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Shane Pitman, leader of the warez group Razor 1911: life after prison (2005)

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Re: Shane Pitman, leader of the warez group Razor 1911: life after prison (2005)

#121

Post by narag »

codezero wrote: post #62

I was a member of Razor back in the day. I noticed that he mentioned he wouldn't say how he got Quake released before release date. I can share how I participated in an early release: I had befriended the manager of Electronics Boutique because I bought frequently there for many years prior to getting into pirating games. He would give me games that arrived but weren't on the shelf yet. From there, it was uploaded to…

I was a member of Razor back in the day.

I vaguely remember an intrincate big ascii logo, always wondered what 1911 meant.

Re: Shane Pitman, leader of the warez group Razor 1911: life after prison (2005)

#123

Post by thomastjeffery »

abigail95 wrote: post #19

Why do people like him think copyright laws are bad and made by rich people, but also support open source software, which relies on the same copyright laws to exist. If hes an anarchist then fine, but it looks like he wants laws that benefit him and not people that actually write software. I read the whole thing and I still don't know why he did it. He says there was no money incentive and his work had no impact on p…

Copyright is about monopoly. That's the antithesis of freedom.

Copyleft is a hack that turns monopoly inside-out. All for one, and one for all.

Without copyright, copyleft would be fundamentally broken. But that isn't the whole picture: anything under a permissive license like MIT or Apache2 would see the same result they implement today. Those are part of "open source", too.

And we could certainly come up with a different system to maintain copyleft: we could make regulation that preserves a user's right to edit their software, and bans practices like DRM and intentional incompatibility. That's what I imagine the "open source movement" would look like if it were brought to an extreme logical conclusion.

Re: Shane Pitman, leader of the warez group Razor 1911: life after prison (2005)

#124

Post by codezero »

narag wrote: post #121
codezero wrote: post #62

I was a member of Razor back in the day. I noticed that he mentioned he wouldn't say how he got Quake released before release date. I can share how I participated in an early release: I had befriended the manager of Electronics Boutique because I bought frequently there for many years prior to getting into pirating games. He would give me games that arrived but weren't on the shelf yet. From there, it was uploaded to…

I was a member of Razor back in the day. I vaguely remember an intrincate big ascii logo, always wondered what 1911 meant.

I don't think I even knew back then (didn't care!) but from Wikipedia it's interesting!

> "The group was founded as Razor 2992 by Doctor No, Insane TTM and Sector9 in Norway in October 1985 as a Commodore 64 software cracking group. Shortly after, they changed from 2992 to 1911 which translates to 777 in hexadecimal."

Next question might be what is 2992? My best guess is it's b00b in little endian hex?

Re: Shane Pitman, leader of the warez group Razor 1911: life after prison (2005)

#125

Post by twodave »

nunobrito wrote: post #54

20 years later I still use a copy of the Starcraft I from them. The original version requires a CD and a CD drive just to boot. Maybe it could be emulated but as a kid I wouldn't have money to buy the original in my country. Blizzard eventually made a young kid happy, I've later bought the games to support them.

Still remember my original SC cd key from installing it on all my friends computers back in the day :) 4015-29374-2985 probably will always be rattling around there somewhere. Useless information taking up space.

Re: Shane Pitman, leader of the warez group Razor 1911: life after prison (2005)

#126

Post by GuB-42 »

antisthenes wrote: post #102
marcodiego wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...adults got sent to jail and had their lives ruined." I'm sure it is a polemic terrain, but I really wonder if this is fair. Eager to hear opinions.

I think in general it is fair, but the very arbitrary 18/not-18 cutoff doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I consider (myself) and most people I know to have been children at 18 and up to several years older than that. But it's not like people wear their "maturity" levels on their forehead, so the justice system has to make an arbitrary cutoff somewhere. Not saying it's ideal, and individual circumstances have to be c…

It is not just the justice system. After 18, you are given full citizen rights, but you also get the responsibilities that go with it. It is crude but fair.

There are exceptions, adults may have guardians and are effectively considered minors if they have mental problems for instance, and in some cases, children can be emancipated. But these are usually for extreme cases.

Re: Shane Pitman, leader of the warez group Razor 1911: life after prison (2005)

#127

Post by mardifoufs »

narag wrote: post #121
codezero wrote: post #62

I was a member of Razor back in the day. I noticed that he mentioned he wouldn't say how he got Quake released before release date. I can share how I participated in an early release: I had befriended the manager of Electronics Boutique because I bought frequently there for many years prior to getting into pirating games. He would give me games that arrived but weren't on the shelf yet. From there, it was uploaded to…

I was a member of Razor back in the day. I vaguely remember an intrincate big ascii logo, always wondered what 1911 meant.

I always assumed it's a reference to the 1911 pistol... but it doesn't make a lot of sense when combined with razor haha.

Re: Shane Pitman, leader of the warez group Razor 1911: life after prison (2005)

#128

Post by ttoinou »

mlyle wrote: post #116
nvarsj wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never made sense for copyright violations to be a criminal offense.

Naaah. If you're doing it for profit, and running a big duplicator farm or selling things online, it can make sense for it to be a criminal offense. But the laws are not crafted that well.

If it's morally right to do for free then it's also morally right to do in exchange of money

Re: Shane Pitman, leader of the warez group Razor 1911: life after prison (2005)

#129

Post by codezero »

mardifoufs wrote: post #127
narag wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a member of Razor back in the day. I vaguely remember an intrincate big ascii logo, always wondered what 1911 meant.

I always assumed it's a reference to the 1911 pistol... but it doesn't make a lot of sense when combined with razor haha.

Pretty sure I assumed the same thing at the time without asking :)

Re: Shane Pitman, leader of the warez group Razor 1911: life after prison (2005)

#130

Post by hippich »

codezero wrote: post #62

I was a member of Razor back in the day. I noticed that he mentioned he wouldn't say how he got Quake released before release date. I can share how I participated in an early release: I had befriended the manager of Electronics Boutique because I bought frequently there for many years prior to getting into pirating games. He would give me games that arrived but weren't on the shelf yet. From there, it was uploaded to…

If you don't mind me asking, what motivated you? Were you afraid of law enforcement ever catching up? Was is just pure scene cred it even that did not matter much?
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