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

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191–200 of 231 posts

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

#191

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.

Is that true? Crime across the Islamic world is remarkably low despite many countries being much more unstable. East-Asia, another region with generally harsh punishments is very safe. Like, even large Chinese cities with over ten million citizens and incomes far below what you see in the West have very low crime rates. Not to speak of more comparable countries lke Singapore.

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

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the appeal, but this is a super dangerous precedent. If we ignore the law and allow juries to convict or acquit based on their personal preferences, what safety do you have when the public hates you but you've broken no law?

> what safety do you have when the public hates you but you've broken no law? How is that different from today?

In terms of capabilities, not at all! Juries can totally do this even today.

This is kinda what I was trying to point out: the precedent that juries should evaluate guilt before the law (instead of their own standards) is the main reason juries work as an institution.

Just as we can see the huge issues with other institutions failing (e.g. election certification breakdowns, bias in news, fraud in peer review), there is a risk that bypassing jury instructions can ruin that precedent on which the legal institution is built.

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

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is normal pronunciation outside of the US.

I've never heard anyone pronounce it as rooter in Australia.

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

#194

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?

Not who you asked. The reason was the juice. The excitement of sending stuff around the world before everyone else. I never cracked on x86 just a little bit with 6809. I was a courier in late 90s(anyone recall FlashFXP). Fall of 1999 is when isonews.com(some old schoolers here will remember this website) got their homepage owned by the FBI. I left the scene that day.

FlashFXP was insane! It's funny to think now a 1.2ish meg disk in 2 seconds between two servers seemed nuts and now I have almost 100Mbps to my house.

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

#195

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.

> I'm sure it is a polemic terrain, but I really wonder if this is fair.

None of it's fair.

A servile government, with license to use force/incarceration, bent on defending putrid industrial system that hordes as much rights for itself as it can? That has extended copyright to 70 years, by crook & by hook? The whole thing is a sham, a disgrace to the human spirit, a scourge upon the earth.

The damage numbers are all made up. These people get punishments exceeding those of violent crimes. It's all deeply unfair & unjust & immoral. The system debases itself by being a mean, cruel, unjust bastard with no remorse to adults. It's pathetic & weak & servile to the worst aspects of society (corporate cultures). Asshole Jack Valenti piece-of-shit RIAA lawyers & trashbag DRM systems are a heavy foot of injustice stomping down on the face of society, forever & ever. It's all woefully biased brutally against society & social possibility, for the greed of very few.

Alas there's seemingly next to no representation for the human cause. Patents & IP rights grow, & seemingly little curbs them, ever. The proprietarization of knowledge & intellect ever expands, a system unable unwilling & uninterested in checking the expansion of intellectual ownership. Fucking shit show man. Fucking awful. Fuck all this.

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

#196
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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] ht…

Not all North Americans pronounce "route" the same way. It's either like "rout" (as in rout an army) or "root".

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

#197
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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] ht…

> The name is pronounced the same way as "route"

There are multiple valid ways to pronounce that word across different localities :)

Here in Australia, it's commonly pronounced in a way that rhymes with "shout". Which is for the best, as "root" is local slang for sex, so calling a device a "rooter" will bring to light all sorts of connotations.

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

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is normal pronunciation outside of the US.

I've never heard anyone pronounce it as rooter in Australia.

I would hazard a guess then that perhaps (1) you are under 30 years of age; and (2) primarily hanging around with IT people who have learned US pronunciation.

While this may be emerging as a 'new norm' among younger and more IT-fluent crowd, it's historically abnormal in Australian English. For evidence, see for instance https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/route... ... noting that Aussie English follows UK English in nearly all matters, and that the Macquarie Dictionary (which is the reference dictionary of Australian English) does not, unfortunately, have a free online edition.

A fellow Aussie statement on the matter concurs with my take https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/thread/3yjjxp59#r7

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

#199

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…

Copyleft is a defensive measure in a hostile environment. If there were no copy laws at all then they wouldn't argue for them.

If copyleft means restricting freedoms on what you can do with software and preserving those rights on derivative works (GPL) - then 100% no, those people need copyright laws to enforce that.

With no copyright law I could take any GPL software, modify it, sell it as my own and nobody could force me to give up the code.

If copyleft means permissive (MIT) - then it's not a hostile environment. You are free to create and share permissive works with no hostility from anyone else.

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

#200
post #13

My childhood hero. Sad to read what he went through in prison. The warez scene is still active and there's no slowing down so this bust doesn't really mean shit. Shoutout to the OGs RELOADED, SKIDROW, RAZOR, PARADOX,CODEX.

ORiON, MYTH, CLASS, CORE, PARADiGM, Motiv8, TRPS, RiSC, PGC, and more.

Wrote about my experience here: https://medium.com/@merket/everything-i-know-about-founding-...

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