By Joe Barr Originally published in January, 1995 warez 1. Stolen software made available on the internet or 'elite' bulletin boards. 2. Pirated or cracked commercial software. HoHoCon is Austin's annual celebration of the computer underground. Phracks, phreaks and geeks rub shoulders with corporate and government security, various and assorted cyber-authors, and run-of-the-mill dweebs. It's an in thing, a cult thing, an elite thing. In many ways it reminds me of the drug-culture of the 60's and 70's. It has the same mentality: paranoia and an abiding disdain for the keepers of law and order. But after all, HoHoCon honors the Robin Hood's of the computer age. Pseudo-cyber-heros stealing from the rich, powerful, and evil princes (Microsoft, Lotus, IBM, et al) of the day, and distributing the booty to the poor under the very nose of the sheriff. A nose, by the way, that is just begging to be tweaked. That's the romantic view, at least. To others there is no nobility in computer crime. Whether it's a case of wholesome anarchy subverted to common criminal mischief or not: warez is warez, theft is theft. Two months ago I had an email conversation with a young man and we discovered we both ran BBS's. He asked what my board was about and I explained that it (the Red Wheelbarrow) was for 'rascals, poets, and dweebs', that it carried echo's from FidoNet, USENET, and other nets, and that its primary focus was on poetry. He replied that his was a private board that dealt mainly in "WaRez and 'bOts" and closed his note with an "eVil gRin." Not being sure what he was talking about, I asked him to spell it out for me. I never heard from him again. I mention this because at HoHoCon you either knew these things or you didn't, you were part of the elite or you were not. Like my questions to my friend the pirate board operator, my questions at HoHoCon were never answered. The hype in the Austin newsgroups for this year's event talked a lot about the party last year. Cyberspace luminaries who attended were mentioned nearly as often as the two girls stripping for dollars in one of the hotel rooms. I decided then and there it was the sort of function I should cover for Tech-Connected. I asked at the door for a press pass and was directed towards a rather small, fiercely redheaded kid across the room. The guard at the door said he was the guy running the show. I expected to see lots of people I knew. I saw only one, John Foster, the man who keeps the whole world (including Tech-Connected) up-to-date as to what boards are up and what boards are down in Central Texas. John is about my age. He looked normal. Everyone else was strange. I saw more jewelry in noses and ears in that room than I normally see in a week. Lots of leather and metal, too. HoHoCon '94 looked like where the tire met the (info) road: a cross between neo-punk-Harley-rennaisance and cyber-boutique. Most of the crowd was young. Old gray-beards like John and I really stuck out in the crowd. I found the redheaded kid. He was selling t-shirts at the table. Next to him an "old hand" (who must have been nearly 30) was reciting the genesis of personal computers to a younger dweeb. They quibbled for a second about whether Altos preceded Altair, then looked up to see if anyone was listening. They smiled and then went on when they saw that I was. I waited respectfully for the redheaded kid to finish hawking a shirt, then repeated my request for a press pass. He just looked at me kind of funny and said he had given some out, but only to people he knew. I didn't know a secret handshake or any codewords I could blurt out to prove I was cool, so I just stood there for a moment thinking about what to do next. Perhaps a change in costume would make me cool. Maybe then these kids could see that I was OK. So I picked up a black one, it read NARC across the front and on the back had a list of strange names on the back. Not wanting to appear ignorant, I didn't ask what NARC stood for. I figured it would be easy enough to find out later, o I bought the shirt and left. I returned the next morning, wearing my new NARC t-shirt, certain it would give me the sort of instant approval I hadn't had the day before. It didn't. As I was looking around, a long-haired dude in lots of leather came clanking up in heavy-heeled motorcycle boots and asked what I was doing. I explained I was there to do a story. That shut him up for a second so I decided to pursue my advantage. "Anything exciting happen last night?" I asked. "Nothing I can tell YOU about, SIR" he replied. Then he pivoted on one of those big heels and clanked away. Browsing the tables in the meeting room I found pamphlets left over from the previous day's activities. There was an old 'treasure map' of high-tech 'trash' locations in Denver. Northern Telecom, AT&T and U.S.West locations seemed to be the focus. There were flyers from internet access providers (it seemed a little like carrying coals to Newcastle, but then what do I know), a catalog from an underground press with titles like "The Paper Trail" (just in case you need to create a new identity for yourself), "Fugitive: How to Run, Hide, and Survive" and "Secrets of Meth amphetamine Manufacture." For the purists there were reprints of issues 1 to 91 of "YIPL/TAP", the first phreak newsletter. For the wannabe's like me, there were more kewl t-shirts to be ordered. I decided I should have opted for the one with "Hacking for Jesus" across the back. I appreciate the art of anthropology a little more after trying to read the spoor left behind by that horde of hackers at HoHoCon. To this day, I'm not certain what the NARC on the t-shirt stands for. Someone suggested it was any state or federal officer interested in busting people, just like in the bad old days (or today, for that matter). Maybe it's shorthand for aNARChist. The definition I like best was given to me on an internet newsgroup, alt.binary.pc.warez. After a paragraph or two of the requisite 'my gawd what a stupid question from a know-nothing nerd' the suggestion was made that it stood for "Never At Rest Couriers." I like that one because it suggests a purpose for those 'bots my friend with the WaReZ board and the eViL gRiN mentioned in our conversation. Sitting in private channels on IRC servers, 'bots could be used to store and forward warez across the internet in almost untraceable ways. Who knows for sure? Not I. One thing I'm certain of, I'm real careful what part of town I wear my NARC t-shirt in. Never near the money corner. I would really hate getting shot by a confused crack-cocaine dealer who took me for a jump-out boy, and thought my shirt was the signal a deal had gone bad. Because I had been excluded from the inner circle, because I had tried and failed to become part of the elite during HoHoCon, it was easy for me to work myself into a morally superior position from which to write this column. All I had really seen were a bunch of kids: wannabe's, cyber-groupies and counterculture alternatives to life-as-we-know-it, celebrating the triumph of crooks and petty thieves over legitimate big business and big government. Something bothered me about that safe, smug position, though, and I thought about it some more. I realized something was missing. If they were criminals, where was their profits? Where were the 'Benz and BMW's that should have been in the parking lot? Where were all the fancy wimminz that follow fast money? Software prices are high these days, so even if they were only getting a dime on the dollar for their WaReZ, there should have been some real high-rollers strutting their stuff. A reformed phreaker gave me some input on this. He said it was about collecting a complete set of goods, like trading baseball cards, not about making money. The software itself wasn't that important. Having it in your collection was the important thing. Tagging in cyberspace. Making a mark by having one of everything. Still, it's illegal. Against the law, whether for profit or not. The news background as I write this story is about Microsoft, king of the PC software hill. The judge reviewing the Consent Decree negotiated between the Department of Justice and Microsoft (arbitration designed to avoid a long court battle to halt their illegal and predatory business practices) is telling the Microsoft lawyers, their 'suits' if you will, that he can't believe them. They (the suits) had testified in September that Microsoft did not engage in marketing vaporware. The judge has before him internal Microsoft documents which indicate otherwise. The employee performance review of a Microsoft geek who came up with the idea of using vaporware to combat a hot new product from Borland. The employee had been given the highest possible ranking in his evaluation. The suits have now told the judge it wasn't vaporware, because Microsoft was actually working on such a product. The judge is not amused by Microsoft's willingness to continue their lying ways in his courtroom. Are the crimes done by Microsoft somehow more acceptable because they are done for the big bucks? Because they're done by millionaires instead of punk kids? How about Ross Perot's old company, EDS. Have the proud men and women of the red (tie), white (shirt), and blue (suit) drifted astray since the days when 'the little guy' insisted that not even a hint of impropriety would be allowable? The state employee that negotiated and signed the contract with EDS in 1990 to install the statewide USAS accounting system was hired by EDS as a 'special consultant' in 1992. Hint of impropriety? EDS bought a full-page ad in the Austin American-Statesman to make sure that all the other bureaucrats in Austin got the message: help EDS land a contract and become an EDS 'special consultant' yourself. Finally, how about me. I have illegal software on my own PC. It's a copy of Personal Editor II that I've had forever. When I first worked at EDS, I once had to code 250,000 lines of COBOL using EDLIN. In those days, EDS management didn't think PC's were anything but toys. They would be damned before they spent money buying editors to write software for them. Out of that ordeal came a lasting hatred for EDLIN. And my own copy of PE II. I'm not even sure where I got it. It might have even been a legal copy at one time. When I was transferred to DC I took it with me. It's followed me from my XT, to my AT, to my 386SX, and now it's own my 486DX2/50. I've had a copy of it on every computer I've used at work. Now I don't go into DOS unless I want to hear the guns fire in Doom II. OS/2 comes with TEDIT, which looks enough like an updated version of PE II to make me feel guilty every time I see it. What about the cops? The federal storm-troopers who conducted the raids around town at the time of the Steve Jackson affair. The judge at that trial had dressed down the agent in charge like he was talking to a teenage bully who had been busted for taking candy from the other kids. So who are the good guys and who are the bad? The suits who steal and bribe and leverage from within? The arrogant thugs with badges? The punks with body-piercings? Or an old phart like me, with illegal software on his own PC? Heady questions for sure. I thought I knew the answers when I started this column, now I'm not so sure. I can't condone the theft of goods or services no matter how altruistic or noble the cause, or how badly some noses need to be tweaked, or how ignoble some agents of law enforcement. I think it would be my style to point a finger first at the suits, then at the kids. But as long as I'm using PE II, or shareware long beyond its trial period, I shouldn't be looking elsewhere for something to set right.