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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)

#171

Post by eek2121 »

Method5440 wrote: post #157
hippich wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

As a 15yo in the mid-90’s I was a member of and courier for a group called FaTe. Did it all over a 28.8k and later 56k modem. It was so much fun and I never once considered actually getting caught - it never felt real and the friends made along the way were worth it, at least in my case. Went to college and gave it all up. Studied a science but came back to IT and get paid today off of the skills I started learning b…

Hope you guys are all using VPNs. I wasn't busted for piracy, but almost lost my freedom (even though I was a minor) for other computer related 'stuff'. I will neglect to say anything more for 'reasons'. :)

IIRC the statute of limitations for the CFAA only has a statute of limitations of 2 years, but there are so many other laws outside the CFAA (and copyright, etc.) that you can violate.

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

#172

Post by danwills »

teodorlu wrote: post #4
mytailorisrich wrote: post #2

Very talented guys in the demo/cracktro scene. Plenty to watch on YouTube.

Care to recommend a video to start with?

I mostly follow the PC scene, and I'd recommend checking out demos by Fairlight&CNCD, MFX, Kewlers, Orange, Still, Quite, Logicoma, and if you're into those then check out other groups that get 'greets' from these ones (a section of many demoscene productions where groups greet each other by name). Pretty much everything can be found on pouet.net.

Here's a YT link to one of my favourites: 'Number One Another One' by Fairlight and CNCD:

https://youtu.be/LyXwmt0EZig

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

#173

Post by Lapsa »

malermeister wrote: post #5
teodorlu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to recommend a video to start with?

If you're talking about the demoscene in general, here's demos sorted by popularity on one of the most important community sites: https://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?order=views Most of them have links to yt videos.

Future Crew - Second Reality (1993)

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

#174

Post by tyingq »

marcodiego wrote: post #84
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…

"...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.

At least for the US, the life ruining part is the very low barrier access to background checks. Unlike the 1980's, where only huge employers could look into your past, now everyone can see everything you've ever been arrested for, even if you hadn't been convicted. It's very difficult to find any employment at all now, and even harder to find something that isn't minimum wage.

As I understand it, in other places, like Australia, employers don't do a background check exactly. They send the job description and the candidate info to a government agency that just answers back "yes" or "no". So that, for example, a hacking conviction might disqualify you for some jobs, but not ALL jobs. And you have some idea beforehand the kind of jobs you might have success passing for. The offense is very specifically weighed against the job description, and not just some HR person's delicate sensibilities.

To me, barring some extreme exceptions, it's not fair for punishment to extend beyond what you were sentenced to. There's also peripheral issues, like the plea bargain system, which gives prosecutors lots of leverage to "convict" people that are either innocent, or guilty of a lesser crime than they plea to.

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

#175

Post by twic »

kingforaday wrote: post #136
jsz0 wrote: post #96

When I first got in the Internet back in the 90s I thought warez was pronounced like Juarez the town in Mexico. To this very day when I see the word that's what it sounds like in my mind.

This to me feels like the folks that call their router a rooter.

The little box that does the internet is sending IP packets along appropriate routes; it's routing, so it's a router. The name is pronounced the same way as "route" [1].

The tool that cuts grooves in wood, well, it seems that's from "root" meaning to dig, [2], so one would think it ought to be pronounced the same way as that, but things aren't always that simple.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbwPKIPVcPw

[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rout#Etymology_5

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

#176

Post by EvanAnderson »

tyingq wrote: post #174
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.

At least for the US, the life ruining part is the very low barrier access to background checks. Unlike the 1980's, where only huge employers could look into your past, now everyone can see everything you've ever been arrested for, even if you hadn't been convicted. It's very difficult to find any employment at all now, and even harder to find something that isn't minimum wage. As I understand it, in other places, lik…

Background check companies in the US scrape public access government websites, too. There’s a great chance that if you have the same name as someone listed on those websites and in the same geography you’re going to get false matches. An Evan Anderson close to my home was involved in a hit-skip car crash and it has come up in searches that have been done on me. Fortunately I was told about it and able to produce documentation that showed it was a different guy. I’m lucky.

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

#177

Post by mlyle »

lapinot wrote: post #158
mlyle wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a breach of contract. Says your own novel legal theory, which has as much basis as trying to tell the cop that's pulled me over that I'm a sovereign citizen. > They should repay the damaged counterpart if they can prove they had a sales contract in place. We give monopolies on copying to encourage production of high quality yet easily-copyable work. If someone can just immediately start selling the good withou…

> It's the free-rider problem. Uuh. Free software would be to differ. Commoditization of intellectual property enable people to do useful productive work as a hobby. And everyone gets encouraged to work with the strongest stream collaboratively.

Free software is one option that is enabled by current copyright. In many cases, there's sufficient incentive ("fame" or marketing, lowered shared maintenance burdens, etc) to make it happen. I have a ton of diff that I've gotten into free software and have had maintainer roles and lead projects.

But I don't exactly think you're going to make a blockbuster movie or AAA game as free software. Some things cost money in a way that any other incentives aren't going to pay it back.

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

#178

Post by 13of40 »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #176
tyingq wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least for the US, the life ruining part is the very low barrier access to background checks. Unlike the 1980's, where only huge employers could look into your past, now everyone can see everything you've ever been arrested for, even if you hadn't been convicted. It's very difficult to find any employment at all now, and even harder to find something that isn't minimum wage. As I understand it, in other places, lik…

Background check companies in the US scrape public access government websites, too. There’s a great chance that if you have the same name as someone listed on those websites and in the same geography you’re going to get false matches. An Evan Anderson close to my home was involved in a hit-skip car crash and it has come up in searches that have been done on me. Fortunately I was told about it and able to produce docu…

I had a similar thing happen a few years ago when I bought my house. There was a guy the same age as me with the same name who had defaulted on his mortgage, and I had to sign a statement saying I wasn't him. The funny thing was, I looked up the house he abandoned, and it was basically identical to the house I was buying, down to the ornamental plum tree in the front yard. Presumably got built in the same wave of development in the 70s.

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

#179

Post by whatshisface »

Raydovsky wrote: post #166
worrycue wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the penalties of many laws weren’t made with fairness in mind but deterrence. The penalty goes up until crime rate comes down. It makes sense I guess, it’s not meant to be a trade - much less a fair one - but to stop/reduce crime. Edit: That said, super heavy penalties for what are often victimless crimes might not be good for society overall - might be better to allow the existing offence rate for that crime…

Yet , countries with the highest crime rates have the toughest punishments.

That is one of the clearest examples of both causal directions being plausible.

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

#180

Post by 13of40 »

codezero wrote: post #132
hippich wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Initial motivation was being a teenager without enough money to buy all the new computer games coming out. From there, it was partly just excitement using new technology that was relevant to the scene (Linux, high speed networks, cool ANSI art). In general scene cred was a big motivator. I also ran a BBS, and being well known in the scene also meant that artists made you great art for your board for free, which was a…

When I was a kid, my dad worked for the government in a handful of fairly remote places, and even though I could dial in to places like TOTSE and The WELL, it cost a ton of money in long distance fees. As a result, there was always incentive to get access to 1-800 numbers that did things like give you a telnet prompt or a modem in a different city. I remember the first time I got access to a network that had internet connected hosts distributed around North America, and I sent an email across the country that arrived in the blink of an eye. When I saw that I was like, "Who the hell is paying for this...this dedicated high speed phone call that's probably been running nonstop since I was in kindergarten?" It didn't occur to me that by the late 80s and early 90s, a "phone call" was really more of a metaphysical fiction than anything else.
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