LOS ANGELES TIMES: THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1994 
Front page (A1), left column - article continuing onto page A18. 
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COLUMN ONE - TITLE: "The Pirates of the Internet" 
Subtitle: "As the global computer network grows so do the rings of thieves 
          who use it to steal software.  Frustrated security experts say they 
          may have to resort to bounty hunters." 
 
By: Adam S. Bauman (nickname "reporter") 
Contact: 1-800-528-4637 extension 73492 
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	In the early hours of July 6, Jenny, head of a software piracy  
ring based in the Pacific Northwest, paced impatiently in front of a rack  
of high-speed personal computers, waiting for the phone call that would  
make her a superstar in the pirate underground. 
	It would come from an employee of LucasArts Entertainment Co. in  
San Rafael, who for $300 would supply Jenny's pirate group with one of  
the most anticipated games of the summer: "TIE Fighter," based on the  
"Star Wars" movie trilogy and priced at about $60 per copy. 
	At LucasArts, the employee attached a small cellular modem to the  
back of his PC - a technique that would keep any record of the call off  
the company telephone bill - and dialed.  Within a few minutes, the  
program had arrived in Jenny's computer, lacking only the code keys that  
would make it possible to play the game without an owner's manual. 
	Jenny then dialed into the Internet, the global computer network,  
and after taking several deliberate electronic detours she connected with  
a small computer in Moscow.  There, a programming whiz who goes by the  
name "Skipjack" quickly cracked the codes and sent the program back  
across the Internet to "Waves of Warez," a Seattle bulletin board popular  
with software pirates. 
	Within 24 hours, "TIE Fighter" would be available to thousands of  
software pirates in major cities around the world - days before its  
official release date of July 20. 
	Welcome to the underside of the Internet, where stealing software  
has become highly sophisticated and hotly competitive - pursued more for  
thrills than for money.  It's a world where pirate groups build  
alliances, undertake mergers and sometimes launch all-out battles against  
rivals. 
	And, contrary to common stereotypes, it is populated not only by  
nerdy teen-age misfits, but by a curious cross-section of computer  
enthusiasts looking for some dangerous fun. 
	Jenny, for example, is a woman whose hobbies include motorcycles  
and collecting rare birds.  The head of a big East Coast-based ring is a  
commercial airline pilot.  Another group leader is a junior studying  
chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa.   
Yet another is a grandmother, leader of an elite group called Nokturnal  
Trading Alliance. 
	Their activities are, of course, illegal, potential felonies in  
many cases.  And to most denizens of cyberspace, who use the Internet for  
scientific research, legimate commerce and legal forms of entertainment,  
the pirates are common vandals at best. 
	Still, a number of pirates agreed to allow a reporter to observe  
their operations - both in person and via computer techniques that make  
it possible to monitor computer activities remotely - on the condition  
that their real names not be used. 
	The economic impact of the pirates' activities is difficult to  
measure.  Electronic software theft via the Internet and other on-line  
services accounts for about one-third of the $2.2 billion lost in the  
United States last year as a result of piracy, according to the Business  
Software Alliance, a trade group.  Pirates who mass-produce CD-ROM and  
floppy disks with stolen software pose a much bigger problem. 
	But Internet software theft is growing rapidly, along with the  
global network itself.  Even major, mainstream software programs - like  
the new version of IBM's OS/2 operating system - are now routinely  
obtainable for free on the Internet. 
	And the pirates' activities have other consequences as well.   
They sometimes invade and effectively disable computers being used for  
scientific research, for example.  And many in the information technology  
industries fear that software theft and other illegal activities are  
giving the Internet a bad name just when it is gaining unprecedented  
popularity. 
	Yet stopping the pirates turns out to be a very difficult task.   
Law enforcement agencies, software companies and even indignant  
individuals are stepping up efforts to hunt down electronic lawbreakers,  
but new methods of stealing and distributing stolen software are  
developed every day. 
 
	By design, the Internet lacks any central administrative  
authority, and security procedures aimed at thwarting pirates could  
interfere with the philosophy of free and open communications that is  
integral to the network.  Some suggest the thievery won't be stopped  
until "bounty hunters" are recruited from the pirates' ranks and paid to  
hunt their former cohorts. 
	It may be small comfort to the victims, but most of the pirates  
interviewed for this story insisted they were not in it for the money. 
	"It was just for the thrill of getting free software or logging  
onto pirate bulletin boards that normal people don't know about," said  
Mike from Seattle, who says he has never earned a dime in his role as a  
"courier" for a pirate group. 
	During the interview, conducted in a tidy suburban home that he  
shares with friends, Mike uploaded a new program - "Lode Runner for  
Windows" by Sierra Games - to the Internet from his custom-built  
computer.  He then typed e-mail messages to other couriers notifying them  
of the new game and instructing them to copy it to various pirate sites  
around the world. 
	There appear to be about 20 major groups dedicated to software  
piracy, a length Times investigation has found, with names such as Razor  
1911, Tristar Red Sector Inc. (TRSi), Pirates With Attitude (PWA),  
Revolutionizing International Piracy (RIP), Legend, Malice and Anti  
Lamers Foundation (ALF).  The groups vary in size from 20 to 100 members,  
and most have a similar hierarchy: group leaders, senior staff, regional  
coordinators, couriers and members. 
	The groups divide into two broad types: releasing groups, which  
arrange for software to be supplied and transferred to local computer  
bulletin board systems, and courier groups, which have a worldwide  
network of members who quickly transfer software from local bulletin  
boards to the Internet for instantaneous worldwide distribution. 
	Operators generally pay a pirate group a "donation" of $50 to  
$200 per month to carry that group's software on their bulletin boards.   
The more successful groups boast as many as several dozen affiliated  
bulletin boards. 
	The logistics of coordinating these far-flung networks are  
daunting, but the pirates are resourceful.  One crucial communications  
method is the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) system, a kind of citizens' band  
of cyberspace that connects thousands of computer users in 21 countries.   
A particular series of channels, known as "warez" channels, are used both  
for conversation between software pirates and the on-line trading of  
freshly stolen software. 
	But the IRC has its limits, and even computer hackers sometimes  
need to talk with each other. 
	One method they have developed involves a "beige box," or  
custom-built telephone.  The pirate travels a distance from his or her  
home and taps into the exterior wiring of an apartment building or house  
to arrange a conference call, possibly involing 20 people or more in  
several countries, via an AT&T Alliance Teleconferencing opertor. 
	The pirate controls the conference call from a pay phone.  But at  
the end of the month, the person whose line was tapped receives the bill  
- which can run well into five figures. 
	Several leaders of software pirating groups also descrived a  
method to avoid charges that involves a special computer program, a pay  
phone and a recordable Hallmark greeting card that contains a small  
computer memory.  The electronic sounds a quarter makes when dropped in a  
pay phone are recorded on the memory chip, then are played back into the  
phone in lieu of depositing money. 
 
	Despite the seeming case with which many pirates stay one step  
ahead of law enforcement, there are plenty of risks - especially for  
those who work in the computer industry. 
	On Aug. 3, Cupertino-based Symantec Corp., best known for its  
line of Norton Utility software backup and security products, discovered  
an employee in its Baton Rouge, La., facility running a pirate site on a  
company computer. 
	A Symantec source says the company took the unusual step of  
packing the offending computer inside a chilled and shielded container  
and flying it to corporate headquarters in Cupertino for laboratory  
analysis.  The employee - who the source said was motivated by "the  
thrill of being part of the pirate scene" - was fired. 
	Last month, Dr. William L Sebok, an astronomer at the University  
of Maryland, announed he had shut down a large pirate site that contained  
more than 500 megabytes of stolen software - enough to fill half a dozen  
personal computer hard disks.  The site had been running on a laboratory  
computer used for processing images from the recent collision of Jupiter  
and the Shoemaker-Levy comet.  The illegal use was detected three weeks  
ago when processing on the computer inexplicably slowed to a crawl. 
	Maryland officials tried to trace the thieves back through the  
Internet, but met with little success: Many pirates were found to have  
used computer accounts belonging to university students in Switzerland,  
Spain and Slovenia who were unaware their accounts were being used for  
illicit purposes. 
	Still, Sebok says the time he spent tracking the pirates was well 
justified. 
	"I figured by shutting their site down, I would create a stir for  
[the pirates] that would be worth it for me.  I didn't want to see the  
cockroaches tunneling through our computer system any more," he said. 
	Law enforcement officials have grown more vigilant about computer 
crime of all types.  A group of special FBI agents now cruises the  
Internet, and many local and state law enforcement agencies have been  
training investigators to root out computer crime.  But software piracy -  
especially involving games - takes a back seat to credit card theft and  
other more destructive crimes. 
	Dr.G Gene Spafford, an associate professor at Purdue University  
and a computer security expert, says software manufacturers and trade  
groups like the Software Publishers Assn. may have to resort to frontier  
justice to stem the tide of illicit software being transferred over the  
Internet. 
 
	"Some of these same guys who are out pirating right now could  
very easily turn in the rival groups for a buck or more, and they'll be  
very willing to do so," Spafford said.  He expects to see bounty hunters  
who get paid based on damages recovered or convictions of software  
pirating groups. 
	"We are already seeing private detective agencies investigating  
computer break-ins, because the local law enforcement agencies arn't  
equipped," he added. 
	Robert Roden, general counsel at LucasArts, said the growth of  
the Internet has made it much easier for people to steal and distribute  
games around the world.  Usually a company sends out cease and desist  
letters to pirates if it can find them, but that has become harder, Roden  
said. 
	"If they're stealing 'TIE Fighter' because they love the game,  
the irony in all of it is that they're harming the thing they love,"  
Rodden added.  "They're making it more difficult for software companies  
to make these products and survive in the market." 
	But the pirates arn't much impressed with that argument.  On July  
14, a 20-year-old pirate nicknamed Drizzt took a morning drive from his  
home in the San Fernando Valley to Babbage's computer retail store at the  
Glendale Galleria.  He wanted to check if LucasArts' "TIE Fighter" game  
had come yet. 
	Glancing inside, Drizzt could see the game had not arrived.  On a  
shelf near the front of the store stood empty "TIE Fighter" boxes, gaily  
decorated with ribbons that said "coming soon." 
	Drizzt recalls laughing at the sight of those empty boxes.  "The  
funny thing was," he later told a reporter, "I'd been playing that game  
for the last seven days.  I'd downloaded it off the Internet, I didn't  
have to pay for it, I was up to the sixth mission and it worked great." 
 

