The Lair

This story I read today possesses sufficient qualities of awesome to be blogged. Yes, they let me off the work treadmill and allowed the hamster a go – so I caught up on some of the webby reading that I’ve been missing for the past couple of months.

The short version – Chairman of regional political party in the US was/is a warez d00d. Story via slashdot. In even bigger news, the evil work proxy does not block Slashdot. I’m not sure what to make of this, personally – but I digress.

This is only a story because this guy is the regional chairman of a US political party that people love to hate. Oh, and there is a good conspiracy theory.

More seriously, people sometimes forget that the stuff done online doesn’t really go away. Ever. Not that Tony Krvaric seems particularly disturbed about people knowing he used to distribute cracked software in the 80s. Commodore International (the makers of the Commodore-64) doesn’t actually exist as a company anymore; so I presume no one really cares about the commercial value angle.

Wonder what would happen if someone ‘fessed up to illegally distributing copies of Windows 3.11? Would Microsoft sue? Or send the chap a plaque for services above and beyond the call of duty?

Even when I started on Usenet in the mid 90s, people used to periodically post dire warnings about potential employers and other people reading these posts, so be careful etc etc. I don’t think many people paid heed. That’s why archives like this one still crop up from time to time. Should there be a statute of limitations on things written and done online? But then again, there is no statute of limitations on things done in real life, so why should things written online be different?