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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 participat

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.
    - codezero 4y ago
      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 4y ago
        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.
    - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      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.
- Scaevolus 4y ago
  Statute of limitations :)
- skipants 4y ago
  The statute of limitations for most federal crimes in USA is 5 years. I think they're fine.
marcodiego 4y ago
"...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.
- codezero 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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.
- antisthenes 4y ago
  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.
  - GuB-42 4y ago
    It is not just the justice system. After 18, you are given full citizen rights, but you also get the responsibilities that go with it. It is crude but fair. There are exceptions, adults may have guardians and are effectively considered minors if they have mental problems for instance, and in some cases, children can be emancipated. But these are usually for extreme cases.
narag 4y ago
I was a member of Razor back in the day. I vaguely remember an intrincate big ascii logo, always wondered what 1911 meant.
- codezero 4y ago
  I don't think I even knew back then (didn't care!) but from Wikipedia it's interesting! > "The group was founded as Razor 2992 by Doctor No, Insane TTM and Sector9 in Norway in October 1985 as a Commodore 64 software cracking group. Shortly after, they changed from 2992 to 1911 which translates to 777 in hexadecimal." Next question might be what is 2992? My best guess is it's b00b in little endian hex?
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  I always assumed it's a reference to the 1911 pistol... but it doesn't make a lot of sense when combined with razor haha.
  - codezero 4y ago
    Pretty sure I assumed the same thing at the time without asking :)
hippich 4y ago
If you don't mind me asking, what motivated you? Were you afraid of law enforcement ever catching up? Was is just pure scene cred it even that did not matter much?
- codezero 4y ago
  Initial motivation was being a teenager without enough money to buy all the new computer games coming out. From there, it was partly just excitement using new technology that was relevant to the scene (Linux, high speed networks, cool ANSI art). In general scene cred was a big motivator. I also ran a BBS, and being well known in the scene also meant that artists made you great art for your board for free, which was a nice benefit if you wanted a cool aesthetic on your BBS. Aside from cred, there were a lot of like minded people and back then it was hard to find locals who were into computers/tech, so it was sort of a social network of sorts on IRC back then, I made real friends that I still keep in touch with today, so in a way it was a shared social activity. One fun anecdote: When I was like 14, I got on a PBX 1800# call with some folks in a group I was in and it kind of blew my mind that I was talking to someone in Israel. It was like the world opened up. That is not novel today, but back then the idea of socializing and sharing ideas with people across the world in real-time (for free) was extremely exciting. Keep in mind back then long distance cost per minute, as did much of the dial-up internet. About law enforcement: not much. Because I did see that minors were usually spared any real consequences, I mainly avoided anything that involved profit (though I once unwittingly bought a stolen modem for cheap, when it's that cheap you kind of know). There was an uptick of paranoia when Kevin Mitnick was busted (in the town I lived in), but for the most part we weren't doing the same kinds of crime he did (some of the folks I knew were, one ended up in prison for ~13 years). I also stopped being involved when I turned 18, which was a smart move. I got a visit from the FBI or state police (I don't remember) once, and my parents nearly shit a brick, and gave me a stern talking to because they were freaking out, but it turned out they were looking for a flasher who had been going around on Halloween! whew!
  - ocardoso 4y ago
    I didn't do any cracking, but I was a teenager in the late 90s and I share your thoughts on the way that computers and the internet eventually opened up my experience. I ended up making friends with any internet café owner in my city because that was the only reasonable place to use the internet before broadband. Thanks for sharing!
nirvgorilla 4y ago
[dead]
samstave 4y ago
UHM.... Was one of two heads of DRG gaming labs at intel in the 90s... Yeah Razor was massive back in that day and we ran a massive warez bbs out of that lab.... we got pre-deploy releases and.... the other guy went on to be evp of dev for blizzard... FYI: I never knew who the 1911 guy was...

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.
  - codezero 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    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.
Scaevolus 4y ago
Statute of limitations :)
skipants 4y ago
The statute of limitations for most federal crimes in USA is 5 years. I think they're fine.

marcodiego 4y ago

"...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.

codezero 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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.
antisthenes 4y ago
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.
- GuB-42 4y ago
  It is not just the justice system. After 18, you are given full citizen rights, but you also get the responsibilities that go with it. It is crude but fair. There are exceptions, adults may have guardians and are effectively considered minors if they have mental problems for instance, and in some cases, children can be emancipated. But these are usually for extreme cases.

narag 4y ago

I was a member of Razor back in the day. I vaguely remember an intrincate big ascii logo, always wondered what 1911 meant.

codezero 4y ago
I don't think I even knew back then (didn't care!) but from Wikipedia it's interesting! > "The group was founded as Razor 2992 by Doctor No, Insane TTM and Sector9 in Norway in October 1985 as a Commodore 64 software cracking group. Shortly after, they changed from 2992 to 1911 which translates to 777 in hexadecimal." Next question might be what is 2992? My best guess is it's b00b in little endian hex?
mardifoufs 4y ago
I always assumed it's a reference to the 1911 pistol... but it doesn't make a lot of sense when combined with razor haha.
- codezero 4y ago
  Pretty sure I assumed the same thing at the time without asking :)

hippich 4y ago

If you don't mind me asking, what motivated you? Were you afraid of law enforcement ever catching up? Was is just pure scene cred it even that did not matter much?

codezero 4y ago
Initial motivation was being a teenager without enough money to buy all the new computer games coming out. From there, it was partly just excitement using new technology that was relevant to the scene (Linux, high speed networks, cool ANSI art). In general scene cred was a big motivator. I also ran a BBS, and being well known in the scene also meant that artists made you great art for your board for free, which was a nice benefit if you wanted a cool aesthetic on your BBS. Aside from cred, there were a lot of like minded people and back then it was hard to find locals who were into computers/tech, so it was sort of a social network of sorts on IRC back then, I made real friends that I still keep in touch with today, so in a way it was a shared social activity. One fun anecdote: When I was like 14, I got on a PBX 1800# call with some folks in a group I was in and it kind of blew my mind that I was talking to someone in Israel. It was like the world opened up. That is not novel today, but back then the idea of socializing and sharing ideas with people across the world in real-time (for free) was extremely exciting. Keep in mind back then long distance cost per minute, as did much of the dial-up internet. About law enforcement: not much. Because I did see that minors were usually spared any real consequences, I mainly avoided anything that involved profit (though I once unwittingly bought a stolen modem for cheap, when it's that cheap you kind of know). There was an uptick of paranoia when Kevin Mitnick was busted (in the town I lived in), but for the most part we weren't doing the same kinds of crime he did (some of the folks I knew were, one ended up in prison for ~13 years). I also stopped being involved when I turned 18, which was a smart move. I got a visit from the FBI or state police (I don't remember) once, and my parents nearly shit a brick, and gave me a stern talking to because they were freaking out, but it turned out they were looking for a flasher who had been going around on Halloween! whew!
- ocardoso 4y ago
  I didn't do any cracking, but I was a teenager in the late 90s and I share your thoughts on the way that computers and the internet eventually opened up my experience. I ended up making friends with any internet café owner in my city because that was the only reasonable place to use the internet before broadband. Thanks for sharing!

nirvgorilla 4y ago

[dead]

samstave 4y ago

UHM.... Was one of two heads of DRG gaming labs at intel in the 90s... Yeah Razor was massive back in that day and we ran a massive warez bbs out of that lab.... we got pre-deploy releases and.... the other guy went on to be evp of dev for blizzard... FYI: I never knew who the 1911 guy was...