OHIO BBS RAIDED BY FBI AGENTS



  (Feb. 2)

  The FBI has raided a Boardman, Ohio, computer bulletin board system called

"Rusty & Edie's," accusing the operators of illegally distributing copyrighted

software.

  The Software Publishers Association, which worked with the FBI in

investigating the case, said in a statement from Washington the agent seized

computers, hard disk drives and telecommunications equipment, as well as

financial and subscriber records during the raid last Saturday.

  The SPA says the investigation started several months ago, "following the

receipt of complaints from a number of SPA members that their software was being


illegally distributed on the Rusty & Edie's BBS." The trade group says that as

part of the investigation, it downloaded copyrighted business and entertainment

programs from the BBS.

  The system, established in 1987, was described one of the largest private

BBSes in the country, with 124 nodes available to callers and more than 14,000

subscribers.

  "To date, the board has logged in excess of 3.4 million phone calls, with new

calls coming in at the rate of over 4,000 per day," the SPA stated added. It
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included "over 19 gigabytes of storage housing over 100,000 files available to

subscribers for downloading."

  The SPA said the BBS had subscribers in the United States and several foreign

countries, including Canada, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Finland, the

Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

  For a fee of $89 a year, "subscribers ... were given access to the board's

contents, including many popular copyrighted business and entertainment

packages," the SPA statement says.

  --Charles Bowen

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