Chart of piracy comparisons link PIRACY CHART:
Compare software, music, and video losses.
Where do you want to pirate today?
By Adam L. Penenberg

M ost 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:
BlackMan@Pirate.for.ever.gov. "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

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 insideis a "lamer." Skirmishes
between rivals abound, decidednot with guns and knives but by computer
antics like taking overrival ftp sites, sabotaging chat channels and
spamming oneanother. You can even read about their exploits on RCN--it
stands for the Reality Check Network--the pirates'homespun online
zine.

There are two main parts to the scene: releasegroups, which, since
they locate and crack the software, sit atthe top of the warez world,
and couriers, who ferry the pilferedproduct to the masses. Some of the
better-known release groupsare, for software applications, Mortality,
Pentium and Premiere,and for games, Class and Hybrid. Some of the
bigger couriersinclude Razor 1911, Motiv8, Amnesia and Fate. Each
organizationsports 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 overthe 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 onInternet Relay Chat, trying to break into the
coolest warezgroups.
And, like the personal computer market, thescene is broken down into
"pcwarez" and"macwarez," the vast PC world offering dozens of
newcracked software products every day while the Mac scene issmaller,
more elite, containing individuals who are as much intothe Cupertino
mystique as they are the technology. In fact, thelatest word out in
the Macwarez scene is that pirates shouldn'tcopy Apple's OS8--Mac's
latest operating system--they should buyit, 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 gotfrom his supervisor? He
uploaded it to a site maintained by arelease group with which he's
affiliated. Within minutes, a"cracker" grabbed a copy of the software
off the siteand got to work, expunging any serial numbers that could
be usedto trace the software back to the company--and, ultimately,
toMutant. Any encryption or watermarks were likewise eradicated andthe
software was compressed. The cracker even went so far as tosupply a
user ID, registration number and the release group'simprimatur, its
cyberlogo: This guarantees quality control. Nogroup wants a rep for
shoddy merchandise.

Meanwhile, couriers were watching, waiting.When the cracked software
hit the release sites, they startedmoving it to any and all sites they
are affiliated with, the ideabeing 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
thesame site at the same time. But this is generally frowned
upon,since it can screw up a release. Word also got out on IRC
andthrough private warez chat networks, or via E-mail or
evenword-of-mouth.

Within hours, this expensive, proprietarysoftware that took years to
concoct, design and manufacturebecame available, free for the asking,
over the Internet. Nomoney changed hands, no profit was made.

Because for those involved in warez, it's aboutthings other than
money: speed; conquest; the high of defeatingrival couriers by
uploading a fresh piece of software to a siteseconds before they can;
being the first release group to crack anew program; maintaining a
site with the largest warez cache.Like winning a pinball tournament or
turning over the scoreboardon Missile Command. It's about ego and
ephemeral glory,about being "the man" in a world that doesn't
evenreally 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 andhe's a nobody," says EveryPirate, an
ISP manager by day whoused to be heavily into warez. "If they can't
make it inreal life, they get into warez to try and be cool. It's
likeliving in a big city without being able to see what people
looklike and judging them only by their typed words and
technicalexpertise."

Look around the office at your Mutants. Notethat meek college student
on work study helping out with thecomputer network or that balding
system's administrator. Keepyour eye on that software beta-tester with
the bruise-coloredbags under his eyes. Watch that graphic artist with
hislaser-quick mouse work. Take a good, hard look at your boss.

One of them may be leading the secret life of a software pirate.