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TEXT_139.txt
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1997-05-27
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6KB
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118 lines
In Phil's world, warez dealers are thieves. In
warez world, the software companies are the
criminals.
"Most products you buy from a store can be
returned if you are unsatisfied," reads the
beautifully crafted Warez FAQ, on the Inner
Circle's Web site. "Software cannot." The Inner
Circle thus can claim to have a practical
motivation - providing "a place to find
something you might want to evaluate before
purchasing." All right. "I personally have bought
progs that I demo'd first from warez," declares
Clickety. "I have more warez than I could ever
hope to install on my poor drives. Tested a lot of
crap also that I was glad I didn't pay for -
deleted it right off the bat. I have recommended
software to clients based upon using a pirate
version at home."
"Software developers have families, and should
be able to support them," reads the Warez FAQ.
"We do advocate buying your own software if you
really like it and use it heavily," adds Mad
Hatter.
As Phil and his friends are well aware, the line
between piracy and ownership is very blurred.
For example, it's commonplace for 3-D
animators and modelers to use pirated, cracked,
or at least unlicensed copies of their office
software at home, for overtime or
experimentation. In some minds, it's even a
"necessary evil," a slightly arcane marketing
strategy, a rather reckless approach to branding
- look at Netscape. Indeed, many software
executives privately acknowledge that piracy -
especially the attention it brings to new
releases - can be a valuable way to develop
markets.
Novell's Martin Smith might disagree. He spends
"99.9 percent" of his time fighting piracy, and he
worries that the next generation of browsers
will seamlessly marry the Web with Usenet.
"The newsgroups will be a lot more accessible,"
he says, with something close to resignation,
"which is going to make the whole thing a lot
more widespread and give these guys a much
bigger market. There's not much we can do, other
than encourage ISPs not to take them."
The difficulty is that, once it's up, a Usenet post
can generally be canceled only by the author or a
sysop from the post's point of origin, "server
zero." Even if a cancel is issued, it takes time to
ripple across the network. A warez regular
would be able to grab the file before it was
vaped. Some servers refuse on principle to honor
cancels. "Even the most diehard warez hater in
news.admin.hierarchy would defend your right to
be safe from cancels," claims TAG. Many
commercial ISPs have taken the industry's
encouragement and dropped the warez groups,
but lots of free servers are carrying on. And
things aren't helped by the lack of a clear legal
framework. Imagine the scenario: a program that
belongs to a UScompany is uploaded via a
router in Canada to a server in South Africa,
where it is downloaded by a Norwegian operating
out of Germany using a US-based anonymous
remailer, then burnt onto a CD in the UK and sold
in Bulgaria. "How would you prosecute that
mess?" asks Smith. "It's a jurisdictional
nightmare."
And the profit pirates are getting more creative.
Smith cites the Web page of one warez guru,
offering a premium-line phone number: for $3 a
minute, you can listen to details about the best
warez FTP sites, their addresses, and their login
passwords. "Updated every three days for your
convenience," it declares. It also makes
provisions for those dialing from outside the US.
The selling of information that leads to illegal
use of information - a difficult case to
prosecute.
"Our strategy is to bring a critical mass of
prosecutions," says Smith. "We'll take out some
people who're downloading this material - the
gnats - and then we'll take out some of the
larger, more organized guys. The people who are
packaging it up and zipping it onto CD-ROMs."
Which might work in a world where software
was always bought on CD-ROM. But in pushing
ever deeper into electronic commerce, where
more and more real commercial software
(browsers, little applets) is being given out for
free, where the Internet is the ultimate
distribution network, this looks a little ropey.
Friction-free markets and friction-free piracy
run in tandem. The Inner Circle already has its
PGP-encoded giveaway mall in place.
Smith knows all this. There's just not much he
can do about it. "All it needs is one server in one
country where there are no laws to counter
copyright theft, and there are plenty who will -
the likes of Libya, Bulgaria, and Iran. One
country with a decent enough telephone
infrastructure is enough to undo a hundred busts
in the West." Even if laws are constitutional or
enforced, larger biases come into play. "Try
asking a Saudi policeman to arrest a Saudi
software pirate on behalf of an American
company. Forget it."