US ‘DrinkOrDie’ extradition fails
p2pnet.net News:- Efforts by US prosecutors to get an Australian judge to extradite a man they say helped to lead the DrinkOrDie software network, have failed.
American authorities wanted Australia to hand over Hew Raymond Griffiths, 42, who lives in New South Wales, on the grounds that he had a major involvement in the (in)famous group.
“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,” says Farhad Manjoo in a Wired story here.
DrinkOrDie was founded in 1993 in Moscow by a Russian with the handle “deviator” and a friend who went by CyberAngel, says Wikipedia here.
By 1995, the group was global. One of its earliest major accomplishments was the Internet release of Windows 95 two weeks before Microsoft released the official version. It is also known for its DoD DVD Speed Ripper released in 1999 shortly before DeCSS. The activity of the DoD group diminished after 1996, and were not considered major players in the warez scene by 2000. The DrinkOrDie network is considered criminal for copyright infringement. As a rule, they made no financial profit from their activities.
In 2001, DrinkOrDie had two leaders, one in the United States and another in Australia. Members include Dezzy, Hackrat, and ForceKill (who Customs agent Allan Doody claimed was a top software cracker). The network primarily consisted of university undergraduates, but was supported by software company employees, who would leak copies of software and other digital media. DoD most likely received such files indirectly, from other networks. Among the people targeted were also corporate executives, university employees, and government workers. The Australian leader Hew Raymond Griffiths, a.k.a. Bandido, has been involved in legal action in Australia involving possible extradition to the USA.
The DrinkOrDie archives, like most other warez archives, included business software as well as movies including Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Behind Enemy Lines, Monsters Inc., and Spy Game.
Operation Buccaneer
On December 11, 2001, in an international operation known as “Operation Buccaneer”, law enforcement agents in six countries targeted 62 people, with leads in twenty other countries.
U.S. law enforcement agents, led by the United States Customs Service, raided M.I.T., the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Oregon, Duke and Purdue, as well as several software companies. Raids were also conducted in Britain, Australia, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Many computers were seized and people questioned.
Five people were arrested in England; in the United States, no arrests were made on the day of the raids, pending review of materials seized.
In the United States, 56 search warrants were served and approximately 130 computers, each holding an average of a terabyte of data, were seized.
The DrinkOrDie website, where the software could be downloaded for free, was also shut down that day.
The raid at MIT was in the economics department; the University of Oregon raid at an off-campus location; the Duke raid in the campus dormitory of a male undergraduate. The universities themselves were not considered targets of the criminal investigation.
In October 2002, the tech website Slashdot posted an interview with former DrinkOrDie member Chris Tresco (see link below).
Quotable quotes
This investigation underscores the severity and scope of a multibillion-dollar software swindle over the Internet, as well as the vulnerabilities of this technology to outside attack.
Robert C. Bonner, commissioner of the Customs Service
“Our targets are not your stereotypical teenage hacker.”
Customs assistant commissioner John Varrone
“This is not a sport. This is a serious crime. These people should do some hard time.”
Commerce undersecretary Phil Bond
“Software piracy undermines the stability of the burgeoning e-commerce industry and it is a direct threat to innovative companies that help strengthen the U.S. economy.”
Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Kenneth Dam
DrinkOrDie – small potatoes
When the news broke, “that the Customs Service, the Department of Justice and foreign authorities executed at least 100 search warrants in the United States, Australia, England, Finland and Norway on Tuesday in an attempt to ‘dismantle’ DrinkOrDie, a lot of people were puzzled,” writes Manjoo.
“According to the evidence available from several cracking sites, Internet newsgroups and members of the Warez – or ’software cracking’ – community, DrinkOrDie was small potatoes in the world of software theft. The group made its name in 1995 by cracking Windows 95 before it was released; since then, it has kind of disappeared.
” ‘I knew of but didn’t know the DrinkOrDie guys,’ wrote a 24-year-old Australian software pirate who asked to remain anonymous, ‘but I thought they were mostly out of the Warez scene actually – heard their main guys were doing Web design. Yeh, they were respected, they did some good work, y’know? But they aren’t the first to come to mind when you think to yourself *whose (sic) the big deal in the scene?* ‘ “
Be that as it may, “The ruling could be a significant setback for US prosecutors, who have invested considerable resources into tracking down elements of DrinkorDie and other net ‘warez’ groups who distributed pirated versions of software, music and movies online, often before they were released commercially,” says silicon.com here.
“The US and British governments have brought charges against other individuals targeted in the long-running piracy sweep dubbed Operation Buccaneer, leading to more than 20 convictions and guilty pleas. A representative for the US Attorney’s office in the eastern district of Virginia, which is leading the extradition proceedings, could not immediately be reached for comment.
“According to the indictment, filed by US Attorney Paul McNulty, Griffiths helped oversee DrinkorDie operations that resulted in the unauthorisd distribution of copyrighted software, games, music and movies worth more than $50m.The group was founded in Russia in 1993, the legal documents alleged, but was run by computer hackers worldwide.
“Townsden said the US government’s attempts to extradite Griffiths, who did not have resources to defend himself overseas adequately, were unfair. All other defendants in the DrinkorDie cases have been charged in their home countries, he noted. Australian authorities, acting on behalf of the US have 15 days to appeal the verdict to that country’s federal courts.”
