Victoria Cole 12:03, 10 Sep 2004 (EST)
Novell's Internet Piracy Unit IPU is a global group of "technical investigators" who scour the Net 24 hours a day, searching for those who trade in unlicensed software products - and busting them. Internet detectives, they spends their working week infiltrating warez world, gathering evidence, pretending to be traders, couriers, crackers, newbies, lamers, lurkes, and leechers (McCandless, 2001).
As Napster has shown the world, the Internet has a vast copyright leak. According to McCandless, the new breed of file swapping technologies like Napster are just a new dimension to the already ancient battle between the software industry and the pirates. He believes that there is a "battle" which has spilled out from bulletin boards and modems of the early 1990's, across the Internet and beyond, to the profit pirates and counterfeiters of Eastern Europe and the Far East.
According to McCandless (2001), Napster just gave the previously virgin and complacent music industry their first taste of the flipside of the new information revolution. A rude awakening to Microsoft, he believes that Novell and co have already learnt - that most laws disintegrate on contact with the Net and that given the opportunity to take stuff for free and not be caught, people take stuff for free.
In IPU's world, the rules are clear. Software is a valuable product. Software is money. Applications like AutoCAD, Microsoft Server and Novell Netware cost thousands of dollars a shot. Piracy therefore is theft. According to McCandless (2001), The industry claims to lose $15 billion a year to piracy, the majority to unlicensed copies on corporate networks and Far East/Eastern European organised counterfeiting. But $5 billion leaks out through the Internet, through warez world at a rate of $5 million per day.
Shirky (2001) believes that like any underground scene, paranoia is commonplace. 'Detectives' must be careful who their friends are. In their offices in Novell UK, they monitor these forums daily, logging usernames and dialogue, hoping to gather enough details and evidence to justify a bust.
Of their strategy being to bring a critical mass of prosecutions, McCandless (2001) concludes that "they begin by taking out some people who're downloading this material - the gnats - and then uncover some of the larger, more organized guys". In short, they hope to create a climate of fear.
Victoria Cole 01:47, 29 Oct 2004 (EST)
References
Victoria Cole 22:42, 28 Oct 2004 (EST)
