I started with 2 modem nodes and had
4 ISDN nodes + 1 modem node by 1997 when it was
shut down by the German version of "feds" (but on state level, called
LKA -
Landes
kriminalamt). I revived it a few weeks after I was "busted", but completely legal, which was my idea and plan already at the time when I got busted (they came a few weeks too early, those bastards! ;) ).
|
If you wonder what that video is to your right, check it out. It explains my understanding of the issue of "Warez" and "Software Piracy" pretty well. It's the english translation of the German original. It was inspired by a German book by Jan Krämer and Evrim Sen about "the scene" titled "No Copy". See also: Original German version of the video. Free book download (German).
|
The charges that were made against me were also only related to my BBS and the amount of warez found at my apartment at the time of the bust. My activities in warez groups was not included and also not persued by the officials. I also have to say that I was already retreating/retiring from the warez scene when they showed up. I had left Dynasty earlier that same year. I was a co-founder and leader together with the former leaders of each group that merged into Dynasty in 1996. Stepping back from this position was a clear sign for my retreat from the active involvements in the groups daily business activities.
My decision to change my BBS from an elite warez/pirate board to a public and perfectly legal BBS, designated for demosceners, ANSI/ASCII artists and PCBoard tool developers, was the reason why I did buy an official license of PCBoard (with manuals and original install disk and serial #) in the first place.
I wrote a blog post about copyright laws and their flaws and about the lies by the BSA and other organizations.
This is the only reason why I had it around when the cops came to take down my board. A warez BBS running on licenced software was weird for the feds (oh, did I mentioned already that I owned an official OS/2 operating system license too? :) ). They have never seen the manuals for PCBoard before, doh. They borrowed the print manuals for a few weeks from me (I am not joking!) hehe.
The name of the BBS was "
Closed Society" by the way, in case you did not notice (or were unable to decypher hehe) the prominent screen shot of the BBS login screen at the top of this page. I wanted to express with the name that the BBS is not open for the general public and that only selected individuals were able to get access to it.
Many warez BBS's started out as public BBS and then closed it later, others did even maintain a legal and perfectly legit BBS as a front for their warez board. Only people who "knew" were able to get access to the hidden warez sections of the BBS. Many users never realized that a BBS they called frequently is anything more than a legal BBS with board games and public domain or shareware to download.
My BBS, "Closed Society", was the SAC world headquarter (WHQ) from day one. "Closed Society" was also affiliated with several other computer groups (mainly
warez groups), such as:
Razor 1911 (RZR), TRSI / Faith (FTH), Dynasty (DNS), Dytec (DTC), LSD, ToaO and Peanuts (PNS).
I shut down my BBS for good at some time in 1998. I don't even remember the precise date when I did it.
The impact, the internet had on BBS'es was by then impossible to ignore. The fact that Clark Development, the company who developed PCBoard, went bancrupt only a short time after I was busted is ironic IMO.
.oOo. Top .oOo.
The bulletin board system Interfaces were only using simple text and a set of extended characters to generate "borders" and that sort of things (MS DOS ASCII characters).
ANSI Color Codes were used to get some colors on the screen. Such interfaces are used today only by telnet sites.
This is an alien World for normal Internet users who usually never have to deal with those. .
People who were able to generate nice looking "graphic" using the basic MS DOS character SET and 16 pre-defined ANSI colors were in high demand to improve the look of BBS systems.
To learn more about this "lost" art, it's history, the styles, the how to's and more, visit my ASCII Art Academy.
.oOo. Top .oOo.
Here is some artwork that I created for my own BBS. Click on the thumbnail image for the ANSI in image format and actual size.
Closed Society BBS - Logon ANSIs
I created five login ANSIs for my own BBS over the years, but used the ANSI by Raiser/SAC, which you can see a bit further down below, most of the time. The ANSIs are sorted by the date they were used for my BBS.
Closed Society BBS - Other ANSIs
Those ANSIs were used for internal stuff of the BBS. There is the login screen, the menu, which nobody had enabled anyway, because everybody knew the important commands anyway.
Then there is the ANSI used for my top uploader statistics, the ANSI that I showed to people before I had the altered login, which didn't even show a login screen (see gray box at the top for details, the upload ansi, which was displayed when you wanted to upload files and the PC conference ANSI, which was also the main conference of the BBS and the default for everybody after the login.
Closed Society BBS - Zip Ad ASCIIs
Those ASCII files were added to all ZIP archives that passed through the BBS as advertisement. No kidding, it was actually a very effective way of advertisement, because it shows others how fast your BBS is. You could also tell, which path a file took from the release group and its courier or world headquarter to your local BBS.
.oOo. Top .oOo.
Closed Society BBS Login ANSI by Raiser/SAC
My groupmate Raiser/SAC created this fabulous Login ANSI for my BBS, which I was using for a long time. Raiser was good with drawing pictures, something I was not. This picture was especially good, not just because the butt of the chick, but it helped :).
.oOo. Top .oOo.
And here is a little collage that I created just for the sake of it hehe.
.oOo. Top .oOo.
