Piracy - did you ever get caught?

[BrooksterMax]

At Uni, there was a small sub network of Win NT 4 machines in this obscure department. They had a trial version of Winzip which I activated with the old Bill Gates serial (still remember the no.!). I needed the full version so I could zip up my warez from downloading on the academic network lolz

instead of just activating the workstation I was on, it activated the whole 20-30 machines in the building.

So Bill Gates had registered Winzip 7 at Aberystwyth - what a kind man.

Did I get caught - no, but I lolled a bit.

[SWIV]

You are only going to get caught if you openly sell on market stalls or something,i remember there was a trader selling thousands of 3.5 copies near me in the 90`s and he was a very busy man indeed.
But i remember him changing what he sold as the heat became too much with news circulating of trading standards catching people in other markets in the area at the time.

[Hewitson]

It's still very common for people to sell warez at the various computer markets around here.

[modrobert]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

I didn't get caught, but stopped using calling cards after a few influential mates were tracked down using them.

Yes, though I switched from calling cards (cc) to bluebox(ing) mostly because it was tiresome with cards dying (or already dead on first try). Bluebox was hard to learn but turned out to be an amazing hobby on its own and sharing working "breaks" with other phreakers.

Originally Posted by Hewitson

It's still very common for people to sell warez at the various computer markets around here.

Here in Bangkok they sell "professional" warez at Tesco/Lotus and Carrefour, like PS2 silvers and GBA multicarts etc.

Regarding topic, didn't get caught yet, but received some empty threats.

[UberFreak]

Been pirating since I got my C128 in 1986, cracking & spreading C64 games, never got caught.
Even used to skip classes & use the computer lab at my highschool, which at the time had some C64's, to crack & mass-copy disks...

I didnt even see it as "pirating" back then, everyone I knew was doing the same, there were computer-clubs everywhere with the purpose of trading disk copies.
I even remember going to the main shop of the local Commodore importer, to meet other people & copy disks from each other IN the shop

Ahh those were the days, I miss them so much!

[mrbob2]

Funny looking at the replies about getting caught at school etc.

At my school everyone had an amiga or ST. Games lists were passed around most days, you give someone a pile of blank floppies and a list of what you wanted, then you do them the same. No money, just friends. Happy days :-) impossible to do now because of the net and copying blu rays isnt really do able. Amiga days were the best!

[cosmicfrog]

probably what this tread shows more than anything that the ppl who did get caught either left the scene or were just in it for the money

I`ll probably free load on brighter ppl than me for the rest of my life after all if I don`t stand on the shoulders of giants I`ll never get to see the light

[Mick_AKA]

'Back in the day' I was distributing copies pretty widely, usually just for the cost of the floppies, obviously credit was always to a pseudonym (hence the AKA after my real name in my later tag)
I was also the first person I knew with a CD Writer, a Plextor 2X Caddy loader so that burned away many a copy before they became more commonplace and everyone was banging out copies.

I never got caught, I was questioned by police at a computer market about my bulk buying of floppies once but nothing came of it.

Ironically nowadays every piece of software I own is legit, the price of working for yourself and thinking you'll get audited one day.

[wizard66]

I never got caught but in the good old day's I made warez cd's on my philips SCSI burner 1x speed (the one in the big case for about 3000 euro's) back in '93
As i looked into the AEB file server I can see one off my old cd"s WILCOM1 There are more in that serie ;-).
This all because users of my BBS back then (BBS The Wizard) where inline to donate the stuff to me for a copy off the warez cd when it came out..
I backup a lot off stuff for people ;-)

P.S. I see 3 post from my home town Spijkenisse in this threat :-) Amiga is coming back !!! more users in the Netherlands LOL..

[TCD]

Originally Posted by wizard66

As i looked into the AEB file server I can see one off my old cd"s WILCOM1 There are more in the serie.

Do you still have the CDs or images of them? Not that we support piracy here, but for preservational purposes you see

[wizard66]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Do you still have the CDs or images of them? Not that we support piracy here, but for preservational purposes you see

Yes WILCOM 2, WILCOM3 and a CD32 bootble game cd are still availble.
I have them stored by a mate of my living in Rotterdam.
I will see if i can get hold of the cd's if you want. and share for preservational purposes like you say !!

[TCD]

Would be great Fingers crossed then

[Greyfox]

yes..completely guilty of owning nothing original myself, other that super Hang-on and Deluxe Paint 4 aga, but never ever sold anything of my collection, I was purely a collector and played a few along the way for educational purposes you understand.

[mfletcher]

While Ive never been caught for piracy, I do remember two instances where the police turned up to arrest pirates.

First time, was Ingliston Sunday Market, near Edinburgh, 1992. Me and my friends used to go there every Sunday to get the latest games. I forget the name of the guy who ran the stall, but the front of the stall, it looked legit, it sold mouse mats, floppy disks, joysticks etc. Behind the stall however, their was a small space closed off my tarpaulin. You'd go in there and there would be a line of guys standing waiting for disks. The guy who ran the stall would have this book that he'd hand out with what he had to sell.

Every so often the police would raid the market, and confiscate anything that they suspected as counterfeit - we actually turned up one Sunday and the police were there, carting off his A2000 and whatever else he was using to duplicate disks! In the end, it didnt stop him, he'd open up the stall again a month later.

Second instance was a few years later, I think 2002 at the Barras market in Glasgow. There was an alleyway in the market you could go to and buy all kinds of counterfeit stuff... movies, cds, ps/ps2/pc games. I think even cards for Satellite boxes. The setup there was a bit more organized. The sellers didnt actually have any merchandise on them. Instead you'd choose from the "menus" that they had on them, and they'd send a runner off to pick up the warez.

The day I was there, I had dropped off my PS2 at a nearby stall to get chipped and I decided to check out what these guys had to offer. I was looking through one of the menus when a police van pulls up at one end of the alley, blocking it off. Three or four policemen get out of the van and start casually walking up the alley, no hurry at all. It was funny seeing all the sellers stopping what they were doing and hastily making off down one of the side alleys. Place cleared out pretty fast!

[deicidal]

The Police always seem to make an apperance at the Magnetic Fields / Digital parties, never seemed to do anything though

[LuMan]

It was rife at our school. There were so many C90 and C120 cassettes doing the rounds with Spectrum and C=64 games on them I think we were keeping TDK in business!

When I got into Amigas I never really had any pirated games until a mate got an A500, second floppy drive and a copy of X-Copy.... The rest is 880k history

Oddly, I haven't got any current-gen pirated stuff. All my PS3 stuff is kosher and I mainly use Linux and open-source stuff. Of course, my Mac Powerbook still has that dubious version of Cubase on it, but it was on when I bought it...officer...

Of course, I did stumble across 7 CDs full of Amiga dms files recently

[mfletcher]

Yeah, all my stuff is Kosher too nowadays... I think Im too lazy to keep up with the protection schemes that they have in place these days.

Last piece of kit that I modded to get free software was the Wii, so I could play some free wads. After a while I just reverted back to the main firmware.

PC / Consolewise, I just wait for the game to come down in price on Amazon or if its on sale in Steam.

I have to admit though, when I owned my Amiga first time around, all my software was pirated. Didnt buy a single piece of software. Why do it when you can get a copy of your mate at school?

[Mr B]

Originally Posted by mfletcher

I think Im too lazy to keep up with the protection schemes that they have in place these days.

Say what?
Ok, so i admit, i mostly game on the PC, but i've on a few occasions had to grab a pirated copy of a game i actually bought since the pirated game requires you to copy a file, in to the install directory, but other then that works "right out of the box" but the bought version wont work regardless of what i do to it. In one instance i've even been told to get the cracked exe by the support, since it was a "well known issue", but most the time it's a combination of factors working against me, one of being XP-x64.
Anyway, my point was that atleast for the PC platform, copy protections are a hassle for the honest buyer, but not for the pirate, so keeping up, is pretty much not an issue...
B!

[kkgarbod]

Originally Posted by Mr B

Say what?
Ok, so i admit, i mostly game on the PC, but i've on a few occasions had to grab a pirated copy of a game i actually bought since the pirated game requires you to copy a file, in to the install directory, but other then that works "right out of the box" but the bought version wont work regardless of what i do to it. In one instance i've even been told to get the cracked exe by the support, since it was a "well known issue", but most the time it's a combination of factors working against me, one of being XP-x64.
Anyway, my point was that atleast for the PC platform, copy protections are a hassle for the honest buyer, but not for the pirate, so keeping up, is pretty much not an issue...
B!

True, When I buy a game these days I normally wait a month or two after the game comes out, (that is If I really want to play right now, and not wait till the price drops, or getting it second-hand) then I get the No-Cd hack, Install it and use the No-Cd exe to launch the Game while my Cd gathers dust being displayed in it's box on the bookcase.

[cosmicfrog]

the NO CD crack has to be one of the best things to ever come out of the piracy scene