Talk To a Convicted Warez Guy 1404
Chris Tresco is one of those evil "software pirates" cybermoms warn you about. He was a sysadmin at MIT, and also a member of "the secretive Internet software trading ring known as 'DrinkOrDie'" who got caught by the DoJ's Operation Buccaneer, got convicted, and was sentenced to 33 months in prison on August 16. Chris has a little time left on the outside before he goes away and has agreed to spend some of it answering your questions, so ask away. (Usual Slashdot interview rules.)
Couple questions (Score:5, Interesting)
2) If so, do you feel what you were doing should be illegal?
3) If so, why did you do it anyways?
Did you laugh at Office Space? (Score:5, Funny)
Do you still think its funny?
Re:Did you laugh at Office Space? (Score:3, Funny)
He'll only have a problem with dropping the soap if Richard Simmons is suddenly convicted of being a flaming homo by the Feds.
Re:Couple questions (Score:3, Insightful)
It is not only illegal to steal code, it is wrong.
I also think the closed proprietary model of software development is wrong, but the same laws that uphold their proprietary licenses uphold my GPL and BSD licenses. If it is wrong for people to violate those licenses (and I think it is), then it is wrong to break a EULA from Microsquish or whomever.
We do not ALL do it. There is at least one person who does not (and I'm willing to bet thousands if not millions of others).
I'm not the devil but I play his advocate on tv... (Score:4, Interesting)
Just because you say it is wrong doesn't mean it is. Is it wrong to get an abortion? Is it wrong to smoke pot? A lot of people will give you different opinions on the ethics of those issues, regardless of their legal standing.
Yes there are people who don't do it, agreed, but your declaration that it's simply wrong is a bit self-righteous.
Re:I'm not the devil but I play his advocate on tv (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people wish to say something like "We can't favor one person's morality over the other" without accepting the full implications of that statement. Namely, if each person gets to decide right and wrong, then we lose the ability to judge any action as wrong, no matter how horrific.
That said, I don't pretend to have all the right answers about which things under which circumstances are right, wrong, and optional. But until someone convinces me otherwise, I am going to assume that the categories exist, and do my best to figure out what things go into which.
Re:I'm not the devil but I play his advocate on tv (Score:4, Insightful)
The key to any moral system is recognizing that people have different moral values, that those differences can be legitimate, but still being able to make value judgments regarding which action is correct for a particular situation. Any hard and fast rule will cause problems, but the recognition that people live differently is not the same as total moral relativism.
Re:Couple questions (Score:3)
Your conclusion does not follow from the premise. The GPL is not an EULA -- you do not have to agree to it to use the software. The GPL only depends on copyright law. The EULA's depend on contract law. Some think that existing contract law does not or should not permit EULA's.
Also, it is certainly possible to have a moral system where an EULA saying "You must not use this program to develop nerve gas" would be considered moral whereas an EULA saying "You must give me your firstborn child" would not.
Re:Couple questions (Score:4, Interesting)
Read the GPL. Let me quote:
It is not required to agree to the GPL to use the software. That is required only if you modify or distribute the program or its derivative works.Re:Couple questions (Score:3, Insightful)
c - Chris
Re:Couple questions (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't care what you do. That's your own business. That what makes me righteous as opposed to self-righteous. All I am doing is calmly trying to point out that there are people who do NOT steal intellectual property. I am a member of the EFF. I fight the growing DRM efforts and the DMCA by writing my congresscritters. I hope you do the same. Also, if you download mp3s and rip warez as an act of civil disobedience, I admire you. Your willingness to go to prison for your beliefs is admirable. I'm not willing to do that.
Re:mv /bin/laden /dev/null? (Score:3, Funny)
rm -f /bin/.laden
He's hidden right now, after all.
Re:Couple questions (Score:4, Insightful)
This is, quite frankly, bullshit. Yes, copyright laws do impose an artificial scarcity on intellectual property. This is because there's no way to provide a direct, capitalistic means of accounting for the real scarcity in intellectual property -- the scarcity of time, effort, money, and talent required to initially create the work.
This scarcity is why I personally haven't made any blockbuster movies or software projects requiring hundreds of man-years. If this scarcity didn't exist, we wouldn't care about copyright because we could easily and instantly produce comparable goods.
People who argue against the government-supported artificial scarcity generally aren't recognizing that it's that very same scarcity that causes the artificially scarce goods to be viable in the first place. If you get rid of copyright, the artists from a video game will probably go into something less IP-dependent like the advertising industry (which still has IP ties, but it could demand payment in advance, and the revenue stream would indirectly be the sale of their customers' tangible products). The programmers would seek employ at traditional companies needing IT staff. Sure we'd have some amateur/hobby free games, but nothing like the heavy-duty, multi-year efforts that we're accustomed to.
In short, until we come up with a way to create many quality games for free, copying them for free doesn't solve anything.
Hmmm (Score:3, Funny)
Do you wish you'd raped someone instead (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Do you wish you'd raped someone instead (Score:5, Informative)
Homicide 149/71
Rape 117/65
Kidnaping 104/52
Robbery 95/44
Sexual assault 72/35
Assault 61/29
Do you feel you got a just sentence? (Score:3, Interesting)
Something nobody has thought of... (Score:3, Interesting)
How does his crime sentence compare to other crimes that involve copying? I wonder how it would compare to, say, wholesale duplication of $100 bills? Everyone always compares piracy to software theft, when in reality, it's much closer to counterfeiting. Both the copyright system and the monetary system rely on government imposed scarcity. The hard question that some people here on Slashdot need to ask themselves, is can the economy survive if that artificial scarcity is removed.
In my personal opinion, I believe the world would be a much better (and radically different) place if copyright is cut short. In this hectic information age, can anyone imagine a world where copyright only lasted 5 years from publication? I'd love to see a reasoned debate on this issue.
And, for my question to the convicted pirate... What is his personal view on the politics of copyright, and what his views (if any) are of what life would be like under such a system.
Bork!
Re:Do you wish you'd raped someone instead (Score:5, Insightful)
There are other idiotic sentencing issues...you can spend more time in prison for bringing a natural harmless plant over an imaginary line than you would if you held someone at gunpoint and robbed them. In the latter case, the person could be traumatised for rest of their life, looking over their shoulder every time they go out. In the first case, well they might feel the urge to eat some junk food.
It depends who the crime is against really. If it's big business like the RIAA, software companies or the alcohol & tobacco lobbies, you are in trouble. Harm a real person, you'll be out by Friday.
Re:Do you wish you'd raped someone instead (Score:3, Informative)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't 117 months (avg. rape sentence sassigned) larger than 33 months (this person's warez sentence assigned)?
Re:Do you wish you'd raped someone instead (Score:3, Insightful)
On a side note, I saw a story on the news last night that several people arrived on the scene of an attempted child kidnapping. They managed to get the two children free from the kidnapper, and kicked and beat him until the police arrived. While I don't condone vigilante actions, this is probably the roughest punishment the kidnapper will face. I'm sure he'll get minimal jail time.
Another story I saw was that a police officer was killed during an alleged road race. An earlier death of an innocent member of the public in a road race resulted in a minimal sentence for the driver. The government's response to the problem of road racing is to educate the public as to the dangers of driving at such speeds. As in many cases, they're completely missing the point. Justice and punishment is supposed to be about making someone think twice before proceeding with a crime. To do this, they should convict a driver of manslaughter or murder (you can argue the differences), take away their license for a long period of time (20+years) and throw them in jail for a long period of time.
A third story that has been progressing was the case of an illegal Japanese immigrant who abandoned her babies in her house for ten days while she went out clubbing and partying with her boyfriend. The children died of starvation (and probably other effects from not eating or drinking). The news programs proclaimed that the Government's support system failed this woman, and as a result two children died. No, the system didn't fail. The woman failed. She received something like seven years in jail less the year she has already served, so she will probbaly be out in about six years.
All of these stories took place in Canada.
At what point did people decide that responsibility is no longer theirs? When you drive, break the speed limit and receive a ticket it's not the fault of the Police or the Government. It's your fault for breaking the limit. You can't turn round and complain that the Police are being too heavy handed.
I'm sick and tired of Justice systems no longer being about Justice. I'm sick and tired of hearing people laying the blame elsewhere. Responsbility for your family's lives, your life and the life of others around you is in your hands. Don't blame anyone else for it. Next time you try to jump a red light, or the next time you speed pass a pedestrian crossing the road, reflect for a second what might have happened. Could you live with the guilt of killing someone due to your impatience?
If you haven't guessed, I'm a carless pedestrian, and I'm tired of drivers trying to run me over as they can't wait for more than 5 seconds while I cross the road.
Rant over, but not finished.
Re:Do you wish you'd raped someone instead (Score:5, Interesting)
The only law being broken is copyright violations. Copyright violations are not theft of service.
Once you realize that copyright is artifical chains that the public places on itself for a certain goal, and not a 'right' of authors, then you'll realize that the morals aren't quite so clear cut. Industry's reframing of the copyright debate from "quid pro quo" to "we must have absolute protection" has caused the issue to become twisted and unrecognizable from what the foundations of the US were built on.
Furthermore, the copyright law as it has been implemented is clearly not in line with the generic arguments for it. Copyright has been modified several times over the last century, each time designed solely to protect the industries solely at Congress's bargaining table and to lock out up-and-coming industries, as well as the public. This has caused the US implementation of the law to become quite sick.
Learn your copyright history. I recommend reading Jessica Litman's "Digital Copyright".
Re:Do you wish you'd raped someone instead (Score:3, Interesting)
From the movie Blow [imdb.com]:
"I went in with a bachelor's of marijuana and came out with a doctorate in cocaine."
I personally believe that (with a few case-by-case exceptions), non-violent offenders should not be thrown in jail as a rule. What is wrong with giving them community service and the like? Thsis warez guy could have spent his time teaching disadvantaged children how to use a computer.
The question should be; do they pose a threat to other people and need to be removed from society? Pirating software (however your feelings on the subject) doesn't do that.
Or it could just be that prison is more about vengence rather than justice.
Do you think you did anything wrong? (Score:3, Interesting)
Quick request (Score:3, Funny)
How serious was your crime? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How serious was your crime? (Score:3, Informative)
While owning copies of software illegally isn't the right thing to do, I doubt you're gonna end up in Oz [hbo.com] anytime soon. Start hacking into other people's systems, setting up warez serves, cracking apps for illegal purposes -- well, maybe you'll get to enjoy some conjugal visits from your friendly jailhouse pimp for those "horrific crimes".
Re:How serious was your crime? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How serious was your crime? (Score:5, Interesting)
I spent a lot of time cracking software back in the day. Never distributed it, and it did eat up a lot of time. However, I'm now happily using the skills that started there to do systems work. Poking at people's servers, in the same vein, breeds better security types.
You just have to realize that boys will be boys. Sure, there's mischief when you're a kid. Just because some kid defaced a web page instead of spraying graffiti at some point and the company victimized claimed tens of thousands of dollars in damages doesn't make the defacement worse than the graffiti, IMHO. As long as you learn to grow out of it, and channel what you know into useful areas, things are fine.
This is one reason I'm kind of sad to see the slow death of the freewheeling, "protect your own computer", wide open Internet. Legalisms, laws, and whatnot are showing up left and right. The laid back, long-haired sysadmins of ten years ago have become suits. The emails that techie friends and I used to regularly spoof to each other, coming from Santa Claus, the President, or others, would now land us in a federal prison. Policy is taking the place of technology, and it makes the world a less fun place.
Just my two cents.
Re:How serious was your crime? (Score:3, Informative)
The jury's still out on that, as far as I see it. "Releases" start on the uber-elite "topsites" and slowly filter down to the 13 year old with the fserve on irc.
Yet "Releases" will be packaged and for sale on the streets of Russia, China, Hong Kong oftentimes long before they hit the online geek "scene".
There is alot of money in the illegitimate sale of pirated software, and various mobs have their hands elbow deep in it.
Someone pays for all their equipment. Someone gives organized crime access to the "topsites" (which exist only in legend to your run-of-the-mill 'warez' scener).
No, I'm not spreading gov'ment FUD or trolling, but where there's money to be made by violating a law, organized crime will show up to make sure it's done right.
The scene's changed since the early days of kids trading c64 disks through the mail.
What was your motivation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Warez's future in light of DRM (Score:5, Interesting)
The Economics Of Warez (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Economics Of Warez (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, one of the most requested serial numbers requested (in a mac channel) is the sn# for Ircle, the shareware client most apple users use that has a 30 day limit.
However, the ppl that pirate warez rarely use the products for more than a week (unless it's a game), if in most cases, use them for non-commercial purposes since businesses usually need to be legit.
Personally, I don't see warez as a huge financial problem for *large* software companies. The people that use them are small-time users who would never be able to afford them, they build a userbase of people that use their products for corporations (that pay for lots of licenses), and retain the marketshare of the product (adobe/quark), (office/claris/openoffice), etc.
Re:The Economics Of Warez (Score:5, Insightful)
I fail to see a justification in stealing something becuase you feel the price is too high. Only in this industry does that mode of thinking seem to carry any weight.
Well, in this industry the cost of duplication is zero. I'm not defending software "pirates", but I wish people would stop equating copying bits on a hard disk to theft of physical goods.
Re:The Economics Of Warez (Score:5, Interesting)
In your analogy above, you wouldn't have committed theft. You would've committed trespass. Multiple times, in fact. The first time through unauthorised access to their systems, and the rest by showing up to a class when you're not authorised by the property owner to be there. The first case of trespass, of course, might be debatable in this form, but I'd say it is an accurate description.
Re:The Economics Of Warez (Score:3, Informative)
That's precisely why its not called theft when you obtain/distribute commercial software without paying for it, its called copyright infringement. They are completely seperate concepts under the law, although they both deal with the unauthorized use or duplication of someone else's property (whether it be intellectual or otherwise).
Re:You have it backwards. (Score:5, Insightful)
Particularly a few years ago, when the web was new and everyone and his brother suddenly needed to manipulate images, Photoshop was the leading (but by no means the only) photo program out there. But it was way too expensive for Joe JPEG to buy to crop his pics for his website. What to do?
What Adobe did was turn a blind eye to casual piracy, while pursuing corporate users who didn't pay for Photoshop. Letting individuals pirate meant that no other, lower-cost program emerged to compete with the Industry Standard - and those freebie programs that come with scanners etc. went nowhere.
Result: legit buyers didn't have a $49.95 program they could buy to run their websites, or at least there was no obvious choice. So they all forked over (and continue to fork over) the bux for the real thing - $599 new IIRC. More revenue for Adobe, and less competition!
How clueful are they? (Score:5, Interesting)
What was your mistake/how did you get caught? (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you feel a little like Johnny Depp in the movie blow? Were you flying high and then one day had a combination of bad luck/overzealousness that finally did you in?
Re:What was your mistake/how did you get caught? (Score:5, Funny)
(User #183926 Info | http://www.ajvar.org/~calin)
How did you get caught? I pirate warez all the time off UseNet and never managed to get caught. I even had a ratio ftp site running for a while.
Maybe the authorities found his confession on Slashdot along with a link to his actual homepage with all sorts of vital statistics and contact info. D'oh.
Re:What was your mistake/how did you get caught? (Score:3, Funny)
That would lead to the next logical question: "Was it worth the Karma?"
Question: (Score:3, Funny)
What's your opinion on the future of piracy ? (Score:3, Redundant)
Or will it just drive consumers to products that are more easy to copy, and with less usage-restrictions ?
Why ? (Score:5, Interesting)
How did they catch you? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hardest to crack (Score:5, Interesting)
What kind of protection is the hardest to crack?
Unjust (Score:4, Interesting)
33 months seems like an outrageous sentence. It seems unjust. The old guy who has been in charge of the photocopier at my local library for the last 20 years would be on death row if similar criteria were applied to him.
Do you think that justice in the USA these days is too influenced by corporations?
Do DOD convictions show DMCA et. al. uneeded? (Score:5, Interesting)
Would stronger anti-circumvention laws or technical protective measure (TPMs) have affect the operations of DOD?
Do you think the DOD's conspicuous visibility (and the ease of online searches), made DOD easier to target that the street-corner DVD, VCD, and VCR vendors?
Is there any way to distribute content online that a copyright holder would not be able to find the that content -- assuming that the content was visible enough to have (in the language of fair use) an "impact on the fair market value of the work"?
Sourcing or Propigating? (Score:4, Interesting)
M@
Re:Sourcing or Propigating? (Score:3, Interesting)
Along a similar line, what are the various source/distribution routes you used and what were the varying levels of danger for each?
--trb
Piracy Justification (Score:4, Insightful)
Blue Byte released an amazing game called "Incubation: Time Is Running Out," which sold moderately well...but not enough to cover their original expenditure on the product. They then released an expansion pack, "Incubation: The Wilderness Missions," which was the first product ever to use SafeDisc. The mission pack outsold the original game by 1.5x.
How can you justify piracy when so few titles break even on their development costs?
Put on a white hat? (Score:5, Interesting)
When you get out, if you were offered a high-paying job to do so, would you use your knowledge to help protect software from other crackers?
Copyright this! (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you believe that this all out attack on the technically knowledgable by the digital illiterati enforcing the bloated bottomline of many of these companies will lead to an eventual electronic revolution or do you see the united states becoming controlled by copyright owners and corporations? And do you see hackers eventually out numbering the number of people in prison on drug related crimes?
The price of software contributing to piracy (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, there is a lot of software out there that I would find useful, though I couldn't afford to (legally) own it. I think that if Adobe charged half of what they do for, say, a current version of Photoshop, they would likely sell MORE legal copies and enjoy larger market penetration and larger profits. What's your take on this?
"The Bust", WarGames or Matrix? (Score:5, Interesting)
M@
Re:"The Bust", WarGames or Matrix? (Score:4, Informative)
This happened in Belgium:
I was with a friend that did major warez when a bust happened. They questioned me for 5 hours long while I was only there to go out to the disco that evening. (Apparantly the entire bust spoiled our weekend).
They take mousepads, monitors, systems, all floppy's and cd-roms and everything that hangs on a PC system. They also take away all money they find that could be as result of trading/selling warez.
They enter with 3 cops, somebody that notes everything down ("deurwaarder" in dutch) and 2 cops from internal affairs. The "deurwaarder" notes everything down that gets taken. Even stupid boxes get taken away, the rooms where being checked for evidence.
The guy now has to pay for over 50000 US$ to the BSA and needed to betray friends where he worked with or he would face jailtime (because he could not pay it).
3 weeks later they tried to check my house though I didn't had anything that was illegal; they did took a lot of writable CD's with them with personal pictures and sourcecode of programs I have written in that time. I am still waiting for them to get them back.
So far of being legal and still loosing a lot of yourself. They took my backups and personal pictures and never had them back.
Why not more Mac warez (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
average guy? (Score:5, Interesting)
What was the prosecution like? (Score:5, Interesting)
Did they call you a "threat to modern society" or just a "guy who'd erred from the straight and true?"
Circumstances... (Score:3, Interesting)
What, do you feel, is the moral difference between what you have been convicted of doing and what everyone else here has probably done at one point or another?
On a personal note, 33 months of your life is a horrendous price to pay. Good luck, man.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
Was there a feeling that DoD was to big? (Score:5, Interesting)
Were you offered a deal? (Score:5, Interesting)
If so, did you talk in exchange for a lighter sentence? Or did you stay silent and let only yourself take the rap?
Re:Were you offered a deal? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm guessing that since you got the most time, you were the one they were after. (as the grand prize)
Feelings? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just typing these questions make me uncomfortable.
Stealing? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you were stealing bandwidth, how much bandwidth do you think you stole from MIT? Did someone there have anything to do with the prosecution, either as a witness or as a whistleblower? Did you feel any moral qualms about stealing from a university?
If you mostly got your bandwidth through hacking, what do you imagine were the costs to the companies to repair the damage from the hacks? Did you feel any qualms about abusing other people's property?
Also, if you were hacking into other people's machines to open up Warez sites, what is the closest analogy to a physical property crime you can imagine? I envision going through the "house for sale" flyer to find unoccupied and poorly monitered homes in my neighborhood, using lockpick (or breaking a window) to get inside, and then "remodeling" it a little bit on the inside so that I could throw huge parties for hundreds or thousands of people. Is this an accurate description of the type of hacking being done, or would you compare it to something else?
Who does the programming? (Score:5, Interesting)
Roughly how much money did developers lose? (Score:3, Interesting)
How much would you say all of the downloaded software was worth?
View of Prison (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you look at it as a miscarriage of Justice? That the goverment and big buisness are railroading you.
Or was it the price to be paid? Kind of a personal Civil Disobediance, that you knew what could happen, and did it anyway. And if it was a Civil Disobediance issue, do you think it will have a major impact on Piracy, either positive or negative?
Highlights (Score:5, Interesting)
What was the weirdest piece of software you pirated?
What was the most memorable piece of software you pirated?
What kind of time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What kind of time? (Score:3, Interesting)
My advice to this guy is to agree to get in a staged fight with someone on your first day there. Many people going in would be happy to do so and I will explain why anyone would want to do this.
What I am about to say may make those reading this uncomfortable but its %100 true.
Bullies and rapists go after the weakest people and assuming its %90 black/hispanic and he is a nerdy slim white guy, would get alot of attention from guys who would love to make him their bitch. This guy needs to look tough so they will find someone else to beat up or rape instead. People with dissabilities get raped practically on a nightly basis in lots of prisons. ITs disgusting and sick but after you are their, you sure as hell do not want to go back.
I hate to think what this guy will go through for a several copies of software that he would not of bought anyway.
Two Questions (Score:3, Interesting)
2) I've heard rumours that some large software companies actually leak software out on purpose because they realize the importance of getting their product out to be used and tested in order to spark intrest in it. Do you believe this is true?
Regarding your fate: (Score:3, Insightful)
What is your opinion of free software ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Has your opinion changed about free software vs commercial software because of your unfortunate experience?
Do you think strong armed tactics by the BSA and upcoming drm will actually help spread free software?
What will you do when you get out? (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you still belive that spreading warez is ok and that you were sacrificed, or will you speak against it and never do it again?
I am sure everyone that got caught wish that they never did get caught, the question really is if they wished that they had done something else, or that the police had target someone else instead.
Guilt (Score:3, Interesting)
Who do you think is more responsable for the demise of coutless small development companies - the publishers, the warez community, or the development companys themselves? And why?
Thad
Games Developer.
33 Months (Score:3, Interesting)
33 months, I'm sure you'll have some free time; do you plan to study anything in particular? (I.e. Programming, hardware, philosophy, art, etc...)
Second question, how is your family taking your (future) incarceration?
Take care... I do hope that you don't have to serve the full 33 months.
Fair (Score:5, Interesting)
why or why not?
If it wasn't about the money, what was it about? (Score:5, Informative)
So if it wasn't about the money, what was it about? Prestige is one option, but people in these groups need to keep hidden, so that doesn't fit. Was it for the ideals? If so, what ideals are there in ripping off software?
I can understand why people who can't afford software rip it off.. they have stuff to do, and can't afford $500 for Photoshop or whatever.. but tell me why someone with a decent salary will work in secret to beat the software companies.. what is the motivation?
Jail not an Option (Score:3, Interesting)
Ive considered it in the past, going to jail is simply not an option for myself -- Why dont you go down to Mexico and get out of North America?
Friends. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been under the impression that the warez "scene" is more about status and human interaction than anything else.
questions from a fellow cracker (Score:5, Interesting)
Swapping things with your inmates (Score:5, Funny)
Do you think your experience with swapping things will help you fit in?
What are your strongest assets on the prison market place?
Rise of P2P? (Score:5, Interesting)
Which P2P networks did you prefer, if any?
What is MIT doing to you? (Score:5, Interesting)
MIT has just about everything a student needs, you didn't need all of that stuff. Are you a kleptomaniac? I'm not trying to beat up on you, I'm just curious how you slept at night or what you told yourself to sleep at night. And if you didn't have any problems sleeping at night do you stay awake at night now wondering why your sense of right and wrong didn't or doesn't conincide with the laws of your country?
Prove me wrong. (Score:5, Interesting)
My understanding of this is that you were involved with the illegal distribution of copyrighted works, depriving the potential owners of money for the works (possibly - the reality may be "probably not," but...). You then received 33 months of jail time (or just under 3 years) which seems to me to be rather fair.
Based on the Operation Buccaneer information, you received counts of felony (criminal copyright infringement, probably), and conspiracy (to commit criminal copyright infringement, probably). (Both probablies are guesses based on the document.) This seems to be in line with what one would expect for charges against a ring of people whose sole goal is to steal massive quantities of software and redistribute them to as many people as want them at no charge. (The fact that there was no charge probably reduces the sentence to a degree, but the fact that it required specialized skills and involved a large collective of people acting together to commit criminal copyright infringement probably both outweigh that.)
So... why should I feel sorry for you? You got what you deserved. You stole from people and gave copies to as many people as you could. Based on the MIT press release, you illegal utilized systems you were supposed to be administrating for the purposes of illegally distributing software. As far as I can see, you got exactly what you deserved.
So - prove me wrong. Demonstrate that my understanding is flawed or that I am misunderstanding the crime. Demonstrate that it should not be a crime. Or - accept my view. Explain if you feel sorry for your actions and believe that you did indeed commit the crimes. Or come up with another response that does not fall directly between agree and disagree.
Re:Prove me wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
Something ain't right.
Kintanon
Decide your fate: (Score:5, Interesting)
(Lets be reasonable, no 100 hours of "community service" breast exams at the Ford Modeling Agency)
My Question (Score:3, Interesting)
Also:
Did you ever think about the money that you were taking away from honest people who work hard and rely on the profits they generate from software sales or did you only think about yourself while committing your crimes?
Warmest regards,
--Jack
How did they got in ? (Score:3, Interesting)
How did you get caught, from your point of view ?
Because that involved the FBI and a lot of people worldwide, there should have been some indications that troubles where coming, or did they manage to stay in stealth mode until they hit?
From what us non-insiders know of, a hacker group is somewhat organized with different isolated layers, and very few connections between those layers, but the one needed to make it works. This ends up beeing a kind of CIA-like organisation, more or like.
Of course, the very nature of internet greatly help that, but i'm wondering : from an insider point of view, did this kind of organisation just "emerge", or where you briefed by someone else?
Of course, the lwa-enforcment greatly over-estimated the importance of DrinkOrDie. They need to justify the tax-payer money they are throwing out of the window: see some interesting file [cryptome.org].
Plans for your stay? (Score:5, Interesting)
When you get out, you will have had 33 months of basically no real responsibilities. If you find a nice, cushy prison, you can get some real work done. Are you going to use this time to make your life when you get out of jail better?
Also, when you get out, what do you plan to do? Something in the computer field, or do you plan to change your path when you get out? If I were in your place, I think I'd just get fed up with computers and become a florist or something.
Was there any warning? (Score:3, Interesting)
Questions about the "busting" process and advice. (Score:3, Interesting)
How hard did the DOJ interrogators push to get names of accomplices and if you cooperated, did that reduce your sentencing?
What advice would you give to someone who finds themselves in a similar situation? e.g. ( Hire a good pre-trial lawyer. Flee the country. )
I assume that the DOJ confiscated all your servers and went through the logs and examined all the user accounts and IP addresses. What happened to the "small time users" or did the DOJ not bother to track them down?
Lastly, in hindsight if you had to do it all over again. What would you have done to stay under the radar and not get busted?
What are you doing to prepare for prison? (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you taken any steps to help yourself assimilate? Meaning, anything physical (e.g. self defense), thing mental (prepared a reading list) and/or things spiritual (e.g. Chuck Colson's pfm.org) ?
Have you set any goals for what you want to accomplish while you're on the inside? How about goals for when you're released?
Re:Was it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Take the syllogism: "All New Yorkers must be Americans."
(So are you saying that if you're not from
New York, you're not from America?)
Given that the guy's an MIT student, we can safely assume with a reasonable degree of assurance that he's a smart cookie.
"All MIT students are smart enough to understand the consequences of illegal actions. He was an MIT student. Therefore, he's smart enough to understand the consequences."
The contraverse is not neccessarily true. Don't twist his logic like that. It fails.
Re:Was it worth it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Next, you'll be telling us that Computer Operators in general are semi-skilled monkeys in white coats trained to mount tapes and plug in disk packs.
Oh, wait! That's the truth, as anybody who was an 'operator' (i.e. myself) back in the days of 9 track tape can tell you.
'Sysadmins' are the janitors of Information Technology, no matter HOW much the current crop of adolescents looks up to them like boys in the past admired riverboat pilots and railroad engineers.
Patents and DMCA (Score:3, Informative)
Why do people copy, or want to copy, proprietary software illegally when they can legally obtain copies of Free and Open Source software more easily
Because the features essential for their work are patented, and the patent holders do not license the patents for use in free software. That's one reason why GIMP doesn't support CMYK, Pantone, or GIF writing and why the LAME project does not distribute binaries.
Or because the proprietary software uses a proprietary encrypted file format. In the United States, it's a crime [cornell.edu] to distribute software that decrypts a proprietary encrypted file format [cmu.edu].
Re:Pirating software is like... (Score:4, Insightful)
The answer is a resounding NO. If you rebroadcast their material, substituting your own ads, you have profited by infringing copyright. Motive in copyright infringment cases is very, very important. If you do not profit from infringement, the violation is not as serious as if you gain profit. Additionally, profitting from copyright infringement leaves you liable for damages equal to or greater than the profit you gained by infringing someone else's copyright.
It's not theft. It is copyright infringement. They are two dramatically different things, although the major software and media companies would have you believe otherwise.
Again, you are incorrect. If you produce goods similar to, or in many cases as identical to (in any case where patent, trademark, or copyright do not apply), someone else's and place your own trademark upon it, you have done nothing wrong. If, however, you place another's trademark upon it (implying that it was produced by the other manufacturer), you are guilty of trademark infringement. Alternatively, if you use a patented invention and do not pay patents to the patentor, you are liable for patent infringement claims. Similarly, if you duplicate a copyright work, you are not guilty of stealing from the author; you are guilty of infringing upon his right to control copying of his work.
The only reasons one could proffer the arguments above, that I can see, is 1) simply lack of education regarding U.S. law. I am not a lawyer, but I do believe I have a sound understanding of laws where they affect my day-to-day life. There are also 2) those paid to have that viewpoint. Hilary Rosen and others are paid part to promote these views of copyright infringement as theft. To promote an alternative view disagrees with the corporate agenda, and this disagreement would most likely eliminate their sources of income.
The fundamental problem with the thinking comes about because of the nature of what we're dealing with. Information is trivially reproduced, even when spoken. I suggest you study the history of copyright, to fully understand the nature of the laws. Today, we have a society where such information can be reproduced for (effectively) free. It's my personal opinion that Copyright is a doomed concept. However, we have not come up with a suitable reward yet for authorship to promote the science and arts that is not Copyright. Until we do, we will be stuck with this system that so obviously maps so poorly to reality.
There are certainly cases where the line between copyright infringement and theft is very blurred. For instance, if one breaks into a computer system and makes copies of information that were never intended to be made public. One has obviously violated copyright in that case, since U.S. law regards all authorship as copyrighted. Is it theft? In that case, I don't know; just as "breaking and entering" is considered "breaking and entering" (vandalism and trespass, if you prefer), if you don't steal anything for entering, but instead copy important documents, you've not stolen the documents, but made copies in violation of the wishes and reasonable expectation of the holder. The company or individual never intended to release the information to the public for profit (the point of copyright), the information was reasonably expected to remain private, and consent for this action was implicitly denied. In that regard, information violation seems more analogous to rape than theft: one has expressly violated the wishes of the holder of the information, taken nothing from them, but used them in a way inconsistent with their will. Copyright infringement on released goods, however, is similar to using a hooker for her intended purpose, but refusing to pay her. One has no implied contract, the other does. The penalties for rape are spelled out in the law, and include government-sanctioned prison time. The penalties for not paying your prostitute are the same as for not paying any service person: if your bill is not paid, you are sent to a collection agency, which then may take you to court to seek damages. It is (often) not treated the same as theft, since the "goods" (a service) are intangible, you have not deprived anyone of anything except time invested (which has value, but is again intangible and cannot be stolen) and potential profits. In some cases, particularly where the one infringed upon believes the intent was to defraud (once again, fraud law, not theft), they may seek criminal remedies. Most don't, though, because by so doing they are depriving themselves of a potential customer, getting bad press, and preventing the infringer from quickly paying the damages by depriving him/her of income.
Note that the paragraph above is entirely my opinion, and not really part of my initial refutation. I simply think that most software companies and authors would do well to remember that they simply sell their time for money. Their "product" is a service, and our current model of copyright attempts to treat information as a tangible good, which it is not. Those prepared to acknowledge this fact (as Microsoft seems to be doing with their license renewal services) will probably do OK as the economy transforms to take advantage of new realities. Those who insist on treating intangible as tangible will eventually go out of business as realists (the customers) begin to treat it as the intangible, inherently value-less thing it is.
A few links for you to peruse:
Fundamentally, it's a thorny issue with a whole lot of ramifications. Those who attempt to cast copyright infringement as a black and white case of theft are intentionally misleading you as to what is going on. It is its own legal domain with its own remedies and penalties, entirely aside from traditional laws regarding property theft. There is no such thing as "intellectual property": there are patents, trademarks, and copyrights which give rights to works based upon a well-established but sorely broken legal framework.