CompuServe Thread

I've seen pirate boards for any home machine you can think of. The vast majority of them appear to be normal BBS's with perfectly legitimate files; however, the person running the board can set user's options. For those swapping software…they get the option enabled that allows them access to the stolen software. The normal way to get access is either by reccomendation of someone who already has access…or by uploading stolen software. You generally keep access by continuing to provide stolen software. I "cracked" a few pirate boards several years ago by working with a publisher and uploading "special" versions of their software…and gaining access to the pirate sections. Those particular boards were quickly put out of business.

Lets just say that I know folks who call them all the time. Believe me there are quite a few bbs's out there devoted to piracy. Many with multiple lines with high speed (14.4K bps) modems. Some have hundreds of megs of storage. Since many of the boards have overseas contacts much of the European software gets to those boards many months before they come the US on there own. Many of the boards advertise other board numbers on their systems and from all the different ones I have been shown there are many out there. I that is just for Amiga, there is even a larger amount for IBM software. Once a piece of software is cracked and is released, it is spread over the entire country in a matter of days, especially at the speed of Courier HST modems which seems to be the bbs standard currently. Those modems transfer about 100K per minute so you can imagine how quickly stuff can spread, not to mention the fact that users on those systems fight for upload credits so they can download more. So that means files are spread very fast.

There's one in my neighborhood, but it appears to be a normal BBS – unless you are able to make friends with the SYSOP and convince him that "you are one of them"…I was able to, by uploading stuff that WAS NOT pirated (or even software, for that matter – but another kind of "dishonesty"). I was amazed at what was being offered at first, but it kind of toned down after a while. Yet, you can indeed get the newest version of Macropaint, or the latest release of ADPro, or several other (non-copy protected) heavy hitters, as well as several cracked games. They definitely exist!!!

about a year ago, I wandered off into the pirate network and mapped out several boards solely dedicated to trading 'warez' (spelling varies). They are out there and frequently have some of the best hardware that I've ever encountered (let alone software). They also seem to have talent, since, frequently, the version of a particular game (seems to be their favorite target) is the same as the public version but with copy protection disabled. Why they continue that illicit practice, I can't make heads or tails of, since they could easily write a program and sell it. It makes no sense. BTW, those boards are no longer in existence.