Forum: Complaint & Debate


Subject: Anatomy of a warez bust (how to stop illegal software distribution)

Nosfiratu opened this issue on Mar 30, 2001 ยท 42 posts


Jim Burton posted Mon, 21 May 2001 at 9:09 AM

Like most of the warez threads, this one is slowly falling apart, but let me add my two cents worth before it fades away: I've got a couple of nice people who sent me links whan they see people warezing the stuff I sell, but a lot of them are those more-or-less ownerless message drops where people say "I'm intrested in trading something for other for Supermodel Vickie" What are you going to do about that? The site is just a blind message drop, the guy sending the message isn't doing anything illegal until he actually does it - this is still a free county to the extent you can say "I'm thinking about robbing a bank" and get away with it (just don't say "I'm thinking about doing something to the President - they will jump on that!) (and the FBI may already be knocking on my door for that line!) You may be able to get the site closed down, but another just will pop up. What bothers me more about Warezs is just another example of the new mentality, it is O.K. to lie and cheat as long as you aren't caught! And much as I'd love to see it, somehow I can't see the FBI breaking down somebodies door over warez, they are more intrested in the threat to the President I didn't actually make above, after all. Years ago I used a nice graphic viewing program called CShow, it was pretty widely used (it was even used on one of the space shuttle flights), I was the first guy to pay for the shareware copy, the seller told me. This is how the who warez thing got rolling, not paying for shareware, methinks. How many of you have paid for WinZip? !!! Read the licence next time you use it. Let he who is without guilt cast the first stone... (and all that stuff!) ;-) But warez still isn't right, of course, I'm not trying to say that at all. And we should try to stamp it out, and the Napster stuff and related stuff as well, and if you can't afford it, don't use it!