One bourbon, one scotch, and one mav

Somebody call Morley fucking Safer or something.

Check this out. The ten-second version: Some anti-piracy vigilantes (amazingly enough, one of them is 19 - not what I’d expect, at all) have written a program that masquerades as commonly-downloaded files (like UT04 keygens) and when run, it phones your IP back to their server. Interesting. Spyware, definitely, but interesting.

I’m not going to touch on what they did, because I believe that any sane person would look on this and say that this is precisely why we have due process. Sex offenders don’t deserve to be murdered by random vigilantes, and software pirates don’t deserve to be harassed by random vigilantes. That should be a given. What I’m curious about is why anybody would write something like this in the first place. So, assuming (as per usual) that there’s no chance in hell that I’ll ever hear from these guys myself, I am going to have to make a few assumptions as to their motives.

First off, I obviously don’t understand how you can be a rabid anti-piracy person. And that’s coming from someone who is so rabidly anti-theft I carry weapons with me in my car. Nobody gets my shit unless they have bigger weapons than me. So I’m obviously biased, and I can’t bring myself to understand their opinion.

Now that my biases are clearly stated, the people who are running their software program aren’t the real criminals. Nobody who runs KaZaZazAzzaaaZZZaaaazz or eDonkey is a real criminal. It’s the Internet equivalent of speeding or not signaling while changing lanes. They are average Joe home users, who are either cheap or (more likely) can’t afford to buy the things they download, so they download. Few pirate for the sheer thrill of pirating.

Rather, the real pirates are the guys that download software, burn it onto CD’s, and sell it for 5 bucks a crack on a New York City sidewalk. The guys who steal software off the shelf and then copy it a few thousand times and distribute it in China. I’ve even seen reports that piracy is becoming so rampant that organized crime has interest in piracy. (Don’t know if it’s true or not, but if it’s big enough to even start the rumor, it’s disconcerting.)

Even more criminal are the persons who run large companies off pirated software. The people who are right now making $25,000 in licensing fees (this year, of course) for a logo that they whipped up in a bogus version of Photoshop. Those are the real crooks, and they deserve the punishment they get.

(Just for the sake of brevity - and the fact that I can’t seem to write a coherent sentence at the moment - I’m not going to touch on the media companies that created shitty products that include forced harassment that the customer has to wade through (console game disclaimers ahoy) or companies who force advertising down your throat even though you already bought their software (Microsoft, IIntuit [possibly worst offender ever,] AOL, Adobe, fucking shit, even ACDSystems does this shit now.))

Seriously, though - This is like posting the names and addresses of everybody that ever bought a dime bag on a power pole somewhere. Nobody gives a fuck, because smoking weed is a victimless crime, and so is end-user software piracy. If you want to bust somebody, bust the hard-drug peddlers.