides that "[a]ny person who | infringes a copyright willfully and for purposes of commercial | advantage or private financial gain" shall be punished as | provided in 18 U.S.C. SS 2319. Section 2319 provides, in | pertinent part, that a 5-year felony shall apply if the offense | "consists of the reproduction or distribution, during any | 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or | more copyrighted works, with a retail value of more than | $2,500." 18 U.S.C. SS 2319(b)(1). | | It is a rather low bar and doesn't take much to get to | distribution of material that has a retail value of more than | $2,500. No "overestimation" is needed there. | | It would be reasonable to debate if $2,500 is too low of a | threshold - but for the law as written, no overestimation is | needed. | Hitton wrote: | I'm not a lawyer, but how does the "for purposes of | commercial advantage or private financial gain" apply to this | guy, when he apparently didn't make any money from that? | shagie wrote: | (digging) | | A Road to No Warez: The No Electronic Theft Act and | Criminal Copyright Infringement - https://digitalcommons.la | w.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?refer... | | > The Act effected six principal changes to criminal | copyright law. First, the NET Act expanded the Copyright | Act's definition of "financial gain" to include the receipt | (or expectation of re ceipt) of anything of value, | including other copyrighted works.24 Second, in addition to | willful infringement for commercial ad vantage or private | financial gain, the Act criminalized the repro duction or | distribution, in any 180 day period, of copyrighted works | with a total retail value of more than $1,000.25 Third, the | Act said that evidence of reproducing and distributing copy | righted works does not, by itself, establish willfulness.26 | Fourth, the Act changed the punishments for criminal | infringement. For infringements of more than $1,000, the | punishment includes im prisonment of up to one year and a | fine. | | This was passed in 1997 which is what he was convicted | under. | | The text of the law is: | https://www.congress.gov/bill/105th-congress/house- | bill/2265 | | which... is rather short: | | No Electronic Theft (NET) Act - Amends Federal copyright | law to define "financial gain" to include the receipt of | anything of value, including the receipt of other | copyrighted works. | | Sets penalties for willfully infringing a copyright: (1) | for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial | gain; or (2) by reproducing or distributing, including by | electronic means, during any 180-day period, one or more | copies of one or more copyrighted works with a total retail | value of more than $1,000. Provides that evidence of | reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by | itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful | infringement. | | Extends the statute of limitations for criminal copyright | infringement from three to five years. | | Revises Federal criminal code provisions regarding criminal | copyright infringement to provide for a fine and up to five | years' imprisonment for infringing a copyright for purposes | of commercial advantage or private financial gain, by | reproducing or distributing, including by electronic means, | during any 180-day period, at least ten copies or | phonorecords of one or more copyrighted works which have a | total retail value of more than $2,500. | | Provides for: (1) up to three years' imprisonment and fines | in infringement cases described above (exclusive of | commercial gain intent considerations); (2) up to six | years' imprisonment and a fine for a second or subsequent | felony offense under (1); and (3) up to one year's | imprisonment and a fine for the reproduction or | distribution of one or more copies or phonorecords of one | or more copyrighted works with a total retail value of more | than $1,000. | | Requires, during preparation of the presentence report in | cases of criminal copyright infringement, unauthorized | fixation and trafficking of live musical performances, and | trafficking in counterfeit goods or services, that victims | of the offense be permitted to submit, and the probation | officer receive, a victim impact statement that identifies | the victim and the extent and scope of the victim's injury | and loss, including the estimated economic impact of the | offense on that victim. | | Directs the U.S. Sentencing Commission to ensure that the | applicable guideline range for a defendant convicted of a | crime against intellectual property is sufficiently | stringent to deter such a crime and adequately reflects | consideration of the retail value and quantity of items | with respect to which the crime against intellectual | property was committed. | | --- | | Note that (2) in the second paragraph is an or, doesn't | require commercial or private gain and the expansion of | "personal gain" to include "got access to other works." | shmde wrote: | My childhood hero. Sad to read what he went through in prison. | The warez scene is still active and there's no slowing down so | this bust doesn't really mean shit. Shoutout to the OGs RELOADED, | SKIDROW, RAZOR, PARADOX,CODEX. | unity1001 wrote: | He should open a Patreon. | westmeal wrote: | greetz to all | ajdoingnothing wrote: | Ah, PARADOX. Nostalgia when hearing the Photoshop CS2 Keygen | music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYvjFOKOP7c | nickstinemates wrote: | I love this music. | | The nostalgia hits hard. Thank you. | layer8 wrote: | That is the loader music from the Amiga game X-Out, by the | way, by Chris Hulsbeck. | | https://youtu.be/nMUrnNa5h-o | blooalien wrote: | Wow! When you say "OGs", and then follow it up with a list of | _THE_ actual "OGs" like that? *Nostalgia for those childhood | days of dialup modems and all-night long downloads...* | DeathArrow wrote: | What was the crime he was sentenced for? | tpmx wrote: | https://www.justice.gov/archive/criminal/cybercrime/press-re... | [2003] | | > announced today that Shane E. Pitman, age 31, of Conover, | North Carolina, was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison by | the Honorable James C. Cacheris, United States District Judge, | for conspiring to violate criminal copyright laws as the former | leader of the oldest game software piracy ring on the Internet. | | Btw: Coming from Europe - this whole thing about doing a public | press release about each sentenced person things seems a bit | off. There's a balance to be struck - and I'm honestly not | quite sure we're doing it right in northern Europe with our | extreme privacy for convicted people... | mdaniel wrote: | I would _guess_ a lot of that happens in the public for | transparency reasons; if one reporter (or otherwise just | curious citizen) notices that (as an example) the Honorable | Cacheris starts sentencing more harshly than their peers, or | letting off CEOs in their courtroom with a "stern talking | to," then that would be worthy of an investigation | | I'm sure the Justice Department's point of view of press | releases is one of deterrence: "do the crime, do the time" or | perhaps even "your tax dollars at work" | tptacek wrote: | For whatever it's worth, the disposition of the case on PACER | says the sentence was reduced to 12 months. There's not much | of a docket to read, because it looks like he immediately | pled out. | danschuller wrote: | It doesn't serve society at all for this type of non-violent | crime to result in prison time. | nvarsj wrote: | It's never made sense for copyright violations to be a criminal | offense. | mlyle wrote: | Naaah. If you're doing it for profit, and running a big | duplicator farm or selling things online, it can make sense | for it to be a criminal offense. But the laws are not crafted | that well. | varispeed wrote: | But it serves corporations that governments work for. | | and it's ironic that we pay for it while big corporations can | avoid paying taxes as they please. | orangepurple wrote: | I'm the last person to defend corporations. That said, US | corporations definitely don't avoid "paying taxes." The | corporate income tax rate imposed by the federal government | is 21%. Employees pay income and social security taxes on top | of those earnings after. From the moment a company earns | income until it lands in the hands of employees the | government can take as much as HALF of it. This includes | everyone on salary. Execs would be wise to issue themselves | stock so they "ONLY" have to pay 15% or 20% (LTCG) as their | "income tax." Companies can reduce their tax burden by | engaging in behaviors which the federal government has deemed | worthy or risky and incentivizes those behaviors with | preferential tax treatment. For instance the R&D tax credit. | It means that organizations that invest in qualified research | and development activities to incentivize innovation and | growth (as defined in Internal Revenue Code section 41) may | be eligible for a general business tax credit. | hnlmorg wrote: | > That said, US corporations definitely don't avoid "paying | taxes." | | Multinational corporations definitely do. They'll register | themselves in a country with a cheaper corporate tax burden | then argue that their income / sales is generated from that | country rather than their actual country of origin. Thus | reducing the amount of tax they have to pay in the US (or | UK, etc). | orangepurple wrote: | Irrelevant due to Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income | (GILTI) | wolverine876 wrote: | Yet the total tax burden of US corporations is low relative | to similar countries (IIRC), and some corporations pay | nothing. | projektfu wrote: | No, wages, salaries, payroll taxes and contractor expenses, | along with most other expenses, are subtracted from gross | profit to make net profit, which may undergo further | reduction in various charges (depreciation, etc) before | being subject to tax, and then various tax credits may be | applied that reduce the corporate liability further. | | Double taxation occurs when a corporation is subject to | corporate tax and then pays a dividend, which is after tax, | but counts as income to the investor. There are arguments | to be made that this is fair or unfair. | wolverine876 wrote: | > Double taxation occurs when a corporation is subject to | corporate tax and then pays a dividend, which is after | tax, but counts as income to the investor. There are | arguments to be made that this is fair or unfair. | | Even calling it double-taxation seems like BS. Generally, | we tax at the point of exchange: income, sales, etc. | Money moves around endlessly. It's taxed when the | consumer pays the corporation (often twice! sales and | income), when the corporation pays the shareholder, when | the shareholder dies and gives it to their kids, when the | kids buy a house, when the homebuilder pays their | contractors, etc. etc. etc. | cruntly wrote: | If you don't want to do the time, don't do the crime. Just | because it happens on a computer in cyber space, doesn't mean | it's not real. | unity1001 wrote: | > If you don't want to do the time, don't do the crime | | The same thing was told by the persecutors of those who | smuggled slaves from the South to their freedom. | cruntly wrote: | [flagged] | yesenadam wrote: | Hilarious comment, thank you. :-) | BLKNSLVR wrote: | Whilst I disagree with your black and white stance on | copyright and punishment for breach, this comment is pretty | darn funny. | burnished wrote: | Full stop that should not be a criminal offense. Jailing that | man for that sentence does not serve justice. | cruntly wrote: | Why not? | burnished wrote: | It sounds like you need to spend some time doing some soul | searching. | | What do you think is served by that sentence of jail time? | Disregarding that I think the law in question is outrageous | - why is jail time an appropriate punishment? Is it fitting | to imprison some one on the dubious claim that they | impacted your profits? It does not seem to be a fitting or | appropriate punishment, it seems to be ghoulish overkill to | scare people from fucking with the money. | bentley wrote: | Why not life in prison? | la_oveja wrote: | We will copy until the end of time. | sigg3 wrote: | Cracking software doesn't warrant hard prison sentences. That's | a double negative for society. | cruntly wrote: | He ruined the lives of many hard-working software developers | who relied on selling their code to feed their families. | | This was back when programming was a highly skilled and | difficult job that only a few could do, so cracking was even | more harshly targeting people. | nyolfen wrote: | i challenge you to identify a single actual human whose | life he "ruined" | beardedwizard wrote: | Can you really point to a single other person whose life | was ruined other than the guy who went to prison? | [deleted] | vkou wrote: | Their lives weren't 'ruined', just like nobody's life is | 'ruined' when someone (over multiple trips) shoplifts a | few thousand (or tens of thousands of) dollars worth of | goods from a large store chain. | | But someone, somewhere along the way did lose some amount | of money. | | The fact that the sentence was only 18 months reflects | that, somewhat. | smokeypanda wrote: | That's a rather presumptive over-simplification of what | effect software cracking had and has on employed | programmers' livelihoods. It's not a direct 1 to 1 | relationship between a cracked installation and lost sale, | nor does piracy prevention guarantee market relevance. I | don't condone consuming pirated software when OSS | alternatives exist, but that's not out of sympathy to tech | megacorps. | | http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html | 2636381321 wrote: | More like telling the whole world "you're not allowed to | copy this, because I wrote it" and threatening everyone | with imprisonment or fines if you do. So everyone has to | buy it through him, or else. To feed his family. | | That is what copyright law fundamentally is. | | We all learn from other people, just because I came up with | an idea, I cannot tell other people "you're not allowed to | use it". It violates other peoples natural right to | autonomy to do so. | cruntly wrote: | Yes and that's why copyright is a good thing, so you have | the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of your intellectual | labour. | kube-system wrote: | > just because I came up with an idea, I cannot tell | other people "you're not allowed to use it". | | You're right, ideas are not protected by copyright. | | Copyright only protects original works of authorship. | xtracto wrote: | I dont agree with Copyright and also dont think the | punishment was deserved. I also did some cracking and | keygens in the 90s (for fun, never released anything). | | Nevertheless, my making argument against doing and | condoning what this guy did is that, because of those type | of actions today we have to deal with SaaS only software | that is subscription based and stops working after the | company folds (I can still use my Win16 copy of GetRight, | thankyou very much). | | We got into this sad state because of greed, from both | sides of the counter. | reassembled wrote: | Is that quantifiable and verifiable? Are there interviews | with software devs whose business was measurably effected | by piracy to the point where their life was "ruined"? | Genuinely curious to know. | coretx wrote: | No, for a fact, he MADE the lives of such families. If your | small time software does not end up being PRE'd somewhere; | it doesn't exist. Without the marketing budget of large | corporates; you could just forget about competing with | them. | Clubber wrote: | I like how companies conned the government to enforce what | used to be a civil matter into a criminal matter. They | don't even have to write a cease and desist letter. Evil | genius. | newfonewhodis wrote: | Love to see the might of US government successfully protecting | copyright, but not _checks notes_ bank customers, airline | customers, telco customers, housing customers or anyone else. | Mizza wrote: | Would love to hear any stories from inside MYTH or CLASS, their | rivalry pushed the whole scene forward. Their releases introduced | me to.. well, all of this, and radically altered the course of my | life. | naet wrote: | "The server bit the big one, the head of the Education dept. knew | who I was and what I knew, and "arranged" for me to go to work | for her. I reloaded the server, got all the terminals set back | up, and showed her how to run things more efficiently. I had been | working there for about a month, and she was getting ready to go | on vacation for a week. Two days after she left, they rounded up | myself and two other guys that worked in education and shipped us | off to "the hole" at Butner Low Security Correctional | Institution. They wouldn't tell us why, what we were being | shipped for, nothing. Come to find out, the Associate Warden and | the head of the education department didn't get along, and the AW | had arranged to have us shipped while our boss was on vacation | because she and one of the instructors that worked under the | Education Director thought they had something on the ED to get | rid of her. | | So, from the end of August to the end of October of last year, | myself and my cell mate got to sit in a room about 9ft. x 15ft. | with a solid metal door that had a little narrow window looking | out into the hall and a small slot that they opened to hand you | your food tray." | | Once you're in prison you lose any rights to any fair type of | trial and punishment and you can be subjected to awful things | that weren't part of your sentencing, like isolation or sensory | deprivation in pitch black cells for no reason at all other than | the warden didn't like the department head that you did work | detail for. It's a broken system for so many reasons. People | don't leave prison rehabilitated, they leave prison broken down | and even more vulnerable. | codezero wrote: | I was a member of Razor back in the day. I noticed that he | mentioned he wouldn't say how he got Quake released before | release date. I can share how I participated in an early release: | I had befriended the manager of Electronics Boutique because I | bought frequently there for many years prior to getting into | pirating games. He would give me games that arrived but weren't | on the shelf yet. From there, it was uploaded to an FTP server | and a cracker would go to work removing protections, it usually | took hours or less, unless the protection was novel. They'd | usually push a release without a lot of large assets (FMV, | cutscene type stuff) to make releasing it faster, and follow up | with a full release after it was all packaged up. | | I saw lots of folks get arrested/busted back in those times, and | there was a key difference of outcomes for two groups: adults vs | minors. Minors always got a slap on the wrist/fine (I remember | TKLP from was it... RoR? had to pay out $1200 to AT&T for hacking | a PBX... because he was 14 or so), and adults got sent to jail | and had their lives ruined. I stopped being involved just before | turning 18 and it was a very smart decision in retrospect. | tpoacher wrote: | [flagged] | codezero wrote: | I was a minor and it was 30 or so years ago, I don't think | I'm at much risk. I think it was an interesting time in tech | and worth sharing some of the details of what went on. Also, | most of the people that served time weren't busted because of | piracy alone, they were often involved in some adjacent crime | like trading credit card numbers, buying/selling stolen | equipment, malware, or some other fraud. | ganoushoreilly wrote: | I imagine there are a bunch of us "Scene kids" around, | Everyone I know that got arrested were the for same | reasons. Ironically most of us ended up in very interesting | positions / senior positions at a lot of modern companies. | Our general rule of thumb was, don't make any money. I | often wonder if there are old boxes sitting in storage | around universities all over the US, that contain a ton of | releases that have been lost to time. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | I was in a situation at age 14. It was before the CFFA | act so I was very, very lucky. And it helped that police | back then didn't really know what they were doing when it | came to computers. But it scared my straight. Never did | anything like that again. | codezero wrote: | That anti-profit motive is exactly the one I followed as | well! Yep I remembered so many of the boxes we uploaded | to were wired into a university network in random closets | in MIT and other universities. | | Your HN karma is 1337 right now lol! | ganoushoreilly wrote: | lol It was, but it was 1337 for the time being! | | Yeah we had FXP hosts on most of the east coast | universities. Those were the days of just having fun. | Ironically it's the knowledge and experiences of being in | the scene that quasi got me into working for the | government and those _letters_ agencies. I was fortunate | that the only real trouble I caused was met with | education and support rather than a harsh response. If I | was born 5 years later with the slow deployment of ZERO | tolerance policies I would have been screwed. | | I still give back though, I have a few racked servers | that are out there sharing torrents (all legal data), and | run a bunch of crawlers for archive.org etc. It's as | close as I can get these days to the olden days. | Scaevolus wrote: | Statute of limitations :) | skipants wrote: | The statute of limitations for most federal crimes in USA is | 5 years. I think they're fine. | marcodiego wrote: | "...adults got sent to jail and had their lives ruined." | | I'm sure it is a polemic terrain, but I really wonder if this | is fair. Eager to hear opinions. | antisthenes wrote: | I think in general it is fair, but the very arbitrary | 18/not-18 cutoff doesn't make a lot of sense to me. | | I consider (myself) and most people I know to have been | children at 18 and up to several years older than that. But | it's not like people wear their "maturity" levels on their | forehead, so the justice system has to make an arbitrary | cutoff somewhere. | | Not saying it's ideal, and individual circumstances have to | be considered, but it's the best a crude system can do. | codezero wrote: | I think it depends on the case. Some of the leaders of those | groups were basically using minors like myself as cover in | the same way street gangs did, and doing a lot more than | piracy. I think the folks that got hit for their actual fraud | deserved it, but folks that just cracked and released games | were unfairly targeted, very few profited from it, and I | think a profit incentive is where I consider the crime to be | more relevant, but I'm not a lawyer :) | cosmodisk wrote: | Thanks for your comments. I've been pirating one way or | another for a couple of decades. Always always saw the | crackers as someone who did it for anything but money. | narag wrote: | _I was a member of Razor back in the day._ | | I vaguely remember an intrincate big ascii logo, always | wondered what 1911 meant. | codezero wrote: | * * * | jsz0 wrote: | When I first got in the Internet back in the 90s I thought warez | was pronounced like Juarez the town in Mexico. To this very day | when I see the word that's what it sounds like in my mind. | ganoushoreilly wrote: | It's what most of us called it ironically, eventually it became | the standard vernacular amongst most of the sneakernet / | underground groups I ran in. | | "Man got some prime warez on these zip disks.. dupe em!" Back | when lan parties were the norm. | wdhilliard wrote: | ditto | actionfromafar wrote: | Heartbreaking. Isolation is literally torture. Federally condoned | torture. | IronWolve wrote: | Interesting, looks like state/feds inflate their win rates by | just going after cases already won. Great way to inflates their | numbers for political/financial reasons. Since many want a good | win rate for public sector jobs. Or make their bosses/elected | officials look like winners being tough on crime. | | I'm sure there is a term for this, like cherry picking out of a | basket of picked cherries. | abigail95 wrote: | Why do people like him think copyright laws are bad and made by | rich people, but also support open source software, which relies | on the same copyright laws to exist. | | If hes an anarchist then fine, but it looks like he wants laws | that benefit him and not people that actually write software. | | I read the whole thing and I still don't know why he did it. He | says there was no money incentive and his work had no impact on | piracy. What was its purpose then? | pharmakom wrote: | Copyleft is a defensive measure in a hostile environment. If | there were no copy laws at all then they wouldn't argue for | them. | kube-system wrote: | I think you're painting with quite a broad brush. There are | absolutely people who support copyleft because they do not | want 'intermediaries' to be able to distribute binaries | alone. e.g. GNU. | soulofmischief wrote: | The heart of the copyleft movement is not to remove all | government regulation. You can have a problem with copyright | laws in their current form while still supporting the copyleft | movement. | petsfed wrote: | I think his position is a little more nuanced than that. | | >The bottom line, what I did violated the laws governing | copyrights. I don't agree with those laws 100%, but they were | designed by people with lots of money in their pockets to keep | lots of money in their pockets, so I doubt they're going to | change for the better any time soon. This is why I'm a huge | advocate for the open source community. | | I understood that to mean "the open source community | specifically addresses the flaws in a system that it cannot | itself abolish, so I support them". | ilyt wrote: | > Why do people like him think copyright laws are bad and made | by rich people, but also support open source software, which | relies on the same copyright laws to exist. | | Because they have more nuanced thoughts that you think ? | | "A copyright law" is not a one thing. | | DMCA doesn't touch OSS software for example. It could entirely | go away. | | Length of copyright protection could be 5 years from creation | instead of 70y from authors death and it would do near jack | squat to OSS software. Ye you could use 5y worth of unfixed | bugs and ignore OSS license but that wouldn't exactly hurt most | projects. | beardedwizard wrote: | They did it for the thrill and because they could. It was a | different time. | BLKNSLVR wrote: | I still do things for the thrill and because I can, and I'm | well into adulthood. That's what makes life fun and | interesting and there doesn't have to be a 'point' that | anyone else understands. | | But sometimes I still try to do things I can't - I currently | have a broken wrist. | bentley wrote: | Only some free software licenses rely heavily on copyright law | as their primary mechanism. Permissive licensing, or something | like it, would continue to exist if copyright as a concept | disappeared tomorrow. | kube-system wrote: | Permissive licenses are not public domain waivers, they | usually have some other disclaimers of liability, a | requirement to include that provision in all copies, etc. In | a world without copyright, OSS devs will need to find another | way to shield themselves from liability. | | However, what would realistically happen in a hypothetical | world without copyright, is that commercial organizations | will stop most OSS development and revert to distributing | obfuscated binaries. | shagie wrote: | While I am generally in favor of permissive licensing and | accept the corresponding "yes, the code can get incorporated | into other projects"... | | That same copyright law protects my photographs. I am | generally in favor of strong copyright laws. | | There are also philosophies of software licensing that want | to ensure that the user can have access to the code that uses | my code. Under those philosophies, it is the protections | granted by the limited right to prepare derivative works that | allow that licensing to have teeth and enforce a copy left. | | Without copyright, the GPL and corresponding licensing that | is written with the desire to be able to guarantee the 2nd | and 4th freedoms (access to the source for some product and | ability to modify the code for that product) have no teeth | and those cannot be guaranteed. | sedatk wrote: | > What was its purpose then? | | Clout, reputation, group identity, coolness factor. It's | similar to how demoscene operates. | coldacid wrote: | >It's similar to how demoscene operates. | | Considering that the demoscene spun off the cracking scene... | wdhilliard wrote: | While it's possible that he did it for clout or as a FU to | software companies, I think many people, including myself, | pirated software in the early days of computing because the | software itself was rare and cool. There were no demos back | then to try software before you buy, and many people used | software like Photoshop, Flash, 3D Max, etc for personal | projects that made no profit. Even today, it's hard to justify | paying $600 for a program that you aren't sure you actually | like just to hopefully create some cool stuff to show your | friends. | | As for the "people that actually write software", I couldn't | care less. It's been shown over and over that piracy never made | the effect on thier bottom line that large software companies | led many to believe. Simply put, people didn't buy these things | because they considered them overpriced luxuries for simple | hobbyists. The only choice was to pirate the software, or to | never get to use it. As someone who writes software myself, I | have no sympathy for people who want harsh punishments for | someone who steals their stupid little program. Sure you put | hard work into it, but so did a lot of people who offer their | software for free. Generally, my thought is that these people | are more upset that their software failed to make the impact | that they thought it would or failed to generate the profit | that they had dreamed of. Piracy was never at fault for either | of those. They need to cope | thomastjeffery wrote: | Copyright is about monopoly. That's the antithesis of freedom. | | Copyleft is a hack that turns monopoly inside-out. All for one, | and one for all. | | Without copyright, copyleft would be fundamentally broken. But | that isn't the whole picture: anything under a permissive | license like MIT or Apache2 would see the same result they | implement today. Those are part of "open source", too. | | And we could certainly come up with a different system to | maintain copyleft: we could make regulation that preserves a | user's right to edit their software, and bans practices like | DRM and intentional incompatibility. That's what I imagine the | "open source movement" would look like if it were brought to an | extreme logical conclusion. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-03-10 23:00 UTC)