

                  The Pirate's Manifesto for 1994

                 -*  RELEASED ON MAY 22 1994  *-

           - Read this and learn the only real facts -

             about  the  police,  software companies,

             and the hidden agenda of phone companies

   Dear Fellow Pirates :

   Well... it certainly is beginning to get kind of tiresome about all

   the wienies that are trying to fuck up the pirate scene around the

   world.  But I think the time has come to spell out some simple info

   to try to clue some folks into the big picture.

   Let us first begin by talking about all the supposed rats that think

   a phone call to SPA, CAAST, BSA or FAAST are going to bring about the

   instant death of some bulletin board - YOU ARE SO FUCKING MISTAKEN.

   These coalitions of software publishers are like a company.  They make

   money from all the software publishers who lamely join them hoping it

   will make some form of difference to the amount of warez being spread.

   They are wrong.  Each of these lame organizations exist solely to make

   money from the software publishers - think about it - if there were no

   pirates than these organizations would have no reason to exist.  Ok so

   you ask how come we hear of them when a big bust occurs - well that is

   exactly the only time you ever hear of them - when it is a major bust

   that occurs.   These organizations only bust bulletin boards where it

   will make them money to do so.   Look at the Rusty & Edie bust, do you

   think they went after them because they were 'elite' ?   No, they went

   after them because they could sue their asses off and make money off

   them.   Look at any other genuine bust in the last four years and you

   will find that the targets they decided to eliminate all had a solid

   financial base against which to sue for $$$$$    Remember the pirate

   system in California run by a doctor... lots of money there.  Each

   time there has been a real raid by the feds it has always turned out

   that the system raided was worth $$$$$ to them.   Face reality, court

   cost are expensive.  These organizations don't raid anyone just for the

   hell of it.   They pick their targets carefully so that when they win

   in court they will get back $$$$$ from the targets.   When was the last

   time you ever heard of any 14 year old zit headed sysop with a 20 line

   BBS being busted - it just never happens - cuz they know they can't sue

   him or his parents.  So there is simply no point trying to drag him into

   court.

   Now what about these supposed anonymous callers who try to rat on a BBS

   by calling these organizations and providing information.  Well in most

   cases the organizations simply take the information, act polite and than

   never do anything with the info.  After all, anonymous info is not worth

   shit to them.   It simply serves to keep sysops scared - and fear is the

   only weapon they have to keep pirate systems in check.   Let's face it

   dudes - with over 10,000 pirate BBS's in the United States alone there is

   no way they could ever hope to kill all of them.  So by means of fear they

   try to control the pirate epidemic.   But for every elite system that goes

   down 10 new ones appear - so the organizations simply cannot win against

   the pirates overwhelming numbers.

   One of the problems that face the users who take time to try to rat on a

   BBS is that things are not as anonymous for them as they thought.  All

   phones at SPA, CAAST, FAAST, BSA and others are monitored.  All incoming

   phone numbers are recorded.  If some fools think that 1-800 phone numbers

   do not record the incoming phone number than they are seriously mistaken.

   All calls are tape recorded - they like maintaining the information they

   receive on tape.  Think about it for a sec.  What is the value of voice

   recordings ?  A voice recording is like a fingerprint.  With the use of

   voice analysis they can accurately identify the caller if they should ever

   want to check up on him/her and take them to court.   A text file like this

   is truly anonymous - no one will ever know who typed it.   A voice recording

   of this same information would absolutely identify myself.   So the point

   of this little paragraph is to simply mention that people who get into the

   habit of making calls to these organizations usually find that information

   about themselves has been passed to the Secret Service or FBI or RCMP or

   New Scotland Yard.  After all... if you have information to give about a

   pirate system, than indirectly you have implicated yourself as being a pirat

   as well.  The cops are only too interested in investigating the informers to

   see if they can use the information that they gain on the rats to subvert

   the rats to do their bidding.  Trust a cop - yah - they will burn anyone if

   if fits their agenda.

   Now let us go further into the strange relationship that pirates have with

   the software publishers to find out why they do not take a greater level of

   interest in the zillions of warez that are spread throughout the world each

   year by pirates.   I believe gentleman that we have been the unwitting dupes

   of the software companies.   Over the past ten years the software publishers

   have found that by allowing pirates to run wild it has helped them sale more

   of their products than they would have sold if we did not exist.  Face it

   dudes - we spread their warez, it gets into the hands of hundreds of

   thousands of users, and eventually people do go and pay for the software

   after analyzing all the different packages.  For some companies this is the

   only way their product would have ever made it into the hands of prospective

   clients.   If the pirates had not helped distribute those files many of the

   software companies would have died a long time ago.      Another benefit

   the pirates provide to the software companies is an excuse for the massive

   overcharging they do on software products.  They blame the pirates for them

   having to charge 10 times what the damn stuff is actually worth.  Convenient

   to have the pirates as a scapegoat for their bloated profits.   We all know

   that a $ 59 game is really marketable for $ 6 - but because of pirates they

   can cry that they are not making sufficient profit margins to cover their

   losses and so the lamers blindly accept this crap and pay the higher markup.

   But let us face another fact of reality and that is that pirates may indeed

   steal software - but NONE OF US would have bought it in the first place, we

   simply steal it to steal it.  Most of us spend ten minutes looking at the

   particular piece of software and then we delete it cuz it was crap.  So it

   lets a lot of steam out of the software publishers claims that we stole

   anything or that they lost anything - nothing was lost cuz they would never

   have sold it to us in the first place.  You can't lose profits that would

   never have existed in the first place.

   So why do some software companies really hate pirates.   In most cases it

   is the software company that produces inferior products that hates us the

   most.  You know which companies I mean - the ones who usually have the

   most spectacular advertisements in the trade magazines - the ones who

   spend more on their advertising campaigns than on the development of the

   software.   The ones who by glossy advertisements suck the unsuspecting

   public into buying their product - only to find out that the game/util

   was vastly inferior or useless compared to other software products out

   there.   The pirates analyze all the warez that pass by them.  In a way

   we become specialist at detecting inferior and superior products.  We make

   recommendations everyday amongst ourselves and with outsiders about which

   software product rulez and which one sucks.  We analyze warez upto 3 months

   before a review shows up in the magazines - they have 3 month lead times

   for publication, we operate in less than 24 hours from the time we receive

   the warez.   Pirates expose inferior warez for what they are - rip offs -

   and this pisses off the low life software publishers whose only existence

   is based on selling inferior products to the uninformed.

   Now let us take a moment to look at the telephone companies as they also

   operate on a hidden agenda that is not too well known.  Pirates make

   extensive use of telecommunications and long distance phone calls.  In some

   cases pirates actually pay for their long distance - this benefits the

   phone companies who make $$$$$ on each of those phone calls.  In some cases

   pirates use calling cards and hacked PBX's to make their phone calls - this

   also benefits the phone company because in most cases THEY MAKE THE OWNER

   of those cards or PBX's pay even though it was not them who made the calls.

   Does anyone not remember how the phone company held Kodak to ransom for

   over 1 million dollars worth of hacked phone calls made on their phone

   system.  Or what about the $ 500,000 worth of phone calls made against

   the Digital phone systems.   The phone companies have a really simple

   approach to this - if a companies phone system is hacked and a ton of

   illegal calls are made on it - it is not the phone companies fault - they

   hold the company that owns the phones liable for all long distance charges

   made against their phone system.  It is the responsibility of the phones

   owners to safeguard their calling card number or PBX passwords and if some

   luckless pirate happens to gain access to it than it is not the phone

   companies fault - the owner of the phone number has to pay.   So you can

   see that we help greatly to boost the profits of the phone companies.  In

   Canada for example, Bell Telephone is that countries highest profit company.

   Statistics taken from Bell Canada's own annual report show that their bigges

   area of profit is long distance charges that occur during the off peak hours

   These are the prime times that pirates operate... overnight express.  But if

   you think about it, what would that phone companies phone lines be doing

   from midnight until 6:00am the next morning - does anyone really believe

   that there are zillions of legitimate phone calls occurring during those

   off hours - NO those calls are almost exclusively being made by pirates.

   So by pumping through those calls in the wee hours of the morning we are

   helping to put profit into what would otherwise be totally dead time on

   their networks.   If we weren't there - there would be only 5% of the

   call traffic that they presently enjoy.   And so for that reason I say

   the existence of pirates have helped profit the pockets of the phone

   companies.   And if you need further convincing about the crooked motives

   of the phone companies than consider this simple fact.  When a long distance

   call goes from one country to another, or from one phone company to another

   the destination phone company receives COMPENSATION directly from the

   originating phone company.   Between the two companies they split the profit

   of the phone call - this is because it took their two networks to complete

   the one call - and for that both deserve a percentage of the $$$$$ made on

   that phone call.   Now think about this for a second - a pirate system in

   the 201 exchange receives 10,000 illegal calls per month.  This represents

   quite a few dollars for which the destination phone company is going to

   make $$$$$$$ no matter what happens - it is going to be paid by the phone

   company where the calls originated from.   I think you can see that the

   destination phone company has absolutely no motivation to assist the police

   or anyone to kill that pirate system that is bringing in these long distance

   phone calls.     But how about one final stab at the scum that manage the

   phone companies - just to expose how crooked they are -  Like the software

   companies, the phone companies use the pirates as scapegoats when they go

   to seek higher phone rates.   Yes, they use us to extract higher rates from

   the regulators who control how much they can charge.   They cry that they

   are being burned to the tune of millions of dollars and have to charge the

   honest law abiding phone callers higher rates to make up for all the losses

   they suffer at the hands of telecomm pirates.   Well I think you can see

   now that they never loss anything in the first place because Bell always

   makes money - even on a pirated phone call.)op, (>), More? 

   I will not bother to discuss how the modem manufacturers have gotten a free

   ride on the backs of pirates.   But let's face it - without pirates the

   world would still be limping around with 2400 baud modems.   It is the

   pirates - NOT BIG BUSINESS - that demanded and got faster and faster

   modems.   Our needs for the movement of files are far greater than all

   of that of Big Business.   In a way you could say that the demands of the

   pirate world have helped Big Business.  We force cutting edge technology

   to do our job and the modem companies are glad to supply us AT A COST.

   Who do you think will make up the majority of purchasers of the new 28.8

   baud modems ?   I laugh if you thought it was the government or some big

   companies.   We all know it is the pirates.   It sure as hell isn't going

   to be Henry PD Dickwad who calls CompuSlave or Genyuk.   Let's face it

   dudes - pirates made US Robotics the leader in the industry by making it

   the modem of choice of the underworld !!   And I believe you can rest

   assured that they know that all to well !   Have you ever wondered why

   US Robotics never gave to the cops a list of all the sysops who have

   bought their high speed modems ?   Course they wouldn't - without us

   John Q Pirate would have no need to keep upgrading to the latest

   product offering coming from them.

   Lastly, let us share a few fast words about the police.  The cops do

   not even have enough money to eradicate drugs, illegal weapons or

   prostitutes.   Do the lamers of the world really think that in these

   tough economic times that the cops would dedicate the ever shrinking

   budgets that they have to use it up chasing pirates.  Get real.  The

   cops are FORCED to spend their ever shrinking budgets fighting real

   crime - ones where there are victims - and as I have already shown

   software piracy is a victimless crime.  So to the lamers of the world

   who operate under some mistaken impression that there are thousands of

   police out there with nothing better to do than chase pirates, I simply

   say to you to 'Wake up and smell the coffee you uninformed dickwad'

   Now that I have exposed the hidden agenda of the phone companies, the

   software companies, and the supposed anti-piracy organizations I will

   now slip comfortably back into my silent mode again and smile knowing

   that after 13 years in this pirate business I will still have at least

   another 13 years of this fun to enjoy.   The wienies that attempt to

   scare pirate boards with their idle threats of bust simply do not know

   the big picture, the hidden agendas or how their lame actions simply

   do not matter.   The only people their lame actions hurt are themselves

   as they find themselves kicked out of all the pirate circles and they

   are removed from the elite world that we know as piracy.

   It is too bad that a few lamers surface in our underground world trying

   to act tough by speaking of bust and betrayal.   Grow up kiddies and

   learn to play the game or leave it.... because you will never change it.

   In closing I extend special greets to all the groups that are out there

   bringing warez to the masses.   Your efforts are greatly appreciated by

   all, including the software companies, telephone companies and yes even

   the anti-piracy organizations.  For without your excellent efforts they

   would never have continued to exist either.....or made such profits !!

                                          --*  TC  *--

                                           May 22 1994

   PS :  Hey... you didn't really expect me to put my full handle here

         ( believe me... they will be pissed to learn this info is out )

