Hacks & Cracks/Hacks_and_Cracks.iso/hackersclub/km/news/1997/august/news5.txt

Text File | 1998-03-25 | 12.9 KB | 240 lines

Where do you want to Pirate today?
by Adam L. Penenberg

       Most people at work just call him "the tech guy." After a
       mundane morning of rebooting computers, reconfiguring
       desktops and shoring up the company's firewalls, he heads to
       his office, where he cracks open a can of Mountain Dew.

       On his desk, there's a package and a note from his
       supervisor: Install new server software on all of the
       company's PCs. Since the software is a brand new
       release--costing his company thousands of dollars--he
       realizes he's just bagged a big one. He grins fiendishly,
       unwraps the box, extracts the disks and--WHAMMO!--morphs
       into his favorite cyberhero.

       He's no longer merely "the tech guy," the geeky middle
       manager with the encroaching weight problem, wife, mortgage,
       two kids and years of impending orthodontia. He is now, or,
       rather his "nick" is, "Mutant," but it could just as easily
       be "Vader" or "Tease" or "Techczar," and he's a big-time
       software pirate. He traverses the world of "warez," as in
       softwares, a virtual arena rife with videogame-like
       rivalries and online monikers, ftp sites and ratios,
       "release" groups, "couriers" and "lamers," code crackers and
       stolen credit card numbers--and every piece of software ever
       released.

       Mutant is the first link in an electric chain of
       distribution that winds its way through the warez world, a
       highly structured, hierarchical net-based community that,
       according to BSA, the Business Software Alliance, costs
       software makers $4 billion every year--one-third the world
       piracy total. Globally, as the watchdog organization's web
       site reminds visitors, that translates into $355 a second,
       $21,300 a minute, more than a million an hour and $215
       million a week. SPA, the Software Publishers Association,
       weighs in with its estimate that $5 million worth of
       software is cracked and posted to the Internet every day.

       Although other forms of piracy, like the sale of CD-ROMs
       stuffed with hundreds of pirated programs in China to stores
       in Poland stocked with 100 percent pirated merchandise, may
       get more press and drain twice as much away from industry
       coffers, it's the net potential that chills software
       executives. As BSA Vice President Bob Kruger states on the
       BSA web site, the growth in the number of Internet users is
       creating a huge, borderless market for pirated goods:
       "Instead of reaching the limited number of people who can
       crowd around a card table at a flea market, pirates can
       peddle their wares to tens of millions of online users
       around the world."

       Which is why you'd think that the antipiracy divisions of
       these organizations, not to mention those of large software
       companies like Microsoft and Novell and even the Federal
       Bureau of Investigation, would be pursuing these guys
       through vaporous trails of Hotmail accounts and ever-mutable
       site addresses. But they're not. They can't. Not until the
       law is changed.

       "If I want registered programs, I get them," brags a warez
       wiz with the kind of courage only anonymity can buy--a phony
       E-mail address: [e-mail]. "If I want the
       latest versions of software, I get them. If I want to buy a
       Pentium MMX200 using stolen credit cards, I do that, too.
       Because I can get anything I want over the Internet."

                 The warez world has an ethos all its own,

       avitriolic culture oddly bereft of capital letters, where
       streetslang has been neatly woven into the
       lexicon--"school"is spelled "skewl;" "the" is "da"(as in "da
       warez scene") and anyone not on the inside is a "lamer."
       Skirmishes between rivals abound, decided not with guns and
       knives but by computer antics like taking over rival ftp
       sites, sabotaging chat channels and spamming one another.
       You can even read about their exploits onRCN--it stands for
       the Reality Check Network--the pirates'homespun online zine.
       There are two main parts to the scene: release groups,
       which, since they locate and crack the software, sit at the
       top of the warez world, and couriers, who ferry the pilfered
       product to the masses. Some of the better-known release
       groups are, for software applications, Mortality, Pentium
       and Premiere, and for games, Class and Hybrid. Some of the
       bigger couriers include Razor 1911, Motiv8, Amnesia and
       Fate. Each organization sports a president, vice president,
       a council and a staff, including site ops and recruiters.

       As for the MPEG-3 crowd (see Song Pirates, by Adam
       L.Penenberg), all those music pirates that have proliferated
       over the net in recent months, they are strictly bottom
       feeders,"lamers" that most major pirate organizations
       dismissas rank amateurs, as are all the pirate wanna-bes
       hanging out on Internet Relay Chat, trying to break into the
       coolest warez groups. And, like the personal computer
       market, the scene is broken down into "pcwarez"
       and"macwarez," the vast PC world offering dozens of new
       cracked software products every day while the Mac scene is
       smaller, more elite, containing individuals who are as much
       into the Cupertino mystique as they are the technology. In
       fact, the latest word out in the Macwarez scene is that
       pirates shouldn't copy Apple's OS8--Mac's latest operating
       system--they should buy it, since Apple so desperately needs
       the money. Think of them as pirates with a conscience.

       Warez the beef According to Sandra Sellers, a member of
       SPA's antipiracy brigade, criminal prosecution under current
       copyright law requires that the defendant have received
       commercial or financial gains (See Cracking loopholes).
       Although there have been recent attempts in Congress to deal
       with net based piracy--for instance, Senator Patrick Leahy
       recently introduced a bill to close this not-for-profit
       loophole in the law--until government acts, pirated software
       is going to flow freely, unfettered over the Internet,
       available to anyone who wants it. For those involved in
       warez, it's about things other than money: speed; conquest;
       the high of defeating rival couriers. Mostly, it's about
       having your 15 seconds of fame.

       Although pirates admit their biggest fear is being rousted
       out of bed by the FBI, they have little to worry about.
       January's Cyber Strike, the FBI's most ambitious Internet
       antipiracy act to date, when the Feds raided businesses and
       homes in half a dozen states, seizing computers, modems and
       illegally copied software, resulted in no arrests. Why no
       jail time? The pirates can thank ex-MIT student David
       LaMacchia, who, in 1995, was charged with running two
       bulletin boards off his university's server that offered an
       estimated $1 million worth of software for free download.
       Ruling that no commercial motive existed, the judge, from
       the U.S. District Court in Boston, threw the case out.
       Prosecutors then tried charging LaMacchia with wire fraud,
       but they lost on that, too, so he walked.

       But perhaps people like LaMacchia are doing the industry a
       favor. Although software makers moan about how much the
       warez scene is costing them, warez junkies claim they are
       actually spurring demand for quality software. (See
       Corporate pirates.)

        "We are the best marketing system the software industry has
                                 ever had,"

       said Klingon, a 10-year veteran of the warez scene. "Many of
       us work at companies where we are the ones who decide what
       software our company buys. So it's important that we sample
       software, and believe me, if the software is good, we buy
       it. Plus a whole generation of kids who can't afford to pay
       for the latest software release get to learn about it
       anyway, which increases computer literacy. There's no way
       they can claim that every piece of pirated warez would
       translate into a sale for them. To them it means money, but
       to us it's just hard drive space, a hobby, like stamp
       collecting or yachting."

       Type "warez" in a search engine and you'll see it's one
       popular pastime, international in scope, with sites offering
       everything from Apple's Greatest Hits to the collected works
       of Microsoft (Windows NT, all the betas for Windows 97 and
       even advance versions of Windows 98) to lists of cracked
       software equipped with User IDs, registration and serial
       numbers, to even lists of stolen credit cards, which can be
       used to purchase more sophisticated hardware. If SPA's
       Sellers had her way, net-based software pirates would walk
       the plank. But she will not only have to wait for a change
       in law; she will also need an increase in her budget, which
       is about $3 million a year, 90 percent of it earmarked for
       software audits. This is when companies are investigated for
       making unauthorized copies, usually in the interests of
       cutting costs. Ironically, American business, which has
       helped fuel the legitimate software industry, is more
       vulnerable to antipiracy enforcement than pirates are.

       15 seconds of fame So what happened to that software Mutant
       got from his supervisor? He uploaded it to a site maintained
       by a release group with which he's affiliated. Within
       minutes, a"cracker" grabbed a copy of the software off the
       site and got to work, expunging any serial numbers that
       could be used to trace the software back to the company--
       and, ultimately, to Mutant. Any encryption or watermarks
       were likewise eradicated and the software was compressed.
       The cracker even went so far as to supply a user ID,
       registration number and the release group's imprimatur, its
       cyberlogo: This guarantees quality control. No group wants a
       rep for shoddy merchandise.

       Meanwhile, couriers were watching, waiting. When the cracked
       software hit the release sites, they started moving it to
       any and all sites they are affiliated with, the idea being
       to redistribute the software to as many places as possible,
       as quickly as possible. Sometimes "racing" occurs, which
       means rival couriers are upping the same release onto the
       same site at the same time. But this is generally frowned
       upon, since it can screw up a release. Word also got out on
       IRC and through private warez chat networks, or via E-mail
       or even word-of-mouth.

       Within hours, this expensive, proprietary software that took
       years to concoct, design and manufacture became available,
       free for the asking, over the Internet. No money changed
       hands, no profit was made. Because for those involved in
       warez, it's about things other than money: speed; conquest;
       the high of defeating rival couriers by uploading a fresh
       piece of software to a site seconds before they can; being
       the first release group to crack a new program; maintaining
       a site with the largest warez cache. Like winning a pinball
       tournament or turning over the scoreboard on Missile
       Command. It's about ego and ephemeral glory, about being
       "the man" in a world that doesn't even really exist: the
       Internet. But mostly, it's about having your 15 secondsof
       fame.

       "Some guy says, 'Boo hoo, I'm a bigpirate,' and everyone
       fears him, but then he leaves the house and he's a nobody,"
       says EveryPirate, an ISP manager by day whou sed to be
       heavily into warez. "If they can't make it in real life,
       they get into warez to try and be cool. It's like living in
       a big city without being able to see what people looklike
       and judging them only by their typed words and technical
       expertise."

       Look around the office at your Mutants. Note that meek
       college student on work study helping out with the computer
       network or that balding system's administrator. Keep your
       eye on that software beta-tester with the bruise-colored
       bags under his eyes. Watch that graphic artist with his
       laser-quick mouse work. Take a good, hard look at your boss.
       One of them may be leading the secret life of a software
       pirate.



       disclaimer: This article is from an issue of Forbes magazine.
       Better than most national media attempts to delve into the warez
       scene and they do mention a few of the bigger groups. Like Pentium <g>.
       Still, not a bad effort overall.

       graphic modification from warez.com by nitemare