When people think of software pirates, they usually envision college kids downloading games off BitTorrent, or adults getting too-good-to-be-true bargains off eBay, or street stalls lined with DVDs in Third World cities. The real pirate scene, however, is much larger, hidden, and yet in plain sight, say experts.

Let's say, just for argument's sake, that you happen upon a hacked version of a PC game and run installer.exe. To the plonky sounds of synth music you might read, "Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 (c) Aspyr. Enjoy another nice game from your friends at Class." After that, you open the accompanying .nfo text file. Beneath an ASCII art graphic, you read details about how the game was ripped, and a 'help wanted' section, seeking partners in crime like suppliers, distributors, and the elite of videogame lawbreakers: crackers.

Its come to my attension that.. we have a rat and a security risk in a our midst... This pos not only leaks site info.. but he also emails providers and tell them that there boxes have scene releases on them. His nick is coderx aka phreek aka xAx .. he is siteop on a rented .UK site called O*T. He recently abused pre priv.. by leaking a sites info through prespam informing ppl site was USA.

A newbie guide to the pirate scene including how to extract, burn and copy releases.

Nineteen defendants from across the United States and overseas who allegedly were leaders, members and associates of the underground software piracy group known as 'RISCISO' were indicted on federal charges for pirating more than $6.5 million of copyrighted computer software, games, and movies through non-public Internet sites. The defendants were charged in a 15-count indictment that was returned late yesterday by a federal grand jury in Chicago, where the investigation was conducted, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, announced today.

It was part of the conspiracy that defendants were leaders, members, and associates of the software piracy group known as 'RISCISO.' 'RISC' was an acronym for Rise in Superior Couriering, while 'ISO' referred to a file format commonly used for the storage and transfer of pirated software. RISCISO was an underground organization, founded in approximately 1993, dedicated to the illegal distribution of large volumes of copyrighted software, games, and movies over the Internet, particularly recently released items, for the use and benefit of members and affiliates of RISCISO, and of persons to whom RISCISO members and affiliates further distributed those items.

The OldSkool DemoMaker creates demos like cracktros on the good old Amiga. Here a list what you can do with it: Horizontal and sinus scrolling text, bouncing copperbars, starfield in three modes, colorfull plasma effects, logo with old stylish deforming effect or as gif anim, 3d ball, dot & vector object view with rotation, replays music in different sound formats eg. SID and V2M, free use of display (window or fullscreen), export optimized standalone executables (no files needed), compressing executables will shrink size upto 90%, able to pack medias to use real large files. A lot of bitmap fonts and tracker modules included. O.S.D.M could be an ideal tool to put your own demos within archives to introduce yourself.

A group built off the ashes of two others. Two top groups putting aside their differences to merge and make something brilliant. The first title we put out was C&C TS - FIRESTORM *STANDALONE* back in 2000. The amount of major titles since then is unbelieveable, regardless of what some people may try to get you to think.

A screen capture of the FBI take down of a popular yet illegal Lineage II private server, running a leaked and pirated copy of the server software.

As a final word, this Q&A was made because of all the confusion concerning Cloning and CloneCDs, hopefully things are clearer now that a detailed explanation has been presented, cracking is becoming a very difficult thing to accomplish, even with all the skill and experience of seasoned crews, recent changes and customization of popular copy protection systems need to be approached using manual tools and methods, since it sometimes takes nearly a month to produce a NoCD, the community will have to accept and learn what to do with CloneCDs especially how to establish 'Quality Control' acceptance of these is still not fully decided, however most surely understand the necessity and can no longer avoid their practical appliance.

On January 8th 1997, the world changed. From the ashes of Prestige, as the new year came, so too did a new group. Several of dedicated, determined and often emotional people formed the group that was to be known as CLASS.

A Slashdot public interview conducted with former Drink Or Die member BiGrAr, taken before he served a 33 month jail sentence after being busted in Operation Buccaneer.

Warez traders have been blamed as a significant cause of copyright piracy, which has led to several dozen conviction of warez traders in the past two years. The article analyzes how criminal copyright infringement and other laws apply to warez trading. The article also describes the prosecutions of warez trading, including a comprehensive chart of all warez trading convictions.

The release groups targeted by Fastlink specialize in the distribution of all types of pirated works including utility and application software, movies, music and games. Among the groups targeted by Fastlink are well-known organizations such as Fairlight, Kalisto, Echelon, Class and Project X, all of which specialized in pirating computer games, and music release groups such as APC. The enforcement action announced today is expected to dismantle many of these international warez syndicates and significantly impact the illicit operations of others.

In 1998, and again on March 26th 2000, three rip game groups collaborated to bring about rules with the hope of ensuring quality in a constantly evolving rip fscene. These rules lasted a long time, but as technology moves forward, so to must the rules governing it. It is time once again for the standards by which the games scene operates to be updated.

Ever since there has been the ability to store data on a personal computer and commercial software for sale, there has been the existence of pirating. Pirating, cracking and even pirate scenes go all the way back to the late seventies, and maybe even earlier. By the early eighties some machines (such as the BBC Macro in Europe) where so riddled with pirates that the programming companies gave up. They discontinued producing and porting software for the affected computers because there was simply no money to be made. This article has been written with only the PC scene in mind.

You all read the news - Operation Fastlink struck hard to the heart of the scene and hit the FairLight ISO section, but mind that the demo activities on the PC and C64 are still naturally untouched, as there is nothing to complain about from a legal point of view on what they are doing.

In the discourse of business ethics, illegal economic undertakings are usually presented as archetypal cases of unethical behavior. This article tries to nuance this view by studying the ethics of an illegal subculture, and particularly its formalized 'codes of conduct', as a valid area of inquiry for business ethics. Based on a prolonged ethnographic study of warez, i.e. illegal games of competitive donation undertaken on the Internet, this article thus argues for a more pluralistic approach to the study of business ethics by showing how formalized ethics can arise out of economic activities that are usually perceived as amoral. By doing a reading of the community's set of rules and the moralizations entailed in these, the role of codes of conduct is discussed as a general case of ethical argumentation. The article closes with a call for an extended view on business ethics.

This Article examines the No Electronic Theft Act (the Act or the NET Act). The Act represents a significant change to copyright law because it subtly shifts the paradigm underlying criminal copyright infringement. For 100 years, criminal infringement punished infringers who derived a commercial benefit based on someone else's copyrighted work. However, through the Act, Congress adopted a paradigm that criminal copyright infringement is like physical-space theft, specifically shoplifting. As a result, the Act significantly extends the boundaries of criminal copyright infringement.

Before I begin, let me state the following: This is my personal perspective of the history of Warez and the scene in general on America Online (AOL). How the scene developed in the beginnings, and where it has evolved to today. I also would like to thank Mat Stars, Reflux, and Da Chronic himself for their input and insight. Enjoy.

Forum index page before the website was busted.

ISO games list before the website was busted.

The welcome screen after the website was busted by The Department of Justice.

Operation Buccaneer is an ongoing international copyright piracy investigation and prosecution undertaken by federal law enforcement. On December 11, 2001, in a coordinated international effort, the U.S. Customs Service and the Department of Justice executed, or caused to be executed, more than 65 searches in the U.S. and five foreign countries. As of October, 2002, 16 defendants have been convicted in the U.S. of felony criminal copyright offenses, including conspiracy to commit those offenses, and 13 defendants have been sentenced to federal prison terms of up to 46 months. These are the longest sentences ever imposed in the United States for Internet copyright piracy. Additional guilty pleas and sentencings are scheduled in the coming months.

In this world of casual piracy, many people have forgotten or just never realized where many software releases originate. Seth Fogie looks at the past, present, and future of the warez industry; and illustrates the simple fact that "free" software is here to stay.

About 14 years ago, I discovered a gem of a game called Life and Death. It was a doctor sim in which you diagnosed and treated patients. The most exciting and challenging parts of its gameplay were the surgery sections, when you had to perform entire operations - from laying out the sheet and disinfecting the gear all the way through putting the final stitches in the incision. Although I was too young to appreciate the title's finer nuances, I did have a tremendous amount of fun carving my name in the patient's flesh with the scalpel and listening to his resulting screams. I eventually put Life and Death aside and moved on to titles more appropriate to my temperament such as Wolfenstein 3D and Blake Stone.

Although this paper would have been ultimately written, much impetus was provided by the Federal Government's (U. S. Custom Department's) investigation into Drink Or Die (DOD), the "underground" software securities group. The following critique on software licensing systems given in this essay is meant to increase the effectiveness of already available software protections by shedding light on their vulnerabilities and strengths. This paper will also attempt to demonstrate how software hackers think, what tools they use, why they attack certain targets, and how to keep software from being "cracked".

Warcraft III, the much-anticipated sequel from Blizzard Entertainment, hits store shelves on July 3. The series, which is the company's most recognizable franchise, hoped its rollout would create a big splash in an industry that thrives on glitz and glamour.

That wasn't to be. While designers rushed to complete the game, groups of crackers around the world were trying to get their hands on Warcraft III before it was released. It's a regular dance between game companies and pirate groups. The bigger the game, the more intense the pressure on both sides. In this battle, the game companies almost never win.

Federal agents seized computers in 27 U.S. cities Tuesday morning to gain evidence against hackers in an international software piracy ring. Police in five countries also served warrants against people accused of stealing software, U.S. Customs Service officials said. They alleged the people targeted in the raids stole and distributed all types of media, including Microsoft Windows operating systems, computer games and high-quality copies of new movies like Harry Potter and Monsters, Inc.

Attorney General John Ashcroft announced today that in three separate federal law enforcement actions federal agents executed approximately 100 search warrants worldwide against virtually every level of criminal organizations engaged in illegal software piracy over the Internet. The three Operations, codenamed 'Buccaneer,' 'Bandwidth' and 'Digital Piratez,' struck at all aspects of the illegal software, game and movie trade, often referred to as 'warez scene.'

To hear the federal government and piracy experts describe it, DrinkOrDie, the network of software crackers that was the focus of worldwide anti-piracy law enforcement action on Tuesday, is the al-Qaida of Internet software theft.

The U.S. Customs Service called the group "the oldest and most well known" of Internet piracy organizations, describing it as a loose affiliation of computer experts who operate as sleepers in our midst, ready to drop their cover and crack the latest copy of Photoshop at any instant.

In Microsoft's battle against software piracy, the first round goes to pirates, even though the starting bell hasn't even rung yet. Microsoft's new operating system, Windows XP, won't be in stores for another seven weeks, but pirated copies are already floating around on the Internet.

The Founder of PhRoZeN CReW/Crackers in Action 2000.

In 1998, three people decided the future of how the scene should shape itself and released a 10-point information document stating how a game release should be conducted. In the past year, many of these rules have been broken by its founding members and other groups have purposely broken the agreement. In lieu of recent events, the deciding figures of three groups, Class, Myth and Divine, have converged and agreed upon a new set of rules based on the original Faction rules and Myth's recent proposal and have been updated, modified and agreed upon by a consensus to a new standard to better suit the scene in this millenium.

With pain in my heart I have to announce, the death of a very prestigious group, who set scenestandards in the period 1992-2000. Today, the remaining members of the original PWA council have decided to disband the group. The scene has become too dangerous for us to continue, and our advice to current group leaders is to watch your backs very closely. With the venue of the internet age, our standards have gone downhill, and it doesn't look like we learn lessons from the past. The scene is too open for the external world, making life easy for moles to enter our ranks. Unfortunately, we had to experience this in a very hard way recently.

Sega announced Thursday it had crushed more than 60 illegal websites and 125 auction sites flogging pirated versions of its Dreamcast games, until recently viewed as one of the most secure digital entertainment systems on the market.

Two years of probation with periodic urine tests, and a limit on access to the Internet. That's the sentence handed down Tuesday to Jeffrey Gerard Levy, 22, who pleaded guilty for illegally distributing MP3 files, movie clips, and software including Adobe Photoshop.

Game companies have filed federal racketeering suit against a nationwide ring of software pirates who methodically distributed top games, sometimes even before they were commercially available. The Interactive Digital Software Association has banded together with six major game publishers to file suit against three alleged pirate rings, known as Class, Paradigm, and Razor 1911.

Two of the video gaming industry's biggest players are shining lights into the murky corners of international video piracy through a joint San Francisco lawsuit against alleged members of "Paradigm," a sophisticated ring of Internet pirates who stole the latest games and posted them to the Web.

I have written this text file to vent my general frustration and to attempt to re-establish some basic standards for game releases and cracking in the CD-RIP'ing scene. This is not a group politics rag, a personal name-calling .TXT or any other such garbage.

Enter the "iso scene": One day, Pirate1 figured out that he could transfer his iso image of GameX to Pirate2 over the internet where Pirate2 could then burn the image and essentially have an exact duplicate of the original! Imagine the possibilities... to share one massive CD collection with all of the greater pirate community. PC games, utils, and console games can all be traded the same way. Expand your PSX or Saturn collection for the mere cost of a blank CD ($2). Download company patches and version upgrades without worrying about compatibility with your rip. Get the latest programming/graphics utils with full online docs and examples (finally!) instead of seeing them ripped out. Build a massive CD library and be the envy of all the other kids on your street!

Before you plan on packaging up a piece of software for release, please make sure that it complies with the guidelines for acceptable releases. These rules were agreed upon through a meeting with a number of the top ISO release groups, which include: CIFE, RiSCiSO, and RAZOR ISO.

In lieu of recent events contributing to the breakdown of the now defunct S.P.A. (Software Piracy Association), a private meeting between the key contributing and contending groups was held. On October 15th, 1998 an agreement and compromise was reached between the 3 attending parties, CLASS, PARADIGM and RAZOR 1911. Let it be known that this type of compromise could not be achieved under the S.P.A. environment; it took a clean break to accomplish in a day what had previously gone unaccomplished in 2 months.

The Yale Herald conducts an interview with Neofish9 in regards to his new and alternative online project, SceneLink. He goes into why he choose the underground scene for his experiment as well as what he hopes to achieve through his efforts.

Hundreds of people are in attendance, feverishly maneuvering to score that elusive, coveted file. The time and date are irrelevant -- this fury of activity takes places 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The place, however, is highly significant, given the task at hand. I am exploring the world of software piracy, and my first stop is the free market economy of an IRC warez channel. The trip was remarkably brief and uncomplicated, and now I sit hunkered in my seat, certain that any moment, my front door will be hammered down by government officials intent on prosecuting this reluctant deviant.

SSA was an attempt by various scene groups to secure the scene, especially it's exposure on IRC. Also of interest is the #ISO channel log were they discuss setting some uniform ISO standards.

As many of you are aware, there were world-wide porn busts. Unknown to anyone in ATN, the ATN WHQ siteop has been caught and charged with possession and distribution child pornography and is due to begin trial in 30 days. He is also likely to face mass piracy charges too, as police also took almost a terrabyte of pirated software from his apartment. This letter to everyone is intended to inform and warn you of the consequences of the events in the past 28 hours.

AH! The good old days. I used to roam bbs's around the world getting wares as well as getting those wonderful ansi packs (that I still have BTW - contact me if you want some). When I started in 1992, everything was almost over in the scene, INC the biggest cracking team, as well as the first on PC's (I think?) was dying. Then it came to THG, and Phoenix, a local (but very good) Montreal cracking team. Then there was Nuke and Darkman (which I met accidentaly - BTW those Nuke people are VERY dangerous and I think they still exist).

Well it is a dark day in the warez scene now. Apparently this little group called Rapier has single handly broken all the "unwritten" codes we purveyors of warez have established. Let me tell you what happened.

Due to some requests I decided to write this biography of my life in cracking scene, not about my full life. Just how I started with cracking and what I've done at all..

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) announced they have received a crucial ruling in their lawsuit against The Final Frontier Bulletin Board System (BBS). The United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Arizona ruled that the system operator for The Final Frontier is responsible for damages to the software companies.

The best way to learn cracking (i.e. understanding, broadly individuating, locating exactly and eliminating or suspending or deferring one or more protection schemes inside a software application you do not possess the source code of) is to begin your tampering experiments using OLDER applications which have OLDER protection schemes.

This is an excerpt from the CLASS.NFO found in the 09/14/1997 Class release of Dark Reign. It is 100% un-edited except for my notations.

n January of 1995, The Renegade Chemist decided that he wanted to retire from the scene and retire RAZOR 1911. The general consensus of the group was that they wanted to see the legacy continue. So EOS, The Gecko, and myself decided we would continue the group and then TRC came to the conclusion of kicking us out and then shutting down the group.

Rummaging through the NAPALM.NFO last night, I noticed yet ANOTHER extremely lame thing about them. While they have no idea how to properly rip CDs, they sure can rip NFO files. At the bottom of their current NFO there is a line stating Uncopyright (u) Napalm '96. Wow. Have not all of us seen this for over two years now, first on the bottom of PHOENIX.NFO, than on the bottom of TYRANNY.NFO ever since?

Responses to Warez Groups by name only:

INC - International Network of People Who NEED TO DIE.
Fairlight - FLT - What the fuck?
Razor/1911 - What the fuck?
The Dreamteam - What the fuck? Is it wet? I hope so.

Gargamel is a CD collection that will be released every quarter, starting with the Gargamel Summer '95 CD. The Gargamel CD's will contain games ONLY.

This particular file is about a handful of boards getting busted in the 214 area code (Dallas). It also contains a GIF file of the fellow that turned them in and committed suicide later. User to User at that time was arguably the most well known "public domain" board in all of 214 and possibly even the biggest. It did have a pirate section but it was accessible to very few people. While it was "slow" (i.e. it didn't have 0 day warez) with a small flow of files, it had *tons* of older files which was a rarity back then. Most pirate boards in that era tended to only keep files for a few months. User to User had storage for years worth of files.

This is a massive list of elite scene boards, with affiliations, site-ops and phone numbers

In the early hours of July 6, Jenny, head of a software piracy ring based in the Pacific Northwest, paced impatiently in front of a rack of high-speed personal computers, waiting for the phone call that would make her a superstar in the pirate underground. It would come from an employee of LucasArts Entertainment Co. in San Rafael,who for $300 would supply Jenny's pirate group with one of the most anticipated games of the summer: "TIE Fighter," based on the "Star Wars" movie trilogy and priced at about $60 per copy. At LucasArts, the employee attached a small cellular modem to the back of his PC - a technique that would keep any record of the call off the company telephone bill - and dialed. Within a few minutes, the program had arrived in Jenny's computer, lacking only the code keys that would make it possible to play the game without an owner's manual.

On 3-24-94 Sysop of Defcon 5 BBS in Shelton Washinton, Missileman received a call from AT&T Investigators informing him that his line has been monitored, for the accumulation of over 240,000 dollars in fraudulant phone charges. Shortly following a similar call was placed to The Prophecy Sysop of Future Shock BBS.

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.

This is a huge list of demos, intros and cracktros released on the PC up until 1994. Included is a brief summary, a review and release information.

The Independent Association of Atari Developers represents over sixty companies supporting the Atari ST platform with commercial software and hardware. Now and then a "pirate" BBS will come to our members' attention. We'll capture the file areas and study them. We'll cringe at the download counts and growl at the messages about our products. We'll download copies of our products and trace the original owner. Sometimes we'll even file police report, but the pirate board stays up and callers keep calling, downloading, and uploading our programs.

A Kawl IM with realy lots of featurs like doc's,cmf,mod,meny Art Options And packed with a good Scrambler.

As you may or may not be aware, a new review/scoring electronic magazine has come into existence over the past five months. Pirates Analyze Warez (PAW) published three issues in the latter stages of 1992 and is looking towards bigger and better things in 1993.

Rusty & Edie's BBS touted the fact that they had only two rules: 1. Have fun and 2. No More Rules. It would appear they are going to soon add a third rule to their operation - No Commercial Software.

Dis is da first GlobeList from da dudez of KraftSchlag! We took a lot of time getting the numbas for da list, and we hope dat most of dem are 100%.

Well guys, this is CyberChrist. I am sure that there have been rumors flying around about how I got busted or something along those lines, but I wanted to set the record straight. For all intents and purposes, I am out of the scene for a good while, but more on that later. I wanted to warn everyone about something that happened to me from a guy that was supposed to be my friend: Warchild.

The Business Software Association of Australia is stepping up its war on software piracy by targeting electronic bulletin boards. Some boards are alledged to have been involved in the distribution of illegally copied software.

Making intros, is something that can be very enjoyable. Most people don't know how to write a simple intro. BoniJoni IntroMaker, made especially for those who don't know how to write their own intros (but, those who knows how to use software).

Site Summary

At 8 am. - The FBI from Birmingham, Alabama came in and presented a Search Warrant dated 7/29/93 and proceded to swipe every piece of Electronics from The Doctor - SYSOP of the Fear & Loathing.

I would like to state this openly and honestly.. I thought something was up when Misery release "DSCRACK.EXE" for PWA, partially because I KNOW he can't crack, and partially because I KNOW he's full of shit, but what bothered me the most was PWA's version didn't have an .EXE header. I'VE NEVER SEEN AN .EXE WITHOUT A HEADER..

Well, I am sure you have all heard that I had a small legal problem today, and I know how stuff gets blown out of proportion, so I thought I'd explain the story myself. Here goes.

Now yes TNSHB (The Not so Humble Babe) & TGR (The Grim Reaper) were busted last week.. TNSHB got it for Carding, Phreaking, Forgery, and Piracy and maybe some other charges. TGR got it for Carding.. Yes they are in big trouble.. ok.. The letter TNSHB put out see did while she was depressed and feeling bad..

After seeing what has happened to The Grim Reaper, and TNSHB, their boards, their groups, all that has happened since their bust, and the reaction everyone is showing, I got pretty shook up about it. (Yes, I got shook up)

This was originally going to be an article for iNSANITY Magazine #4 called 'Lamer Pirate Mags, Etc' to straighten out the complete bullshit and lies in Badnews #7, but seeing as there are so many rumours floating around, and the future of iNSANITY is undecided I decided to just put out this textfile to explain what is really going on, less a few lamers out there spread all kinds of bullshit and lies, as they seem to do so often.

elcome to the wonderful world of cracking. What is cracking? If you don't know and you're reading this, ask yourself why? Anyway, cracking is the art of removing copy protected coding from programs. Why do this? In recent years, software companies have been fighting to keep copy protection in their software to avoid their work to be illegally copied. Users feel that such copy protection is ridiculous in that it violate their own rights to make backups of their sometimes expensive investments.

People still copy software, and most of us who work for a living have little sympathy for the plight of the software vendor. After all, the software industry will eventually generate more millionaires than any other business in history. Bill Gates, with a net worth of $7 billion, is now the richest man in America, and his money was accumulated from scratch-zero-in 15 years flat.

A big FUCK YOU goes out to the deadest group on the scene these days, even deader than NEUA, The Humble Geeks, and specifically Pieman and Slavelord. THG died after losing the people who currently form USA, and ever since USA started kicking their ass with the latest releases, THG has held this petty little bullshit grudge against us. The Pitts and Slave's Den have become two total anti-USA boards - from the one-liners to the voting questions they do nothing but slander USA, and spew their mindless and petty bullshit about how we suck and they rule. Why do they do this? What have we done to piss them off so much?

We do not want anyone to get the wrong idea about our group. We are not here in the 914 area-code to reak havok. The purpose of our group is to eliminate lamerism of any way, shape, or form. We have 4 members that will find very illustrious ways to do this.

TL Here. First off, I want it known, I am not longer TL or The Timelord, but rather The Slavelord. Good, got it? Great. You can also call me master. Why the handle change you ask? Well I am now the Slave Driver for The Humble Guys. If you are reading this, then you are reading an application to be a Slave or THG. Got it? Good. Let's continue.

The university policy against computer software piracy has been widely publicized, including in a recent issue of Computing News (December, 1989). There is no question that the university must protect itself against actions of the NIU community for which it could be held legally accountable. However, based on our current research of the "computer underground" and the activeities of "phreaks, hackers, and pirates," we find no evidence to support the many value judgments offered in the rationale circulated by the university.

CompuServe has copyrighted the contents of the CompuServe Information Service as a compilation copyright, just as many magazines and newspapers reserve such a copyright on the contents of their publications. This copyright is held in accordance with the 1976 Copyright Act of the United States.

Recently, many unlawfully copied or modified programs have appeared on various IBM PC bulletin boards across the country. THE DIRTY DOZEN is a list of known examples. There are four major categories of 'bogusware': commercial pirate jobs, unauthorized "hacks" of otherwise legitimate freeware programs, malicious 'TROJAN' programs which damage your system, and miscellaneous illegal software.

These are illegally copied programs being distributed as "public domain" on various IBM PC bulletin boards across the country. Most of them are commercial pirate jobs, although a few of them are legitimate freeware or user supported programs that have been hacked up by people with warped minds.