To pirates, who often appear and disappear anonymously, these on-line services provide immunity from the legal and ethical restraints that prohibit such activities in newspapers, magazines, radio, television or public speech. In short, pirates exploit such systems to get away with lawless conduct which they never could get away with outside the cyberworld. The problem of piracy is serious and growing. Recently, the head of a software piracy ring invited a Los Angeles Times reporter into her home to watch the ringleader lift a new, expensive computer game from LucasArts Entertainment Company, with help from a paid inside saboteur. Using the Internet, the pirate next linked up with a programmer in Moscow who cracked the code, making it possible to play the game without an owner's manual.
Computer piracy extends well beyond computer games.
This problem has emerged with alarming frequency. Such postings potentially denied him any livelihood he may have been able to make from his own works. Netcom's principals insisted that they had no responsibility for their users' postings and that they could not be held accountable for them. They even went so far as to claim that they did not have the ability to take action to remedy the violations of the law. Freedom has learned that those assertions, while convenient to Netcom as it struggles to manufacture a defense, simply do not comport with the facts.