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The Pirate's Manifesto for 1994
-* RELEASED ON MAY 22 1994 *-
- Read this and learn the only real facts -
about the police, software companies,
and the hidden agenda of phone companies
Dear Fellow Pirates :
Well... it certainly is beginning to get kind of tiresome about all
the wienies that are trying to fuck up the pirate scene around the
world. But I think the time has come to spell out some simple info
to try to clue some folks into the big picture.
Let us first begin by talking about all the supposed rats that think
a phone call to SPA, CAAST, BSA or FAAST are going to bring about the
instant death of some bulletin board - YOU ARE SO FUCKING MISTAKEN.
These coalitions of software publishers are like a company. They make
money from all the software publishers who lamely join them hoping it
will make some form of difference to the amount of warez being spread.
They are wrong. Each of these lame organizations exist solely to make
money from the software publishers - think about it - if there were no
pirates than these organizations would have no reason to exist. Ok so
you ask how come we hear of them when a big bust occurs - well that is
exactly the only time you ever hear of them - when it is a major bust
that occurs. These organizations only bust bulletin boards where it
will make them money to do so. Look at the Rusty & Edie bust, do you
think they went after them because they were 'elite' ? No, they went
after them because they could sue their asses off and make money off
them. Look at any other genuine bust in the last four years and you
will find that the targets they decided to eliminate all had a solid
financial base against which to sue for $$$ Remember the pirate
system in California run by a doctor... lots of money there. Each
time there has been a real raid by the feds it has always turned out
that the system raided was worth $$$ to them. Face reality, court
cost are expensive. These organizations don't raid anyone just for the
hell of it. They pick their targets carefully so that when they win
in court they will get back $$$ from the targets. When was the last
time you ever heard of any 14 year old zit headed sysop with a 20 line
BBS being busted - it just never happens - cuz they know they can't sue
him or his parents. So there is simply no point trying to drag him into
court.
Now what about these supposed anonymous callers who try to rat on a BBS
by calling these organizations and providing information. Well in most
cases the organizations simply take the information, act polite and than
never do anything with the info. After all, anonymous info is not worth
shit to them. It simply serves to keep sysops scared - and fear is the
only weapon they have to keep pirate systems in check. Let's face it
dudes - with over 10,000 pirate BBS's in the United States alone there is
no way they could ever hope to kill all of them. So by means of fear they
try to control the pirate epidemic. But for every elite system that goes
down 10 new ones appear - so the organizations simply cannot win against
the pirates overwhelming numbers.
One of the problems that face the users who take time to try to rat on a
BBS is that things are not as anonymous for them as they thought. All
phones at SPA, CAAST, FAAST, BSA and others are monitored. All incoming
phone numbers are recorded. If some fools think that 1-800 phone numbers
do not record the incoming phone number than they are seriously mistaken.
All calls are tape recorded - they like maintaining the information they
receive on tape. Think about it for a sec. What is the value of voice
recordings ? A voice recording is like a fingerprint. With the use of
voice analysis they can accurately identify the caller if they should ever
want to check up on him/her and take them to court. A text file like this
is truly anonymous - no one will ever know who typed it. A voice recording
of this same information would absolutely identify myself. So the point
of this little paragraph is to simply mention that people who get into the
habit of making calls to these organizations usually find that information
about themselves has been passed to the Secret Service or FBI or RCMP or
New Scotland Yard. After all... if you have information to give about a
pirate system, than indirectly you have implicated yourself as being a pirat
as well. The cops are only too interested in investigating the informers to
see if they can use the information that they gain on the rats to subvert
the rats to do their bidding. Trust a cop - yah - they will burn anyone if
if fits their agenda.
Now let us go further into the strange relationship that pirates have with
the software publishers to find out why they do not take a greater level of
interest in the zillions of warez that are spread throughout the world each
year by pirates. I believe gentleman that we have been the unwitting dupes
of the software companies. Over the past ten years the software publishers
have found that by allowing pirates to run wild it has helped them sale more
of their products than they would have sold if we did not exist. Face it
dudes - we spread their warez, it gets into the hands of hundreds of
thousands of users, and eventually people do go and pay for the software
after analyzing all the different packages. For some companies this is the
only way their product would have ever made it into the hands of prospective
clients. If the pirates had not helped distribute those files many of the
software companies would have died a long time ago. Another benefit
the pirates provide to the software companies is an excuse for the massive
overcharging they do on software products. They blame the pirates for them
having to charge 10 times what the damn stuff is actually worth. Convenient
to have the pirates as a scapegoat for their bloated profits. We all know
that a $ 59 game is really marketable for $ 6 - but because of pirates they
can cry that they are not making sufficient profit margins to cover their
losses and so the lamers blindly accept this crap and pay the higher markup.
But let us face another fact of reality and that is that pirates may indeed
steal software - but NONE OF US would have bought it in the first place, we
simply steal it to steal it. Most of us spend ten minutes looking at the
particular piece of software and then we delete it cuz it was crap. So it
lets a lot of steam out of the software publishers claims that we stole
anything or that they lost anything - nothing was lost cuz they would never
have sold it to us in the first place. You can't lose profits that would
never have existed in the first place.
So why do some software companies really hate pirates. In most cases it
is the software company that produces inferior products that hates us the
most. You know which companies I mean - the ones who usually have the
most spectacular advertisements in the trade magazines - the ones who
spend more on their advertising campaigns than on the development of the
software. The ones who by glossy advertisements suck the unsuspecting
public into buying their product - only to find out that the game/util
was vastly inferior or useless compared to other software products out
there. The pirates analyze all the warez that pass by them. In a way
we become specialist at detecting inferior and superior products. We make
recommendations everyday amongst ourselves and with outsiders about which
software product rulez and which one sucks. We analyze warez upto 3 months
before a review shows up in the magazines - they have 3 month lead times
for publication, we operate in less than 24 hours from the time we receive
the warez. Pirates expose inferior warez for what they are - rip offs -
and this pisses off the low life software publishers whose only existence
is based on selling inferior products to the uninformed.
Now let us take a moment to look at the telephone companies as they also
operate on a hidden agenda that is not too well known. Pirates make
extensive use of telecommunications and long distance phone calls. In some
cases pirates actually pay for their long distance - this benefits the
phone companies who make $$$ on each of those phone calls. In some cases
pirates use calling cards and hacked PBX's to make their phone calls - this
also benefits the phone company because in most cases THEY MAKE THE OWNER
of those cards or PBX's pay even though it was not them who made the calls.
Does anyone not remember how the phone company held Kodak to ransom for
over 1 million dollars worth of hacked phone calls made on their phone
system. Or what about the $ 500,000 worth of phone calls made against
the Digital phone systems. The phone companies have a really simple
approach to this - if a companies phone system is hacked and a ton of
illegal calls are made on it - it is not the phone companies fault - they
hold the company that owns the phones liable for all long distance charges
made against their phone system. It is the responsibility of the phones
owners to safeguard their calling card number or PBX passwords and if some
luckless pirate happens to gain access to it than it is not the phone
companies fault - the owner of the phone number has to pay. So you can
see that we help greatly to boost the profits of the phone companies. In
Canada for example, Bell Telephone is that countries highest profit company.
Statistics taken from Bell Canada's own annual report show that their bigges
area of profit is long distance charges that occur during the off peak hours
These are the prime times that pirates operate... overnight express. But if
you think about it, what would that phone companies phone lines be doing
from midnight until 6:00am the next morning - does anyone really believe
that there are zillions of legitimate phone calls occurring during those
off hours - NO those calls are almost exclusively being made by pirates.
So by pumping through those calls in the wee hours of the morning we are
helping to put profit into what would otherwise be totally dead time on
their networks. If we weren't there - there would be only 5% of the
call traffic that they presently enjoy. And so for that reason I say
the existence of pirates have helped profit the pockets of the phone
companies. And if you need further convincing about the crooked motives
of the phone companies than consider this simple fact. When a long distance
call goes from one country to another, or from one phone company to another
the destination phone company receives COMPENSATION directly from the
originating phone company. Between the two companies they split the profit
of the phone call - this is because it took their two networks to complete
the one call - and for that both deserve a percentage of the $$$ made on
that phone call. Now think about this for a second - a pirate system in
the 201 exchange receives 10,000 illegal calls per month. This represents
quite a few dollars for which the destination phone company is going to
make $$$$ no matter what happens - it is going to be paid by the phone
company where the calls originated from. I think you can see that the
destination phone company has absolutely no motivation to assist the police
or anyone to kill that pirate system that is bringing in these long distance
phone calls. But how about one final stab at the scum that manage the
phone companies - just to expose how crooked they are - Like the software
companies, the phone companies use the pirates as scapegoats when they go
to seek higher phone rates. Yes, they use us to extract higher rates from
the regulators who control how much they can charge. They cry that they
are being burned to the tune of millions of dollars and have to charge the
honest law abiding phone callers higher rates to make up for all the losses
they suffer at the hands of telecomm pirates. Well I think you can see
now that they never loss anything in the first place because Bell always
makes money - even on a pirated phone call.)op, (>), More?
I will not bother to discuss how the modem manufacturers have gotten a free
ride on the backs of pirates. But let's face it - without pirates the
world would still be limping around with 2400 baud modems. It is the
pirates - NOT BIG BUSINESS - that demanded and got faster and faster
modems. Our needs for the movement of files are far greater than all
of that of Big Business. In a way you could say that the demands of the
pirate world have helped Big Business. We force cutting edge technology
to do our job and the modem companies are glad to supply us AT A COST.
Who do you think will make up the majority of purchasers of the new 28.8
baud modems ? I laugh if you thought it was the government or some big
companies. We all know it is the pirates. It sure as hell isn't going
to be Henry PD Dickwad who calls CompuSlave or Genyuk. Let's face it
dudes - pirates made US Robotics the leader in the industry by making it
the modem of choice of the underworld !! And I believe you can rest
assured that they know that all to well ! Have you ever wondered why
US Robotics never gave to the cops a list of all the sysops who have
bought their high speed modems ? Course they wouldn't - without us
John Q Pirate would have no need to keep upgrading to the latest
product offering coming from them.
Lastly, let us share a few fast words about the police. The cops do
not even have enough money to eradicate drugs, illegal weapons or
prostitutes. Do the lamers of the world really think that in these
tough economic times that the cops would dedicate the ever shrinking
budgets that they have to use it up chasing pirates. Get real. The
cops are FORCED to spend their ever shrinking budgets fighting real
crime - ones where there are victims - and as I have already shown
software piracy is a victimless crime. So to the lamers of the world
who operate under some mistaken impression that there are thousands of
police out there with nothing better to do than chase pirates, I simply
say to you to 'Wake up and smell the coffee you uninformed dickwad'
Now that I have exposed the hidden agenda of the phone companies, the
software companies, and the supposed anti-piracy organizations I will
now slip comfortably back into my silent mode again and smile knowing
that after 13 years in this pirate business I will still have at least
another 13 years of this fun to enjoy. The wienies that attempt to
scare pirate boards with their idle threats of bust simply do not know
the big picture, the hidden agendas or how their lame actions simply
do not matter. The only people their lame actions hurt are themselves
as they find themselves kicked out of all the pirate circles and they
are removed from the elite world that we know as piracy.
It is too bad that a few lamers surface in our underground world trying
to act tough by speaking of bust and betrayal. Grow up kiddies and
learn to play the game or leave it.... because you will never change it.
In closing I extend special greets to all the groups that are out there
bringing warez to the masses. Your efforts are greatly appreciated by
all, including the software companies, telephone companies and yes even
the anti-piracy organizations. For without your excellent efforts they
would never have continued to exist either.....or made such profits !!
--* TC *--
May 22 1994
PS : Hey... you didn't really expect me to put my full handle here
( believe me... they will be pissed to learn this info is out )