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mine. By now, large chunks of UNIX code had been created that were not
AT&T's, and were being sold by others. An entire rival UNIX-based
operating system had arisen in Berkeley, California (one of the world's
great founts of ideological hackerdom). Today, "hackers" commonly con-
sider "Berkeley UNIX" to be technically superior to AT&T's "System V
UNIX," but AT&T has not allowed mere technical elegance to intrude on
the real-world business of marketing proprietary software. AT&T has
made its own code deliberately incompatible with other folks' UNIX, and
has written code that it can prove is copyrightable, even if that code
happens to be somewhat awkward "kludgey." AT&T UNIX user licens-
es are serious business agreements, replete with very clear copyright
statements and non- disclosure clauses.
AT&T has not exactly kept the UNIX cat in the bag, but it kept a grip on
its scruff with some success. By the rampant, explosive standards of
software piracy, AT&T UNIX source code is heavily copyrighted, well-
guarded, well-licensed. UNIX was traditionally run only on mainframe
machines, owned by large groups of suit-and- tie professionals, rather
than on bedroom machines where people can get up to easy mischief.
And AT&T UNIX source code is serious high-level programming. The
number of skilled UNIX programmers with any actual motive to swipe
UNIX source code is small. It's tiny, compared to the tens of thousands
prepared to rip-off, say, entertaining PC games like "Leisure Suit
Larry."
But by 1989, the warez-d00d underground, in the persons of Terminus
and his friends, was gnawing at AT&T UNIX. And the property in ques-
tion was not sold for twenty bucks over the counter at the local branch
of Babbage's or Egghead's; this was massive, sophisticated, multi-line,
multi-author corporate code worth tens of thousands of dollars.
It must be recognized at this point that Terminus's purported ring of
UNIX software pirates had not actually made any money from their sus-
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pected crimes. The $300,000 dollar figure bandied about for the con-
tents of Terminus's computer did not mean that Terminus was in actual
illicit possession of three hundred thousand of AT&T's dollars.
Terminus was shipping software back and forth, privately, person to
person, for free. He was not making a commercial business of piracy.
He hadn't asked for money; he didn't take money. He lived quite modest-
ly.
AT&T employees as well as freelance UNIX consultants, like Terminus
commonly worked with "proprietary" AT&T software, both in the
office and at home on their private machines. AT&T rarely sent securi-
ty officers out to comb the hard disks of its consultants. Cheap free-
lance UNIX contractors were quite useful to AT&T; they didn't have
health insurance or retirement programs, much less union membership
in the Communication Workers of America. They were humble digital
drudges, wandering with mop and bucket through the Great Technological
Temple of AT&T; but when the Secret Service arrived at their homes, it
seemed they were eating with company silverware and sleeping on com-
pany sheets! Outrageously, they behaved as if the things they worked
with every day belonged to them!
And these were no mere hacker teenagers with their hands full of trash-
paper and their noses pressed to the corporate windowpane. These guys
were UNIX wizards, not only carrying AT&T data in their machines and
their heads, but eagerly networking about it, over machines that were
far more powerful than anything previously imagined in private hands.
How do you keep people disposable, yet assure their awestruck respect
for your property? It was a dilemma.
Much UNIX code was public-domain, available for free. Much "propri-
etary" UNIX code had been extensively re-written, perhaps altered so
much that it became an entirely new product or perhaps not.
Intellectual property rights for software developers were, and are,
extraordinarily complex and confused. And software "piracy," like the
private copying of videos, is one of the most widely practiced "crimes"
in the world today.
The USSS were not experts in UNIX or familiar with the customs of its
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use. The United States Secret Service, considered as a body, did not
have one single person in it who could program in a UNIX environment
no, not even one. The Secret Service *were* making extensive use of
expert help, but the "experts" they had chosen were AT&T and Bellcore
security officials, the very victims of the purported crimes under
investigation, the very people whose interest in AT&T's "proprietary"
software was most pronounced.
On February 6, 1990, Terminus was arrested by Agent Lewis.
Eventually, Terminus would be sent to prison for his illicit use of a
piece of AT&T software.
The issue of pirated AT&T software would bubble along in the back-
ground during the war on the Legion of Doom. Some half-dozen of
Terminus's on-line acquaintances, including people in Illinois, Texas
and California, were grilled by the Secret Service in connection with the
illicit copying of software. Except for Terminus, however, none were
charged with a crime. None of them shared his peculiar prominence in
the hacker underground.
But that did not meant that these people would, or could, stay out of
trouble. The transferral of illicit data in cyberspace is hazy and ill-
defined business, with paradoxical dangers for everyone concerned:
hackers, signal carriers, board owners, cops, prosecutors, even ran-
dom passers-by. Sometimes, well-meant attempts to avert trouble or
punish wrongdoing bring more trouble than would simple ignorance,
indifference or impropriety.
Terminus's "Netsys" board was not a common-or- garden bulletin board
system, though it had most of the usual functions of a board. Netsys was
not a stand-alone machine, but part of the globe-spanning "UUCP"
cooperative network. The UUCP network uses a set of Unix software
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