DrinkOrDie

For other uses, see DOD.

DrinkOrDie

DrinkOrDie ASCII .nfo header. Their slogan reads "warez bearz from Russia and beyond".
Origin	Moscow
Country	Russia
Years active	1993–2001
Category	warez
Founder(s)	deviator CyberAngel

DrinkOrDie (DoD) was an underground software piracy group and warez trading network during the 1990s. On December 11, 2001, a major law enforcement raid - known as Operation Buccaneer - forced it to close under criminal charges of infringement. DoD, as a rule, received no financial profit for their activities. The DoD network - which primarily consisted of university undergraduates - was also supported by software company employees, who would leak copies of software and other digital media. DoD was also actively involved in illicit file-trading with other networks.

History

Start up and trading

DrinkOrDie was founded in 1993 in Moscow by a Russian with the handle "deviator" and a friend who went by the code name "CyberAngel." 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 they were not considered major players in the warez scene by 2000.

Member raids

In 2001 the group was busted in a U.S. Customs operation called Operation Buccaneer. The global raids were initiated after information was given to United States Customs by James Cudney, known as Bcrea8tiv. Cudney quickly rose up the ranks of DOD council where he spent many years working undercover for US Customs, logging conversations in chat rooms and channels visited on IRC. He also carried out undercover operations in the UK, France, and the US prior to the arrests collecting detailed information on members.

Large amounts of intelligence were collected by U.S. Customs agents on many warez groups worldwide e.g., screenames, ftp locations, nationalities. At the time, DrinkOrDie allegedly had two leaders, one in the United States and another in Australia.

The Australian co-leader Hew Raymond Griffiths, known by his handle "Bandido", from Bateau Bay on the Central Coast of New South Wales, was charged in 2003 with copyright infringement and conspiracy to commit copyright infringement under US legislation. He was involved in opposing extradition to the USA in Australian courts for a period of almost 3 years.

Griffiths was ultimately unsuccessful and in early February 2007, he was transferred to the US detention system. He pleaded guilty on 20 April 2007 to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and one count of criminal copyright infringement.^[1] On 22 June 2007 Griffiths was sentenced to 51 months in prison for conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. But the US District Court Judge, Claude M Hilton, took into account the almost three years Griffiths had spent in Australian jails while fighting extradition, meaning he will only have to serve 15 months in a US Jail.^[2]

The self-confessed American co-leader John Sankus Jr. of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, known by his screen name "eriFlleH" (HellFire spelled backwards), was convicted and sentenced to 46 months, later reduced to 18 months by cooperating with the government in capturing other members of the group. Sankus was also a member of the group HARM at the time of his arrest.

US

Also charged and convicted were:

• Christopher Tresco age 23, of Boston, Massachusetts, who used the screename "bigrar", pleaded guilty May 28, 2002 to conspiracy to violate the criminal copyright laws, and was sentenced to 33 months jail. Tresco was also a member of Rise in Superior Couriering (RiSC). Tresco at the time of his arrest was the Systems Administrator for the MIT Economics department.

• Barry Erickson age 35, of Eugene, Oregon, who used the screename "radsl", pleaded guilty on May 2, 2002 to one felony count charging conspiracy to violate the criminal copyright laws, and was sentenced to a term of 33 months, with three years of probation to follow. Erickson was a systems engineer at Symantec Corporation and provided prerelease software to DoD and RiSCiSO. He was also a founding member of Parents On ‘Puterz (POP) a warez group that specialized in the release of children’s learning software and games.

• David Grimes age 25, of Arlington, Texas, who used the screename "chevelle", pleaded guilty on March 4, 2002 to one felony count charging conspiracy to violate the criminal copyright laws. Grimes was a computer engineer at Check Point Software. Grimes supplied Check Point firewall software to DrinkOrDie on at least two occasions, and he operated an FTP site known as High Octane and was affiliated with RiSC, MYTH, RTS, and DrinkOrDie.

• Richard Berry age 34, of Rockville, Maryland, who used the screen name "flood", pleaded guilty on April 29, 2002 to one felony count charging conspiracy to violate the criminal copyright laws. Berry was Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Streampipe.com in Alexandria, VA. A longtime member of DrinkOrDie, he supplied members with computer hardware, occasionally tested software, and operated BNCs for the FTP sites known as Fatal Error, Packet Storm, and Lake of Fire. Berry was also a member of POP.

• Sabuj Pattanayek age 21, of Nashville, Tennessee, who used the screen name "buj", pleaded guilty on April 16, 2002 and was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison for conspiring to violate criminal copyright laws. However, Pattanayek did not spend one day in prison nor was he ever arrested. Instead, his sentence was reduced to 6 months community confinement, 3 years probation, and 100 hours of community service. Pattanayek, a student at Duke University, was a council member, and a skilled software cracker. Pattanayek had also been a senior member of the courier group Request To Send (RTS).

• Stacey Nawara age 34, of Rosenberg, Texas, who used the screen name "avec", pleaded guilty on March 19, 2002 to one felony count charging conspiracy to violate the criminal copyright laws. Nawara was a Council member in DoD, a senior member of the warez courier group RTS, and a leading courier for the warez group Razor 1911.

• Michael Kelly age 21, of Miami, Florida, who used the screen name "erupt", pleaded guilty on April 10, 2002 to one felony count charging conspiracy to violate criminal copyright laws. Kelly was a systems network administrator for Gator Leasing, Inc., of Miami, Florida, from where he conducted many of his activities. A senior member/botmaster for DoD, he also had past or current membership in the warez groups AMNESiA, CORP, and RiSC and the underground artscene group Remorse.

• Nathan Hunt age 25, of Waterford, Pennsylvania, who used the screen name "azide", pleaded guilty on April 3, 2002 to one felony count charging conspiracy to violate criminal copyright laws. Hunt was a senior member in DoD and the group’s leading supplier of software. From November 2000 through October 2001, Hunt provided the group with more than 120 individual software titles. Hunt was also a senior member of The Corporation (CORP).

• David Russo age 50, of Warwick, Rhode Island, who used the screen name "ange", pleaded guilty on April 24, 2003 to conspiracy to violate criminal copyright laws and received 13 months in federal prison. Russo was responsible for testing the programs to determine if they functioned properly before release.

• Kentaga Kartadinata, 29, of Los Angeles, California, who used the screen name "tenkuken", pleaded guilty on January 22, 2002 to conspiracy to violate criminal copyright laws. Kartadinata operated an electronic mail server for the group.

• Andrew Clardy of Galesburg, Illinois, who used the screen name "doodad", pleaded guilty on April 4, 2002 to criminal copyright infringement and conspiracy to violate criminal copyright laws. Clardy was also a member of POP.

• Derek Eiser of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who used the screen name "psychod", pleaded guilty on June 21, 2002 to conspiracy to violate criminal copyright laws.

• Robert Gross of Horsham, Pennsylvania, who used the screen name "targetpractice", pleaded guilty on May 22, 2002 to criminal copyright infringement.

• Myron Cole of Warminster, Pennsylvania, who used the screen name "t3rminal", pleaded guilty on July 10, 2002 to criminal copyright infringement.

• Anthony Buchanan of Eugene, Oregon, who used the screen name "spaceace", pleaded guilty on August 19, 2002 to criminal copyright infringement. Buchanan was also a member of POP and worked as a computer administrator at the University of Oregon.

UK

As a result of Operation Buccaneer, the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit in the UK also arrested six members residing in Britain.

Two of those arrested ran a 6 month trial at the Old Bailey and were charged and convicted for Conspiracy to Defraud, Alex Bell (aka "mr2940") of Grays, Essex and Steven Dowd (aka "Tim") of Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside,

Andrew Eardley of Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, (aka "Maverick") pleaded guilty in May 2005 to conspiracy to violate the criminal copyright laws and was sentenced to an 18 month suspended sentence after previously being remanded in custody and under a stringent 24 hour house arrest order whilst under suspicion of contempt of court. Eardley was also a member of Parents On ‘Puterz (POP) which was founded as a joint venture by Eardley, Cudney & Erickson and allegedly other various other groups of which Cudney had various senior positions.

Mark Vent of Essex (aka "British") entered a guilty plea in July 2004 and received an 18-month sentence. Denis Oshdashko, a Ukrainian national (aka "Vizitor"), who had been instrumental in the reverse-engineering part of the conspiracy, was deported after his arrest.

Bell, Dowd & Vent served their time at HMP Belmarsh.

Elsewhere

Apart from the Australian and British defendants, others implicated in DoD were Swedish, German, Norwegian, Italian and Finnish nationals. All except the Australian were dealt with under the copyright or fraud laws of their own country. Griffiths was the only member of the international network to be extradited to the USA. This has set an important benchmark in copyright enforcement for the US Department of Justice.

References

1. ^ Nguyen, Kenneth (May 7, 2007). "Aussie software pirate extradited". The Sydney Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/aussie-software-pirate-extradited/2007/05/06/1178390182639.html. Retrieved 2007-05-07. 
2. ^ Stavrinos, Anthony (2007-06-24). "Piracy king to serve 15 months in US". The Sydney Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/piracy-king-to-serve-15-months-in-us/2007/06/23/1182019432307.html. 

External links

• Official webpage DrinkorDie Webpage.

• Piracy case that cost £18.4m.
• Slashdot interview with former DoD member Chris Tresco aka BiGrAr
• Slashdot article on the extradition of the leader of DrinkOrDie.
• Your Rights Online: DrinkOrDie Warez Trader to be Extradited to U.S.
• ZDNet UK article regarding DoD members standing trial.
• Digital Pirates and the "Warez" Wars by Omar J. Pahati of AlterNet
• Defendant Indicted in Connection with Operating Illegal Internet Software Piracy Group (Hew Griffiths)
• Warez Leader Sentenced to 46 Months (John Sankus)
• Member of "DrinkOrDie" Warez Group Sentenced to 41 Months (Sabuj Pattanayek)
• Warwick Man is Sentenced for Software Piracy (David Russo)
• Drink or Die file and information repository on Defacto2
• 'Bandido' Software Pirate Arraigned In U.S. On 2 Charges, Information Week, February 21, 2007.
• DrinkOrDie warez ringleader cops to piracy charges, Ars Technica, April 25, 2007