These writings gave way to another adventure. An adventure in which I was the wronged party, in which my rights were being trampled - or so I thought.
It all started on IRC one day, one of those worthless channels. I was talking to someone about NSA, and mentioned something I had written in it. In a few minutes he was telling me about what I had written. "Got it off my CD" he said.
I did a double-take. That was my work. I asked him the name of the nefarious company that was selling my works. Well a portion, a very small portion.
When I found out some info on the company that made the disc I searched the net for NSA issue 4(When I found it I was gleeful as I saw a copyright notice in plain site.
I was in the right.
It was a strange feeling, someone stealing something of mine. I knew they weren’t making real money, and the company was probably those "starving programmers" we always hear about (I’m waiting for the Sally Struther’s special on the starving pale programmers, with permanent caffeine headaches).
Anyways, I called an utterly prominent copyright software attorney who was kind enough to take my call. If you see this page, Mr. Utterly Prominent Lawyer, give me the okay to use your name. Never be too careful when referring to lawyers.
I decided when this started what I wanted. I wanted ten copies of this CD. A lot of numbers crossed my mind, especially when the lawyer said I could probably get an injunction against distribution of the CD. I tried calling the company, and speaking with the president. At first he took my call.
After the first call he never let me talk to him again - his lawyer was talking for him. Already this incident cost him far more than the costs of giving me my CD’s. Just a couple hours of the lawyer cruising the net and letting the dilema bounce around his head would cost a small fortune.
Of course all my legal threats were bluffs. I couldn't afford to go down to AZ, where the company was. I couldn't afford 'my lawyer', to fly him out or pay for real time spent on this case. He was helping me out by giving me the right language to use and giving me an understanding of what my rights were.
The problem was that the company was violating a lot of copyrights. There were entire archives of this material that were being marketed. They didn’t want every single copyright bearer calling them up, claiming infringement.
They also claimed that because I "put this onto the net" that I didn’t own the copyright anymore. The problem is that we didn’t upload this to the net at all. This was distributed entirely through a private BBS distribution system. This file was intended to be distributed to a select audience.
Eventually I "won" I didn’t win in the sense that they acknowledged they had wronged me. They never aplogized. In fact, in order to collect my ‘booty’, I had to give up all future claims. I had to admit that they were not in the wrong in anyway, and further never try to collect from them again.
But they wanted more than this. They wanted me to agree never to tell any of my buddies in the community that they were being ripped off.
This didn’t turn out to be a problem. I pretty much considered this a ‘scam’ when I first started it. Even though I was in "the right", I just wanted my loot, my reward. Other hackers would have to extort on their own. The other reason this was okay is that my bounty, which ended up being twenty CD’s, sucked. The CD’s were bad. Just mirrored archives of common 'underground' ftp sites and tons of alt.binaries.tastless pics.
So I won. I got my victory. I had intimidated my opponent and had walked out with the prize. I felt no victory however, I had hacks that gave me greater pleasure than that. There was no satisfaction. I had used an oversight of this pathetic company’s "big business plan" and used it to get my prize.
I’m not losing sleep over this, don’t get me wrong, but the whole thing didn’t settle well in my stomach. At DEFCON II they had representatives there. They were giving away T-shirts, and gave me two. I was surprised that they weren’t angry at me, resentful - they realized who I was. Then I understood that they just wanted to party too.
I gave one of the shirts to the cool attorney that helped me out on this. They were cheap (the shirts, that is).
This poem was called "The place to be", and is about QSD, an infamous chat line.
I remember logging onto QSD (it didn’t happen often) and have complete strangers give me old, dead, useless CBI numbers and then expect the coolest GOD (or whatever was their code-of-choice for the day) around in return.
I preferred lutzifer. The atmosphere was more laid back, and people were halfway intelligent. This poem, while certainly not good, is also not serious.
If the stranger sending chat messages to you wasn’t asking you for your first born code, they were asking to have net-sex with them. Chatters were infamous for not fully revealing their proper gender. The lists of complaints about QSD goes on, but I’d rather hear it praised.
