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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)

#201

Post by abigail95 »

wdhilliard wrote: post #117
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…

While it's possible that he did it for clout or as a FU to software companies, I think many people, including myself, pirated software in the early days of computing because the software itself was rare and cool. There were no demos back then to try software before you buy, and many people used software like Photoshop, Flash, 3D Max, etc for personal projects that made no profit. Even today, it's hard to justify payi…

I sell software, I wouldn't do it if I couldn't retain ownership of it.

I don't care how much work I put into it, I don't care how much money its worth. I don't care about its impact.

I create because it's mine and I control it. The hands that built it decide what happens to it.

I could paint the prettiest picture and then burn it forever and nobody has any right to stop me, no matter how many poor hobbiest art admirers wanted to see it.

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

#202

Post by abigail95 »

petsfed wrote: post #80
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…

I think his position is a little more nuanced than that. >The bottom line, what I did violated the laws governing copyrights. I don't agree with those laws 100%, but they were designed by people with lots of money in their pockets to keep lots of money in their pockets, so I doubt they're going to change for the better any time soon. This is why I'm a huge advocate for the open source community. I understood that to…

I'm sorry, I have no patience for "rich man bad" takes on copyright.

Copyright law protects the smallest against the biggest. If some company comes and steals my product and outspends me on marketing, how do I fight back without copyright law?

Say someone stole the book I wrote and passed it off as their own - how does open sourcing it help me?

The chief purpose of the DMCA was to clarify legal liability and penalties for digital copyright infringement brought on by the disruption of the internet. How does that keep anyone rich? Who is that taking money from? Who is made poorer because people are able to create and sell their own works in the manner of their choosing?

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

#203

Post by abigail95 »

soulofmischief wrote: post #25
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…

The heart of the copyleft movement is not to remove all government regulation. You can have a problem with copyright laws in their current form while still supporting the copyleft movement.

To make what this guy did legal would require overhauling 300 years of law.

It's a ridiculous position. Especially given the hypocrisy in supporting copyleft, which lets people distribute works gratis with heavy restrictions, and ripping off other peoples work who didn't want any part of that, while getting mad that people aren't following the copyleft restrictions.

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

#204

Post by abigail95 »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #123
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 dif…

> bans practices like DRM and intentional incompatibility

more restrictions on the road to copyright freedom

if restricting what people are allowed to do with software is bad, why does that make it acceptable to create more restirctions on what people can do with software.

once we have 1,000 pages of restrictions closing all the interop and drm loopholes - our software will truely be free

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

#205

Post by gradstudent »

vgeek wrote: post #82

https://punctumbooks.com/titles/warez-the-infrastructure-and... is a good read if anyone is interested in the mechanics of the scene.

What a great link!

Reading about the topsites really takes me back. STH, ET, FS, HDS. These were famous acronyms! It was hard to get an account and you had to work hard to keep it. As a courier, I remember ending up in all sorts of groups so I could "pre" (be the first to upload) new releases. It's nice too to re-read the Netmonkey Weekly Reports. This was a weekly scene 'zine that kept score and documented all the drama.

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

#206

Post by danman114 »

Loveaway wrote: post #69
malermeister wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh wow found one I still remember making big rounds around 2000. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObtPizPFMbo Graphic were insane and it has a really fun high energy vibe.

This was always special to me, especially as a metalhead- they managed to capture the emotion of this song / part of the song so well, tech and style, fantastically combined.

Always love how they timed the surprising animation of the mask at the end (maybe face, don’t remember right now) too a smile in time with the emotional lift at the end of the song…

Gotta watch it later in full blast! :D thanks for reminding me!

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

#207

Post by facet1ous »

Tbh it does seem he was bit naive of what he was doing at the time and of the consequences. He wasn’t just some rando out there cracking software for personal use - he should’ve expected the government would be going after and throwing the book at people like him. It’s puzzling he didn’t take security more seriously or just stopped doing it entirely earlier.

The shocking part for me though was reading about how he was put with violent offenders and experienced being sent to “the hole”. Like what the fuck? Does the federal prison system not separate white collar criminals from high security prisoners? Honestly insane.

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

#208

Post by wolverine876 »

orangepurple wrote: post #189
varispeed wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still. The corporate tax rate is way lower than personal tax. In my country some workers pay over 50% tax on their income, while corporation they work for pay 10% or less if they have good accountants.

Every US person pays for taxes on capital gains and income tax at some point and those taxes ain't zero for executives of large corporations. Not even close. This extreme focus on taxation of corporations is bizarre. Eventually corporate profits need to be used by people. Companies cannot buy houses and living properties for executives either unless there is a legitimate business purpose rolled in somehow. You can tr…

> Every US person pays for taxes on capital gains

Much of America never pays such taxes and has no such investments. About 40% (? IIRC) don't have $600 saved.

> taxes ain't zero for executives of large corporations

Taxes on wealthy are relatively low, in part because capital gains, the source of revenue for the wealthy, are taxed at a lower rate than income, the source of revenue for working class Americans.

> This extreme focus on taxation of corporations is bizarre.

I don't see the argument. Corporations pay relatively low taxes, and it has a large effect on other Americans who lack government services and have to pay more themselves to cover the corporations' share.

> You can try to bullshit the IRS but they will come down on you like a bag of bricks if you feed them a load of crap.

The GOP cut IRS enforcement to the bone, and it was restored only ~1 year ago.

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

#209

Post by wolverine876 »

nullc wrote: post #187
varispeed wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still. The corporate tax rate is way lower than personal tax. In my country some workers pay over 50% tax on their income, while corporation they work for pay 10% or less if they have good accountants.

In the US we've historically arranged thing so that the corporate tax rate + long term cap gains rate is approximately equal to the income tax rate. If the combined rates were much greater it would create an incentive against creating c-corps.

> If the combined rates were much greater it would create an incentive against creating c-corps.

Are you implying that sole proprieterships would be alternatives to C corps? Facebook would be a personal asset of Zuckerberg?

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

#210

Post by wolverine876 »

projektfu wrote: post #148
wolverine876 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Double taxation occurs when a corporation is subject to corporate tax and then pays a dividend, which is after tax, but counts as income to the investor. There are arguments to be made that this is fair or unfair. Even calling it double-taxation seems like BS. Generally, we tax at the point of exchange: income, sales, etc. Money moves around endlessly. It's taxed when the consumer pays the corporation (often twice!…

I don't disagree, but S-corporation profits are only taxed once, regardless of distribution, and C-corporation profits are taxed on the corporate tax bill even if distributed in a dividend to shareholders. It's a little peculiar.

It's the concept of a corporation as a fictional person that is source of the peculiarity. If it's a fictional person, with its own assets, income, and expenses, then it pays taxes. It serves real humans by providing a place they can safely pool their investment.

S corps are more extensions of a real human than separate fictional entities.

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