Steal this software

From...

June 21, 2000
Web posted at: 11:13 a.m. EDT (1513 GMT)

by Hillary Rosner

(IDG) -- If you're a tech worker who paid for the software on your computer, don't be surprised if someone tries to sell you a bridge.

In a certain elite circle that includes programmers, graphic designers and many others, not paying for software is more than just money-saving, it's a point of pride. "Everything on my computer is stolen. I haven't bought one program," says a New York special-effects artist who estimates his Apple Macintosh is loaded with more than $15,000 worth of software for which he hasn't paid a penny.

He rattles off the names: "After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Infini-D, Flash, Poser, Elastic Reality, Cinema 4D, QuarkXPress, Premiere, sound programs, Microsoft Office, but who doesn't have a pirated copy of that?" One programmer with $10,000 of illegal software on his PC (who insisted on anonymity for obvious reasons) adds: "It's ... sort of a competition to see who can get the most stuff."

	MESSAGE BOARD
Insurgency

Much of the traffic in illegal software online, and offline, is grounded not only in a quest for bragging rights but also in the same philosophy that prevents many entertainment journalists from ever paying for a movie or a concert: a sense of insider entitlement. Paying is for the dopes who don't know how to get stuff for free. "Nobody pays for software," says another programmer. "As far as finding people who never pay, that's just going to be everybody."

As long as there have been disk drives and modems, bandits have been cracking code and stealing "warez." But with the advent of Napster-like technology that enables much more than MP3 access on the Internet, the barriers to what one game designer calls the "world of the digitally criminal elite" are toppling.

MORE COMPUTING INTELLIGENCE

IDG.net home page

The Standard.com

TechInformer: The Thinking Internaut's Guide to the Tech Industry

Washington coalition attacks Internet crime

Napster hears call beyond music

Reviews & in-depth info at IDG.net

E-BusinessWorld

Industry Standard email newsletters

Questions about computers? Let IDG.net's editors help you

Industry Standard daily Media Grok

Search IDG.net in 12 languages

News Radio

Fusion audio primers

Computerworld Minute

But while the modus operandi and the skill level required may have changed, the basic tenets of software piracy remain. In order to install most software, users require security clearance in the form of either simple registration numbers or, with higher-end programs, a piece of security hardware called a dongle. Hackers make stolen software usable by cracking the code, disabling the security measures, and then posting it on the Internet for download.

The money at stake, and the number of downloads, is certainly worth bragging about. Of 20 programmers questioned about their illegal software, all said they owned well over $10,000 worth, and many figures ranged closer to $25,000. Official calculations by software industry trade groups put the amount of pirated software at roughly 20 percent of all software in use worldwide, and the Software and Information Industry Association estimates that companies lost $12 billion to pirates in 1999.

Those figures reflect only theft in the business application market situations in which a company purchases one copy of a software suite and installs it on multiple computers and don't include Internet piracy, a wildly popular method of acquiring software that's difficult to measure due to what Peter Beruk, SIIA's VP for antipiracy programs, calls "methodology problems."

Tech-savvy computer users are taking advantage of the situation. Batur Oktay, Adobe's senior corporate counsel, estimates that as much as 50 percent of the company's software in use today is stolen, and that 90 percent of Adobe software offered for sale on auction sites is illegal.

"A couple of years ago, we went after a 'warez' site that had Photoshop posted for free download," recalls Oktay. "It had been downloaded over 100,000 times in six months. ... That's a $60 million street value."

While certain sites run by individual pirates can be shut down, other decentralized means of software distribution are tougher to shutter and are making it easier for people to get their hands on pirated software.

"Gnutella and Freenet are scary," says Beruk of the new programs that function much like online audio's Napster, but without centralized servers. Both allow people to make software available for general consumption without having to upload it to a server; both make file sharing and distribution so amorphous that it is nearly impossible to trace. "They are powerful applications that, unchecked, could bring significant harm to the industry."

And they certainly will up the ante in the longstanding cat-and-mouse game between hackers and software companies. "What's going to happen is they'll move toward stricter security measures," says Cameron Hickey, a New York-based freelance Web designer. Of course, Hickey notes, the hackers will just as quickly find a way around those procedures. (For the record, Hickey's computer is fully stocked with legal software that he bought from his last full-time employer when it went belly-up.)

But Gnutella and Freenet are only the latest Internet-based thorns in the side of the software industry. Hotline, another Web tool that enables decentralized file sharing and software swapping, has seen a steady growth in popularity since its debut in 1996, with 100,000 new users each month. Hotline now has thousands of servers and more than 3 million active users, according to the company, which has never run a single ad.

Hotline, and its client software, HCL, was originally designed as a business tool to provide Internet-based discussions and file sharing. "Since anyone can set up a Hotline server on any computer, there is no need to maintain a central server that may break or have its security compromised," says Les Brown, who runs HotlineCentral.com, a search engine for Hotline servers.

For now, finding, downloading and installing software from Hotline servers can be a daunting process for those not intimately familiar with computers and coding. But that's part of the allure. People usually need to go through a series of links to obtain a username and password to start the download. One Hotline aficionado says most Hotline servers are maintained by people who have no interest in software and are just in it for the money they can make when software seekers click through the ads. The rest, he says, are college kids and anarchic programmers in it for the thrill.

Hickey views Hotline as "a liberating thing", a sort of virtual Robin Hood that gives freelancers who couldn't otherwise afford to buy expensive programs the chance to improve their skills, even if the method for getting the software can be time-consuming.

The method will likely get easier, though, as Hotline, Gnutella and Freenet inspire more user-friendly iterations. And while the recording industry is attempting to crack down on Napster for enabling free access to copyrighted music, it's impossible for the software industry to attack a Hotline head-on because essentially a legal protocol is being used to post illegal software.

Beruk says Internet service providers generally have been cooperative about taking down software boards and other sites offering illegal downloads. But, he notes, "with Hotline and Freenet, you don't have a central patrol point. We're going to have to find out what is the best way to investigate [piracy] claims and work with the FBI." The SIIA is also working with ISPs and with the government to find ways to monitor and prosecute software piracy.

It's unclear how successful they'll be as decentralized networks proliferate and the techie pirates are joined by the casual home user. "I can't imagine any way for software developers, I'm one, by the way, to stop pirating via computer-to-computer transmission like Hotline," says HotlineCentral's Brown. "But once this central server is replaced by many computers all over the world with changing IP addresses, logins, passwords and potentially changing physical locations, it becomes nearly impossible to stop the trading of files in this manner."

Pirating has always been a part of the tech culture, but its nature as an elite pastime is clearly changing. "Ah, the kids these days! They don't know how hard we had to work when I was young!" says one game developer, waxing nostalgic about his childhood days of cracking Pong and other games for his Commodore 64, using a 300-baud modem.

His sentiment, however, is still current: "We just didn't have to play by the rules. We were above that."

Hearing spotlights clash between open source and copyright protection
May 26, 2000
MP3.com gains ground as Napster loses a round
May 10, 2000
Battle brews over reverse engineering
May 8, 2000
Italian piracy ruling angers software makers
April 27, 2000
Swap MP3s, go to jail?
April 14, 2000

Trolling for tech treasure
(The Industry Standard)
Napster hears call beyond music
(PC World.com)
MS fights piracy with swap offers
(PC World.com)
Mad about copyrights
(The Industry Standard)
Washington coalition attacks Internet crime
(Civic.com)
E-BusinessWorld
(IDG.net)
TechInformer: The Thinking Internaut's Guide to the Tech Industry
(IDG.net)

Napster
What is it like to be a software pirate?

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.