Piracy - did you ever get caught?

[zipper]

As I bought my KS/WB upgrade 2.1 to my A500 I got a genuine kickstart - but gray floppies with felt tip markings...That shop had a long history but did end soon after...

[Hercules]

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federa...Software_Theft

£1000 to grass on your mates...



My contracts disks I mailed out always use to have a boot screen that said 'Piracy is theft but who gives a fuck'

[Hercules]

The piracy ad...

[ Show youtube player ]

[Nobby_UK]

Reported a guy who sold me
a CD Burned set of MYST 3 (Full Price)

Nothing happened.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Shaitan

I remember mail trading went through the roof after I got my modem. I was lucky in that there was a lot of local boards, so I didn't have to spend too much dialling long distance. However, I do remember dialling Rebel's board a lot

I guess you did :-)

[DDNI]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

I guess you did :-)

Now that’s some ancient digital footprint. Quick ring that FAST number ?

[Subzero]

never been busted, worked on both sides, legal and illegal ,at same time...from 87-today ...

[Shaitan]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

I guess you did :-)

Happy days

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Shaitan

Happy days

Sent you pm

[XPD]

Years ago when XP was still a thing, I had a "dodgy" copy floating around in my collection of CDs..... but for some reason this particular copy would BSOD any system it was put onto yet burn the image to another CD and it was fine....

Anyway, marked that particular disk with a "X" and eventually threw it into a rubbish bag, and out it went for the rubbish truck to collect.

I went out with mates for weekend, and I get a call from my father - "some woman was at the door with one of your CDs in her hand, asking if you had the product key for it. The CD had a "X" on it"

The CD had been one of the first items in the rubbish bag, so it was at the bottom, with all sorts of other household waste on top.

1) WTF was she doing going through our trash to start with AND GOT TO THE BOTTOM OF THE BAG (gross)
2) How cheeky to ask for a product key for an obviously pirated bit of software

[Predseda]

Aren't you in New Zealand? For us Europeans bottom of your rubbish bag is its top

[UberFreak]

Nobody cared to bother.
I remember we used to freely copy disks at my school's computer lab (C64 and PC).
Also, meeting with people from all over the country at the computer store of the local Commodore distributer, which had a few C64 and C128 for free use.
We used to sit there for hours copying disks...

Edit: looks like I replied in this thread 10 years ago. Time flies...

[S0ulA55a551n]

I didn't but a local shop in the town where my schools was the owner got caught. Not sure if he got time or just big fine, but he certainly stopped.

You could just go in there and for the cost of like 50p per disk (if you supplied the disk ) get a copy of pretty much any game. He just had a big list you could choose from.

I know from a friend that he just used to download them off the BBS of the time.

The shop was always rammed with school kids on lunch breaks.

To clarify these were obviously Amiga games
I still didn't have an amiga at this time was still on my trusty CPC

I remember at the time it was said he was caught with several suitcases of copied disks

[Matt020]

Lots of Amiga scene dudes in this thread,

Would you believe that a large handful of the elite /X boards are still alive and active today. Connection is via telnet, and uploads/downloads still occur.

Should I post up a list of boards with telnet IP addresses?

[outsiderz]

you are just talking about "busted with amiga stuff"?
whats about "pc area"
i remember 2002/2003, OP fastlink

[XPD]

Originally Posted by Matt020

Lots of Amiga scene dudes in this thread,

Would you believe that a large handful of the elite /X boards are still alive and active today. Connection is via telnet, and uploads/downloads still occur.

Should I post up a list of boards with telnet IP addresses?

I'd be interested

[XPD]

Originally Posted by Predseda

Aren't you in New Zealand? For us Europeans bottom of your rubbish bag is its top

Keep outta my trash then

[Turran]

So here is my story..

I had 3 friends involved in this. Lets call them #1, #2 and #3. Only #1 was a close friend and the other two were more friends of friends, but they all lived in the same apartment complex, near each other. So close that they had coax cables between each others apartments for a network.
I did not live that near.

This was the time of the BBS in around 1992. I had a rather big pirate BBS with 4 lines in to my apartment. My landlord was getting rather annoyed with me because there were no more space to run cables in the building walls.

I had one network server with novell netware light and 4 DOS PCs running .. PCBoard I think it was? All connected with Coax.

Friend #1 and I usually hung out at his place. He was older and had one room fully dedicated to tech. It was amazing. 3-4 amigas, commodores 64,128's, synths, PC. Stereo from hell. You name it. Tech everywhere. Of course, he was the most tech savvy one in this group of 4.

Time came to do my military service. I was going to be away for a while and felt I could not take care of my BBS during this time.
Friend #2 offered to host it at his place for the duration so I (seem to remember anyway) dropped it all off at his place.
During the time I was away, he actually renamed it to Second Front and made it 10x more successful than I ever could.

When I got back from military training, he was doing so well with it that I did not want to take it back. I let him keep everything.
Plus, I was getting tired of always have to be the coolest and getting wares the fastest. I liked the idea of the BBS but not the prestige behind it.
So I said "F**k it" and opened a shareware BBS instead. Called it Shareware Heaven.
By now, Windows 95 Chicago came out (The beta). So I got myself a Windows NT 3.51 server in the closet, a 4 port serial card and ran PCBoard 4 times on one machine, because multitasking. wooooo

I also had a CD changer and would usually just plop in a shareware CD full of software that you got a new one of every month. It was pretty fancy and drew some attention.

I think the Internet started to come up at this time and how it was the next big thing. I remember telling my sister how it was just a fad and would never last. Why did I think that? Because with 4 phone lines and a BBS, people called me and they had to pay for the phone call. With the internet, I had to do the dialing out and staying online, with 4 phones, 24/7. That would have cost a million/month. It'll never catch on =)

So, all was hunky dory.
We (friends and others) did not know this at the time but I'll write it here for consistency.

About this time, friend #1 was hooking up with friend #2's wife. #2 had 2 kids with her but was being your typical drunk/hitting his wife, neglecting the kids etc.

Anyway, #2 found out about it and this is where it all turned to shit.

The server that #2 got from me earlier, he ran a screwdriver in the motherboard.
He then called #1 and asked if #1 could fix the machine that mysteriously died.

"Sure", #1 said and the highly illegal BBS was moved into his apartment.
#2 now called the police on #1, explaining all the stuff he had and other equipment that was "stolen" etc.

The police arrives at #1 and are baffled by the amount of computers and equipment he has. #1 goes into custody.

Now, the police in Sweden, when they start dismantling all his equipment, put labels on everything they disconnected so that they could connect it all up again at the station. It took them a week to tag everything. When they were done, there was 10-20CM of tags on the floor (rip of the tape at the back to get to the glue). It was glorious.

About this time, the policy goes, "Hm, why are there coax cables going out the window".
They follow the coax cables to friend #2's apartment and yes, he still has a lot of computers going. So they put him in custody as well and empty the apartment of computers.

"There is another coax going out here."

Knock knock at friend #3s house. Now, friend #3 had networked his whole apartment basically but the police did not know that. He also ran a pirate BBS from his living room but the police told him to "Go sit in the kitchen while we process all this in the living room".
So he did. Took out his laptop and proceeded to wipe the BBS from the kitchen. He later got out clean since there was nothing illegal there =)

Anyway. #2 who called the police now starts to talk to the police about everything. He told them about me and a couple of other friends I don't need to involve in this story. "Turran bought this and that from #1." "This came from Turran." etc etc.


So, at 6AM, there was a knock on my door. 6 police came in. They were very polite and I knew that I only had my Shareware Heaven BBS so I had nothing to fear. I explained this to the police, was allowed to show them and they understood.
They called the prosecutor and explained the situation. He on the other hand, could only see "Childp*rn!". Yeah, this was during that era when it was on the news that BBSs were spreading such things.
So the police had to take all my stuff as well.

One fun thing during this time.. Since I was cooperating, I was allowed to show the tech on site (I say "tech" very loosely here...) how it was all set up, since it was pretty advanced.
I saw one of those CHECKDISK.MS files in the root of one of the DOS machines that checkdisk left behind when you ran it. I had a habit of deleting them when I saw them, so I did.
The "tech" yanked the keyboard out of my hands and started yelling that "There was some fast commands and now files are gone".
So that explains his level of competence.

Anyway, what happened?

We all got interrogated. Since we did not squeal on each other and the police had now realized that #2 was a drunk wife-beater, they stopped believing what he told them.
Me and friend #3 got our things back rather quickly. I seem to remember that the disks in my Windows NT 3.51 server had seized up so I doubt they ever got it working at the station.
#2 moved out of town. He lost his wife and kids and as far as I know, stayed a drunk.

Friend #1 spent over 6 months in custody while they tried to find where all the things he had was stolen from. In the end, they could not find a single stolen item. He got sentenced because of one thing. A Windows 95 Chicago CD they found. He was not allowed to have that as it was a beta product and he was "not on the list" for it. Sentencing was 6 months which he already spent in custody, so he was set free. He got that disc from me. No clue where I got it from but I worked as a PC builder at a time so probably from work.

He worked at .. a large tech company in Sweden which was very concerned that the tech was stolen from them. In the end there was nothing from them there and he got to keep his job.

While I have no connection to either of them today, last I knew, #1 is still together with #2s wife today and they have several more children.

Worst thing that happened to me due to all of this?
While I was taken away for interrogation and the police were still at my apartment to tag and bag my stuff, they opened the balcony door because I guess it got hot inside.
This was in the winter.
Next to the balcony door was my guinea pig which was rejected from his mom at birth so me and my sister took turns to hand fed him 24/7 for a few months. He was so tame. One of those that jumped into your hand when you got near and ran up to greet you when you got home.
Anyway, he got a cold from the draft. When I got back from the police station he was very obviously sick and the balcony door was still open. When guinea pigs get sick, they usually become food in the wild so they don't really have an immune system to handle it. At least that is how I was taught. Dont know if its true.

He died in the arms a few days later and I've never forgiving the police for being so stupid. RIP Spunky Spunk

Thats my story =)

[amigasith]

What a f*?cking great story there, Turran

I enjoyed reading every single word. This is life at it's best, he he. Poor guinea pig, but at least it served as a great ending For sure, this is material for at least one, perhaps even more cinema movies! Simply awesome.

[Turran]

Thanks amigasith =)