Digital Pissing Contest

One of the first things FreOn said to me was, It s just a pissing contest. We re all thrill seekers. All crackers want to crack the hardcore games before anyone else can. You can almost taste the respect and prestige you get from releasing a respected crack, he said.

A pissing contest digital thrill seekers addicted to their own egos.

I could tell that FreOn had more fun cracking games than playing them. He was born a cracker, and his job is to defeat all copy protection programs that are developed.

Every application and game on the market contains some type of copy protection (e.g., the application/game may not run from a copied version of the CD, it may require a CD key or license code for installation, or a hardware dongle may have been plugged into the computer while the software was running). This technology (designed to stop pirates from distributing licensed software on the Internet) is the latest initiative that software developers are using in order to increase sales. New copy protection techniques are constantly being developed. Anti-piracy technology has grown so much that commercial anti-piracy solutions are now a multi-million dollar industry.

Despite all of the time and money invested in copy protection techniques, crackers can still defeat the most elaborate and complex copy protection technology, often hours before it is placed on a store shelf. Crackers are the brains behind releases and the warez group scene. Piracy would not exist without input from...