21 ms·

Shane Pitman, leader of the warez group Razor 1911: life after prison (2005)

321 points by grubbs 4y ago

teddyh 4y ago
https://www.little-gamers.com/2001/12/13/372 https://www.little-gamers.com/2001/12/13/372
mytailorisrich 4y ago
Very talented guys in the demo/cracktro scene. Plenty to watch on YouTube.
- teodorlu 4y ago
  Care to recommend a video to start with?
  - malermeister 4y ago
    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 https://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?order=views Most of them have links to yt videos.
    - teodorlu 4y ago
      Thanks!
      - malermeister 4y ago
        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 4y ago
      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.
    - Loveaway 4y ago
      Oh wow found one I still remember making big rounds around 2000. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObtPizPFMbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObtPizPFMbo Graphic were insane and it has a really fun high energy vibe.
      - danman114 4y ago
        This was always special to me, especially as a metalhead- they managed to capture the emotion of this song / part of the song so well, tech and style, fantastically combined. Always love how they timed the surprising animation of the mask at the end (maybe face, don’t remember right now) too a smile in time with the emotional lift at the end of the song… Gotta watch it later in full blast! :D thanks for reminding me!
    - Lapsa 4y ago
      Future Crew - Second Reality (1993)
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    Here's just a few: https://youtu.be/0CBQI7cktMk https://youtu.be/0CBQI7cktMk https://youtu.be/N5CNlMGcARA https://youtu.be/N5CNlMGcARA https://youtu.be/gKNvLyxHTmg https://youtu.be/gKNvLyxHTmg https://youtu.be/IFXIGHOElrE https://youtu.be/IFXIGHOElrE
    - Lapsa 4y ago
      btw Revision Demoparty just around the corner
  - danwills 4y ago
    I mostly follow the PC scene, and I'd recommend checking out demos by Fairlight&CNCD, MFX, Kewlers, Orange, Still, Quite, Logicoma, and if you're into those then check out other groups that get 'greets' from these ones (a section of many demoscene productions where groups greet each other by name). Pretty much everything can be found on pouet.net. Here's a YT link to one of my favourites: 'Number One Another One' by Fairlight and CNCD: https://youtu.be/LyXwmt0EZig https://youtu.be/LyXwmt0EZig
grubbs 4y ago
Looks like it broke. Another mirror here: https://archive.ph/2016.03.16-100508/https://defacto2.net/file/view/ab3914 https://archive.ph/2016.03.16-100508/https://defacto2.net/fi...
actionfromafar 4y ago
Heartbreaking. Isolation is literally torture. Federally condoned torture.
guybedo 4y ago
wow i hadn't heard about Razor 1911 in a while. In the 90s they released so many cracks
- GuB-42 4y ago
  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.
- no_time 4y ago
  Some guys are still releasing warez with the Razor1911 branding. Currently they are the only ones with a working (albeit wonky) Windows Store DRM crack.
devwastaken 4y ago
"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.
qmmmur 4y ago
Ruined a guys life because of overestimated profits. Ridiculous
- shagie 4y ago
  https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1847-criminal-copyright-infringement-17-usc-506a-and-18-usc-2319 https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual... > The principal criminal statute protecting copyrighted works is 17 U.S.C. § 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. § 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. § 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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      (digging) A Road to No Warez: The No Electronic Theft Act and Criminal Copyright Infringement - https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1123&context=facpubs&sei-redir=1 https://digitalcommons.law.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 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 4y ago
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.
- westmeal 4y ago
  greetz to all
- unity1001 4y ago
  He should open a Patreon.
- blooalien 4y ago
  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…*
- ajdoingnothing 4y ago
  Ah, PARADOX. Nostalgia when hearing the Photoshop CS2 Keygen music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYvjFOKOP7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYvjFOKOP7c
  - nickstinemates 4y ago
    I love this music. The nostalgia hits hard. Thank you.
  - layer8 4y ago
    That is the loader music from the Amiga game X-Out, by the way, by Chris Hülsbeck. https://youtu.be/nMUrnNa5h-o https://youtu.be/nMUrnNa5h-o
- rootw0rm 4y ago
  all rights reversed
- ryanmerket 4y ago
DeathArrow 4y ago
What was the crime he was sentenced for?
- tpmx 4y ago
  https://www.justice.gov/archive/criminal/cybercrime/press-releases/2003/pitmanSent.htm 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...
  - tptacek 4y ago
    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.
  - mdaniel 4y ago
    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"
  - chmod775 4y ago
    > and I'm honestly not quite sure we're doing it right in northern Europe with our extreme privacy for convicted people... The result will be that convicted people are additionally punished and shunned by society after their release. That's essentially just inviting vigilante justice and also makes it more difficult to live a crime-free life. But I suspect you knew that. I wonder what balance you have in mind? Right now only famous people are the exception in northern Europe - their crimes and the result of their trials are generally published. However in many of these countries the results of trials of ordinary people also often appear in publications, they just aren't mentioned by name. It seems to be mainly consumed as entertainment and publishing names is not really needed - any society that needlessly ruins people lives for the entertainment of others would be sickening. You may ask: how to do background checks then? In many countries you can ask the police to certify that you did not commit certain kinds of crime. Your employer can't just check somewhere. These kinds of certifications are often required for jobs involving large sums of money and/or working with children, but cannot be required for other work.
danschuller 4y ago
It doesn't serve society at all for this type of non-violent crime to result in prison time.
- varispeed 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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.
    - projektfu 4y ago
      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.
cruntly 4y ago
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.
- sigg3 4y ago
  Cracking software doesn't warrant hard prison sentences. That's a double negative for society.
  - cruntly 4y ago
    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.
    - beardedwizard 4y ago
      Can you really point to a single other person whose life was ruined other than the guy who went to prison?
      - vkou 4y ago
        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.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - 2636381321 4y ago
      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.
abigail95 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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.
  - abigail95 4y ago
    If copyleft means restricting freedoms on what you can do with software and preserving those rights on derivative works (GPL) - then 100% no, those people need copyright laws to enforce that. With no copyright law I could take any GPL software, modify it, sell it as my own and nobody could force me to give up the code. If copyleft means permissive (MIT) - then it's not a hostile environment. You are free to create and share permissive works with no hostility from anyone else.
- soulofmischief 4y ago
  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.
  - abigail95 4y ago
sedatk 4y ago
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.
- linuxftw 4y ago
  That's why it's always important the jury be educated on their rights to decide verdicts however they see fit.
  - gameman144 4y ago
    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?
    - linuxftw 4y ago
      > what safety do you have when the public hates you but you've broken no law? How is that different from today?
      - gameman144 4y ago
        In terms of capabilities, not at all! Juries can totally do this even today. This is kinda what I was trying to point out: the precedent that juries should evaluate guilt before the law (instead of their own standards) is the main reason juries work as an institution. Just as we can see the huge issues with other institutions failing (e.g. election certification breakdowns, bias in news, fraud in peer review), there is a risk that bypassing jury instructions can ruin that precedent on which the legal institution is built.
        4y ago
breck 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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-isolation,40274.html 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-a-profit-on-499-ps5 https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/325504-sony-finally-turns...
newfonewhodis 4y ago
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.
DerekBickerton 4y ago
https://defacto2.net/file/view/ab3914 https://defacto2.net/file/view/ab3914?
- cobaltoxide 4y ago
  Thank you! Why is the main link a giant screenshot?
nunobrito 4y ago
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.
- twodave 4y ago
  Still remember my original SC cd key from installing it on all my friends computers back in the day :) 4015-29374-2985 probably will always be rattling around there somewhere. Useless information taking up space.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - nunobrito 4y ago
    Same here. Still remember the WinZip registration key from memory. Perfectly useless info, don't even use Windows since a decade ago.
jakswa 4y ago
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...
codezero 4y ago
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 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - codezero 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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.
IronWolve 4y ago
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.
vgeek 4y ago
https://punctumbooks.com/titles/warez-the-infrastructure-and-aesthetics-of-piracy/ https://punctumbooks.com/titles/warez-the-infrastructure-and... is a good read if anyone is interested in the mechanics of the scene.
- devindotcom 4y ago
  Thanks for this link, looks super interesting.
- gradstudent 4y ago
  What a great link! Reading about the topsites really takes me back. STH, ET, FS, HDS. These were famous acronyms! It was hard to get an account and you had to work hard to keep it. As a courier, I remember ending up in all sorts of groups so I could "pre" (be the first to upload) new releases. It's nice too to re-read the Netmonkey Weekly Reports. This was a weekly scene 'zine that kept score and documented all the drama.
jsz0 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
  ditto
- kingforaday 4y ago
  This to me feels like the folks that call their router a rooter.
  - contingencies 4y ago
    This is normal pronunciation outside of the US.
    - masfuerte 4y ago
      Over lockdown I watched a lot of films from the 40s, 50s and 60s. This was a common pronunciation in America back then. The current pronunciation becoming standard is quite a recent thing.
    - circularfoyers 4y ago
      I've never heard anyone pronounce it as rooter in Australia.
      - contingencies 4y ago
        I would hazard a guess then that perhaps (1) you are under 30 years of age; and (2) primarily hanging around with IT people who have learned US pronunciation. While this may be emerging as a 'new norm' among younger and more IT-fluent crowd, it's historically abnormal in Australian English. For evidence, see for instance https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/router https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/route... ... noting that Aussie English follows UK English in nearly all matters, and that the Macquarie Dictionary (which is the reference dictionary of Australian English) does not, unfortunately, have a free online edition. A fellow Aussie statement on the matter concurs with my take https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/thread/3yjjxp59#r7 https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/thread/3yjjxp59#r7
naet 4y ago
"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.
- davidwritesbugs 4y ago
  This was my experience of prison: the random exercise of power by petty screws or prison civilian workers. It didn't take much to cross them or their egos.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Mizza 4y ago
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.
RGamma 4y ago
Razor 1911 releases were amazing quality, just saying.
coretx 4y ago
Just in case he is reading this... Thank you man! You where one of my childhood heroes!
snvzz 4y ago
Going to prison for such made-up crimes must have sucked.
Lapsa 4y ago
those folks colored my childhood. thank you
facet1ous 4y ago
Tbh it does seem he was bit naive of what he was doing at the time and of the consequences. He wasn’t just some rando out there cracking software for personal use - he should’ve expected the government would be going after and throwing the book at people like him. It’s puzzling he didn’t take security more seriously or just stopped doing it entirely earlier. The shocking part for me though was reading about how he was put with violent offenders and experienced being sent to “the hole”. Like what the fuck? Does the federal prison system not separate white collar criminals from high security prisoners? Honestly insane.

321 points by grubbs 4y ago

teddyh 4y ago

https://www.little-gamers.com/2001/12/13/372 https://www.little-gamers.com/2001/12/13/372

mytailorisrich 4y ago

Very talented guys in the demo/cracktro scene. Plenty to watch on YouTube.

teodorlu 4y ago
Care to recommend a video to start with?
- malermeister 4y ago
  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 https://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?order=views Most of them have links to yt videos.
  - teodorlu 4y ago
    Thanks!
    - malermeister 4y ago
      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 4y ago
    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.
  - Loveaway 4y ago
    Oh wow found one I still remember making big rounds around 2000. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObtPizPFMbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObtPizPFMbo Graphic were insane and it has a really fun high energy vibe.
    - danman114 4y ago
      This was always special to me, especially as a metalhead- they managed to capture the emotion of this song / part of the song so well, tech and style, fantastically combined. Always love how they timed the surprising animation of the mask at the end (maybe face, don’t remember right now) too a smile in time with the emotional lift at the end of the song… Gotta watch it later in full blast! :D thanks for reminding me!
  - Lapsa 4y ago
    Future Crew - Second Reality (1993)
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  Here's just a few: https://youtu.be/0CBQI7cktMk https://youtu.be/0CBQI7cktMk https://youtu.be/N5CNlMGcARA https://youtu.be/N5CNlMGcARA https://youtu.be/gKNvLyxHTmg https://youtu.be/gKNvLyxHTmg https://youtu.be/IFXIGHOElrE https://youtu.be/IFXIGHOElrE
  - Lapsa 4y ago
    btw Revision Demoparty just around the corner
- danwills 4y ago
  I mostly follow the PC scene, and I'd recommend checking out demos by Fairlight&CNCD, MFX, Kewlers, Orange, Still, Quite, Logicoma, and if you're into those then check out other groups that get 'greets' from these ones (a section of many demoscene productions where groups greet each other by name). Pretty much everything can be found on pouet.net. Here's a YT link to one of my favourites: 'Number One Another One' by Fairlight and CNCD: https://youtu.be/LyXwmt0EZig https://youtu.be/LyXwmt0EZig

grubbs 4y ago

Looks like it broke. Another mirror here: https://archive.ph/2016.03.16-100508/https://defacto2.net/file/view/ab3914 https://archive.ph/2016.03.16-100508/https://defacto2.net/fi...

actionfromafar 4y ago

Heartbreaking. Isolation is literally torture. Federally condoned torture.

guybedo 4y ago

wow i hadn't heard about Razor 1911 in a while. In the 90s they released so many cracks

GuB-42 4y ago
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.
no_time 4y ago
Some guys are still releasing warez with the Razor1911 branding. Currently they are the only ones with a working (albeit wonky) Windows Store DRM crack.

devwastaken 4y ago

"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.

qmmmur 4y ago

Ruined a guys life because of overestimated profits. Ridiculous

shagie 4y ago
https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1847-criminal-copyright-infringement-17-usc-506a-and-18-usc-2319 https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual... > The principal criminal statute protecting copyrighted works is 17 U.S.C. § 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. § 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. § 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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    (digging) A Road to No Warez: The No Electronic Theft Act and Criminal Copyright Infringement - https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1123&context=facpubs&sei-redir=1 https://digitalcommons.law.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 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 4y ago

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.

westmeal 4y ago
greetz to all
unity1001 4y ago
He should open a Patreon.
blooalien 4y ago
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…*
ajdoingnothing 4y ago
Ah, PARADOX. Nostalgia when hearing the Photoshop CS2 Keygen music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYvjFOKOP7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYvjFOKOP7c
- nickstinemates 4y ago
  I love this music. The nostalgia hits hard. Thank you.
- layer8 4y ago
  That is the loader music from the Amiga game X-Out, by the way, by Chris Hülsbeck. https://youtu.be/nMUrnNa5h-o https://youtu.be/nMUrnNa5h-o
rootw0rm 4y ago
all rights reversed
ryanmerket 4y ago

DeathArrow 4y ago

What was the crime he was sentenced for?

tpmx 4y ago
https://www.justice.gov/archive/criminal/cybercrime/press-releases/2003/pitmanSent.htm 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...
- tptacek 4y ago
  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.
- mdaniel 4y ago
  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"
- chmod775 4y ago
  > and I'm honestly not quite sure we're doing it right in northern Europe with our extreme privacy for convicted people... The result will be that convicted people are additionally punished and shunned by society after their release. That's essentially just inviting vigilante justice and also makes it more difficult to live a crime-free life. But I suspect you knew that. I wonder what balance you have in mind? Right now only famous people are the exception in northern Europe - their crimes and the result of their trials are generally published. However in many of these countries the results of trials of ordinary people also often appear in publications, they just aren't mentioned by name. It seems to be mainly consumed as entertainment and publishing names is not really needed - any society that needlessly ruins people lives for the entertainment of others would be sickening. You may ask: how to do background checks then? In many countries you can ask the police to certify that you did not commit certain kinds of crime. Your employer can't just check somewhere. These kinds of certifications are often required for jobs involving large sums of money and/or working with children, but cannot be required for other work.

danschuller 4y ago

It doesn't serve society at all for this type of non-violent crime to result in prison time.

varispeed 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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.
  - projektfu 4y ago
    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.

cruntly 4y ago

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.

sigg3 4y ago
Cracking software doesn't warrant hard prison sentences. That's a double negative for society.
- cruntly 4y ago
  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.
  - beardedwizard 4y ago
    Can you really point to a single other person whose life was ruined other than the guy who went to prison?
    - vkou 4y ago
      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.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - 2636381321 4y ago
    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.

abigail95 4y ago

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 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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.
- abigail95 4y ago
  If copyleft means restricting freedoms on what you can do with software and preserving those rights on derivative works (GPL) - then 100% no, those people need copyright laws to enforce that. With no copyright law I could take any GPL software, modify it, sell it as my own and nobody could force me to give up the code. If copyleft means permissive (MIT) - then it's not a hostile environment. You are free to create and share permissive works with no hostility from anyone else.
soulofmischief 4y ago
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.
- abigail95 4y ago

sedatk 4y ago

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.

linuxftw 4y ago
That's why it's always important the jury be educated on their rights to decide verdicts however they see fit.
- gameman144 4y ago
  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?
  - linuxftw 4y ago
    > what safety do you have when the public hates you but you've broken no law? How is that different from today?
    - gameman144 4y ago
      In terms of capabilities, not at all! Juries can totally do this even today. This is kinda what I was trying to point out: the precedent that juries should evaluate guilt before the law (instead of their own standards) is the main reason juries work as an institution. Just as we can see the huge issues with other institutions failing (e.g. election certification breakdowns, bias in news, fraud in peer review), there is a risk that bypassing jury instructions can ruin that precedent on which the legal institution is built.
      - 4y ago

breck 4y ago

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 4y ago
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-isolation,40274.html 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-a-profit-on-499-ps5 https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/325504-sony-finally-turns...

newfonewhodis 4y ago

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.

DerekBickerton 4y ago

https://defacto2.net/file/view/ab3914 https://defacto2.net/file/view/ab3914?

cobaltoxide 4y ago
Thank you! Why is the main link a giant screenshot?

nunobrito 4y ago

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.

twodave 4y ago
Still remember my original SC cd key from installing it on all my friends computers back in the day :) 4015-29374-2985 probably will always be rattling around there somewhere. Useless information taking up space.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nunobrito 4y ago
  Same here. Still remember the WinZip registration key from memory. Perfectly useless info, don't even use Windows since a decade ago.

jakswa 4y ago

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...

codezero 4y ago

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 4y ago
[flagged]
- codezero 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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.

IronWolve 4y ago

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.

vgeek 4y ago

https://punctumbooks.com/titles/warez-the-infrastructure-and-aesthetics-of-piracy/ https://punctumbooks.com/titles/warez-the-infrastructure-and... is a good read if anyone is interested in the mechanics of the scene.

devindotcom 4y ago
Thanks for this link, looks super interesting.
gradstudent 4y ago
What a great link! Reading about the topsites really takes me back. STH, ET, FS, HDS. These were famous acronyms! It was hard to get an account and you had to work hard to keep it. As a courier, I remember ending up in all sorts of groups so I could "pre" (be the first to upload) new releases. It's nice too to re-read the Netmonkey Weekly Reports. This was a weekly scene 'zine that kept score and documented all the drama.

jsz0 4y ago

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 4y ago
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 4y ago
ditto
kingforaday 4y ago
This to me feels like the folks that call their router a rooter.
- contingencies 4y ago
  This is normal pronunciation outside of the US.
  - masfuerte 4y ago
    Over lockdown I watched a lot of films from the 40s, 50s and 60s. This was a common pronunciation in America back then. The current pronunciation becoming standard is quite a recent thing.
  - circularfoyers 4y ago
    I've never heard anyone pronounce it as rooter in Australia.
    - contingencies 4y ago
      I would hazard a guess then that perhaps (1) you are under 30 years of age; and (2) primarily hanging around with IT people who have learned US pronunciation. While this may be emerging as a 'new norm' among younger and more IT-fluent crowd, it's historically abnormal in Australian English. For evidence, see for instance https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/router https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/route... ... noting that Aussie English follows UK English in nearly all matters, and that the Macquarie Dictionary (which is the reference dictionary of Australian English) does not, unfortunately, have a free online edition. A fellow Aussie statement on the matter concurs with my take https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/thread/3yjjxp59#r7 https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/thread/3yjjxp59#r7

naet 4y ago

"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.

davidwritesbugs 4y ago
This was my experience of prison: the random exercise of power by petty screws or prison civilian workers. It didn't take much to cross them or their egos.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Mizza 4y ago

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.

RGamma 4y ago

Razor 1911 releases were amazing quality, just saying.

coretx 4y ago

Just in case he is reading this... Thank you man! You where one of my childhood heroes!

snvzz 4y ago

Going to prison for such made-up crimes must have sucked.

Lapsa 4y ago

those folks colored my childhood. thank you

facet1ous 4y ago

Tbh it does seem he was bit naive of what he was doing at the time and of the consequences. He wasn’t just some rando out there cracking software for personal use - he should’ve expected the government would be going after and throwing the book at people like him. It’s puzzling he didn’t take security more seriously or just stopped doing it entirely earlier. The shocking part for me though was reading about how he was put with violent offenders and experienced being sent to “the hole”. Like what the fuck? Does the federal prison system not separate white collar criminals from high security prisoners? Honestly insane.