Yea, on second thought, I should have just used “release group.”
“Operating Buccaneer” is OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD news (about the same time as when Isonews was shut down)… The only thing new here is that they concluded the trial and sentenced him to an absurd amount of jail time, in addition to trying to fine him for money that he doesn’t even have. These guys have been pirating since the C64 days. The bit about them “selling” pirated copies of the games does seem a little odd though, I thought most of these guys just spread their stuff on the internet for free to avoid this particular legal issue.
Yeh. They’re under “new” management. Incidentally, the guy who used to run Razor1911 left and started Deviance years ago as well. Maybe he knew something about how this guy was selling the goods for profit? Dunno. Deviance was also one of the groups who was raided in “Operation Buccaneer.” If you knew these groups prior to the raids, they had IRC channels open to the public and afterwards they are all invitation only…
Actually, it’s mostly just courier, cracker, and encoding release groups who have inane three letter acronyms. Some example ones (in no particular order):
CMS - Constipated Monkey Smegma (Hip Hop MP3s)
RNS - Rabid Neurosis (MP3s)
DOD - Drink or Die (crackers, from russia no less)
FTL - Faster than Light (internet couriers)
THG - The Humble Guys (bbs couriers)
If you look back during the heyday of the BBS scenes, you’ll notice ANSI graphics groups also had similar acronyms.
ICE - Insane Creations Enterprise
ACiD - ANSI Creators in Demand
There was also CIA, and a few others.
Is RNS still around?
There’s a few pirate groups with 3 letter codes, I can think of one right off:
FLT Fairlight
oh well
-Jason
There are people out there who charge for direct, bullshit-free access to warez downloads. Maybe that’s what this was.
I’d kinda be interested to know, because if it was (and that’s a big “if”), then on that same legal principle Gamespot, FilePlanet, et al are actually charging us for the demos and trailers we download when we subscribe to their service.
If that’s too harsh, what would you have proposed for a sentence then?
Half the time and half the fine, add the remainder of time not spent in jail without computers or consoles in probationary existence.
Mostly this sort of abbreviation was to avoid spilling over in the DOS 8.3 filename limit… I was referring mainly to actual acronyms.
The same sort of people who buy fake designer clothes I suppose. When the cops raid car boot sales over here they routinely bust people for selling warez CDs as well as those selling fake designer label clothes and so forth.