From: guglielmetti@elia.epfl.ch (Philippe Guglielmetti)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: Pirates and stuff
Date: 8 Jan 93 07:23:56 GMT
Organization: IA-DME-EPFL
X-UserAgent: Nuntius v1.1.1d11
X-XXMessage-ID: <A772ED4633017B20@iamace9.epfl.ch>
X-XXDate: Fri, 8 Jan 93 08:35:18 GMT

I'm posting this for Andreas Axelsson, who sent me this by e-mail.
------------------------------------------------------------
>Hi,
>In article <ddrumm.0mm2@amiganet.chi.il.us> Daniel Drumm,
>ddrumm@amiganet.chi.il.us writes:
>>the Amiga entertainment software biz. In Chicago, there is a fucking
>>subscription pirate BBS! That's right! For something like $60/month,
>>you can download all the newest and best Amiga titles before they hit
>>the streets. These motherfuckers are getting rich on the corpse of
>>the Amiga. Anybody know who the best people are to contact to blow...
>
>I don't believe you can get rich by running such a BBS. I had the
>pleasure to meet someone who runs a BBS in switzerland. He explained me
>roughly this:
>- you need a big (1 Giga) hard disk
>- you need more than one high-speed (dual standard) modems since people
>in this "field" call every day and DL everything you'll be limited to
>about 50 subscribers per modem...
 
There are sveral ways to get hold of such equipment without paying a dime.
Credit card hacking ang cheating is very widely spread. Not to mention
pure
theft. I know a guy who has a 7 node BBS Dual Standard, he updated 5 lines
to 16,800 DS in one month!! That's $5000-$6000 (at least in Sweden). And
I'm pretty sure he didn't pay that legally. He's been caught by the
police a couple of times, but he's back soon again. They're adicted.
 
>- either your BBS gets its stuff by users uploads and you have to test
>everything to remove fakes and buggy progs, or you have to get the disks
>from somewhere, i.e. to buy them. Since a "good" pirate BBS is expected
>to get all the "news" in 24h max (!!!) you should be pretty well
>organised and spend much time for that.
 
Most BBS's have one or two Co-Sysops who can help the Sysop with things
like that. And the amount of different software uploaded per day isn't
that
big. A lot of testing is also handled by traders. They dload it and gives
the sysop a note if they find it faulty or old. A lot of people have
access
to hacked AT&T calling-cards so they don't even pay for the call.
Blueboxing and PBX numbers are also widely spread methods to call free.
 
>- most of the BBS sysops are members of cracking groups. Members from
>these groups usually have unlimited access to the BBS and since you can
>not really advertise for your BBS and users are supposed to have a modem,
>a hard disk and to master DMS and such stuff, you are lucky if you have
>50 paying subscribers and even in that case you won't "earn" (or steal)
>more than a few bucks.
>However, you may be fed for free, in jail...
 
I would say $3000/month is quite a good extra income if you study or have
a normal job. And I bet they don't pay tax for it...
 
I've been in the scene, I've seen the inside.
 
-- Andreas Axelsson - Digital Illusions --       We have such sights 
-- Speaking for myself and nobody else! --       to show you...
------ andreas@gilbert.adsp.sub.org ------       /Pinhead
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