Winning the War Against Software Piracy

At Metropolis, we're concerned about pirated software, and here is why you should be too. Legit BBS Sysops invest too much time and money into their systems to watch pirates steal customers away from them by offering free rates and all the latest mods which are not paid for.

The abuse from pirates has taken its toll. The MajorMUD community pays the price for the crimes of pirates through higher BBS prices and more expensive modules. This eventually drives sysops out of business and players are limited to the choices of boards to play on.

Many pirated BBS�s are fly by night, unstable and can disappear without warning. Therefore, the customer loses out by playing on such unstable and unreliable systems.

The campaign to fight piracy has been a direct result of casualties from cracked, hexed, edited and pirated bulletin board systems. Victim�s stories range from the hijacking of player�s characters, misuse of Sysop powers to corrupt mudops killing new characters. Sysops and players have joined together in the War against Pirates.

Hopefully these reasons will diminish the temptation for players to play pirated boards.

Protect yourself and the MajorMUD community by making others aware of our War Against Pirates campaign.

Here�s how you can help:

Type the Sys Lance command inside MajorMUD to verify the License Count.
Match registration number from the Sys Lance results with the Registered BBS List.
Verify registration with Metropolis for outdated records not published on the BBS List.
Report pirates to their cable modem company, DSL Company or their ISP.
Add a banner to your web site and tell all your friends.
Add this Piracy FAQ to your web site.
Add the Registered BBS Logo to your BBS.

From within MajorMUD type:

sys lance

This will return something that looks like this:

[HP=30]:sys lance
Reg# 0123456789
Lcon 256

The reg # is the WorldGroup number of the system in question. You can then go to the Registered Mud Owners List at http://www.majormud.com/cgi-bin/mmudlist/mmudlist.cgi and input the number to check for it on the system.

If you don't see it there, please e-mail us and let us know the name and IP of the system and what the sys lance information is that you found. E-mail us at [email protected]. Bear in mind there are a few systems that are not on the list that are legit, but their records were so out of date, we were unable to contact them when the list was made. So, you should not assume a system is not legit until you have heard back from us.

If you type sys lance and it returns this:

[HP=30]:sys lance
Reg# 0123456789
Lcon 598

Note the Lcon 598. That is the License Count. MajorMUD only sells 4, 16, and 256 license counts. Additionally WCC used to sell a 32 user count some time ago. So, valid numbers would be 4, 16, 32 and 256. If you see someone with a 598 Lcon, that is a known crack. Whether they have previously purchased from us or not, they are now using an illegal copy of the dll files. If you see someone with this, please notify us immediately.

Additionally, you can report them to their cable modem company, dsl company or their ISP. No one has our permission to be running a 598 License Count and it is a pirated dll.

The easiest way to find out what their ISP is, is to open up a DOS window and type:

tracert bbsip

So it would look llike, C:\tracert 100.000.00.00 (or the name C:\tracert samplebbs.com). This will show you the route between you and the system in question.

Once you've gotten the name, like qwest.net, you can go to the qwest.net web site and use their online form to report them. Most ISPs have an e-mail address specifically for reporting people who are pirating or abusing their access.

Do not report someone unless you have confirmed 100% that they are pirating the software in question.

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