DrinkOrDie ASCII NFO header. Their slogan reads "warez bearz from Russia and beyond".

DrinkOrDie (DoD) was an underground software cracking and warez trading network during the 1990s, shut down by a major raid in 2001. DrinkOrDie ASCII NFO header. ... DrinkOrDie ASCII NFO header. ... ASCII art, an artistic medium relying primarily on computers for presentation, consists of pictures pieced together from characters (preferably from the 95 printable characters defined by ASCII). ... NFO is an abbreviation of info, which is shorthand for information. ... Definition: Software cracking is the modification of software to remove encoded copy prevention. ... Warez (pronounced wares) is both a derivative for the plural form of the word software and a contraction of warehouses meaning both the copyrighted material traded in violation of its copyright license and the places where its traded. ... // Events and trends The 1990s are generally classified as having moved slightly away from the more conservative 1980s, but otherwise retaining the same mindset. ... 2001: A Space Odyssey. ...

DrinkOrDie was founded in 1993 in Moscow by a Russian with the handle "deviator" and a friend who went by "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. The DrinkOrDie network is considered criminal for copyright infringement. As a rule, they made no financial profit from their activities. 1993 is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003). ... Moscow (Russian: Москва́, Moskva, IPA:   listen?) is the capital of Russia, located on the river Moskva. ... A pseudonym (Greek: false name) is a fictitious name used by an individual as an alternative to their legal name (whereas an allonym is the name of another actual person assumed by one person in authorship of a work of art; e. ... 1995 was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Windows 95 (codename Chicago) is a hybrid 16-bit/32-bit graphical operating system released on August 24, 1995 by the Microsoft Corporation. ... Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is the worlds largest software company, with over 50,000 employees in various countries as of May 2004. ... DVD is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for data storage, including movies with high video and sound quality. ... 1999 is a common year starting on Friday Anno Domini (or the Current Era), and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ... DeCSS is a computer program capable of decrypting content on a DVD video disc encrypted using the Content-Scrambling System (CSS). ... 1996 is a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ... This article is about the year 2000. ... For copyright issues in relation to Wikipedia itself, see Wikipedia:Copyrights. ... Copyright infringement is the unauthorized use of copyrighted material in a manner that violates one of the copyright owners exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works that build upon it. ... Profit is defined as the residual value gained from business operations. ...

The DoD network primarily consisted of university undergraduates, but was supported by software company employees, who would leak copies of software and other digital media. DoD also received such files indirectly, from other networks. A professor giving a lecture at the Helsinki University of Technology A university is an institution of higher education and of research, which grants academic degrees. ... In some educational systems, an undergraduate is a post-secondary student pursuing a Bachelors degree. ... Digital media encompasses digital audio, digital video, the World Wide Web and other technologies that can be used to create and distribute digital content. Digital media represents a profound change from all previous media technologies. ... A file in a computer system is a stream (sequence) of bits stored as a single unit, typically in a file system on disk or magnetic tape. ...

Member raids

In 2001 the group was busted in an FBI operation called Operation Buccaneer. At the time, DrinkOrDie had two leaders, one in the United States and another in Australia. 2001: A Space Odyssey. ... Official FBI Seal The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is a Federal police force which is the principal investigative arm of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). ... On December 11, 2001, in an international operation known as Operation Buccaneer, law enforcement agents in six countries targeted 62 people suspected of software piracy, with leads in twenty other countries. ...

The Australian leader Hew Raymond Griffiths 40, known by his screenname "Bandido", has been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and one count of criminal copyright infringement, and has been involved in legal action in Australia. As of March 2005, Griffiths has lost an appeal against extradition to the United States, to face charges under US copyright laws. Hew Raymond Griffiths has been accused by the United States of being a ring leader of DrinkOrDie. ... A screenname is a name or string of characters chosen to uniquely identify a user within an online system, including dial-up bulletin board systems, platform videogame servers, and Internet-based environments. ... ← - 2005 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December- → Deaths in March • 31 – Terri Schiavo • 30 – Mitch Hedberg • 29 – Johnnie Cochran • 27 – Wilfred Bigelow • 26 – Paul Hester • 26 – James Callaghan • 21 – Jeff Weise • 21 – Bobby Short • 19 – John De Lorean • 18 – Gary Bertini • 17 – George F... Extradition is a formal process by which a criminal suspect held by one government is handed over to another government for trial or, if the suspect has already been tried and found guilty, to serve his or her sentence. ...

The American leader John Sankus Jr. of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, known by his screename "eriFlleH" (HellFire spelled backwards), was convicted and sentenced to 46 months. Sankus was also a member of the group HARM at the time of his arrest. Independence Hall Philadelphia (sometimes referred to as Philly or the City of Brotherly Love) is the fifth most populous city in the United States and the largest city in the state of Pennsylvania, both in area and population. ...

The National Hi-Tech Crime Unit in the UK also arrested eight members residing in Britain. Two of those arrested were charged and convicted for Conspiracy to Defraud, Alex Bell of Greys, Essex and Steven Dowd of Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside. The National Hi-Tech Crime Unit is a section of the National Crime Squad, a British Police organisation which deals with major crime. ... The Greys have landed! Alien mannequin at International UFO Museum & Research Center; Roswell, NM, USA Greys (also known as Zetas or Reticulians after the ζ Reticuli star system) are the type of intelligent extraterrestrial life that appears most commonly in modern conspiracy theories, particularly UFO conspiracy theories and other UFO-related... Essex is an administrative county in the East of England. ... Location within the British Isles. ... Merseyside is a metropolitan county, located in the North West of England, Merseyside is named after the River Mersey and comprises the conurbation by the Mersey estuary centred upon Liverpool. ...

Also charged and convicted were:

• Christopher Tresco age 23, of Boston, Massachusetts, who used the screename "bigrar", pled guilty May 28, 2002 to conspiracy to violate the criminal copyright laws, and was sentenced to 33 months of jail time. 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", pled 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 (POPZ) 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", pled 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 screename "flood", pled 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 POPZ.

• Sabuj Pattanayek age 21, of Nashville, Tennessee, who used the screename "buj", pled guilty on April 16, 2002 and was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison for conspiring to violate criminal copyright laws. Sabuj 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 screename "avec", pled 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 screename "erupt", pled 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 screename "azide", pled 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 screename "ange", pled 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 screename "tenkuken", pled 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 screename "doodad", pled guilty on April 4, 2002 to criminal copyright infringement and conspiracy to violate criminal copyright laws. Clardy was also a member of POPZ.

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

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

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

• Anthony Buchanan of Eugene, Oregon, who used the screename "spaceace", pled guilty on August 19, 2002 to criminal copyright infringement. Buchanan was also a member of POPZ.

• Kirk Patrick St. John age 34, of Gilbert, Arizona, who used the screename "thesaint", was charged with one count of conspiracy to violate federal criminal copyright laws, and one count of possession of stolen property. St. John ran the FTP leech server "Godcomplex".

Nickname: Beantown, The Hub (of the Universe), Athens of America Location in Massachusetts Founded  -Incorporated September 17, 1630 1820, as a city  County Suffolk County Mayor Thomas Menino (Dem) Area  - Total  - Water 232. ... May 28 is the 148th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (149th in leap years). ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a research and educational institution located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. MIT is a world leader in science and technology, as well as in many other fields, including management, economics, linguistics, political science, and philosophy. ... Eugene is the third largest city [1] and boasts the second largest metropolitan population [2] in the state of Oregon, and is also the county seat of Lane County, Oregon. ... May 2 is the 122nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (123rd in leap years). ... 2002 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ: SYMC), founded in 1982, is an information security company headquartered in Cupertino, California that specializes in computer security and antivirus software. ... City nickname: none Location Location within the state of Texas Government County Tarrant County Mayor Dr. Robert Cluck Physical characteristics Area      Land      Water 256. ... March 4 is the 63rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (64th in leap years). ... Location in Maryland Founded  -Incorporated c. ... April 29 is the 119th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (120th in leap years). ... Bounce, often abbreviated as BNC, is used to relay traffic and connections in computer networks. ... The Nashville skyline Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee. ... April 16 is the 106th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (107th in leap years). ... Duke Chapel Duke University is a private, coeducational university in Durham, North Carolina in the United States. ... Rosenberg is a city located in Fort Bend County, Texas. ... March 19 is the 78th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (79th in leap years). ... Razor 1911 ASCII NFO header by JED of ACiD. Razor 1911 is a warez and demo group, with a history similar to that of Fairlight. ... City nickname: The Magic City, The American Riviera, The Sixth Borough Location Location of Miami in the State of Florida Government County Miami-Dade Mayor Manuel “Manny” Diaz (R) Physical characteristics Area      Land      Water 54 km²      35. ... April 10 is the 100th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (101st in leap years). ... The phrase computer art scene or artscene for short, refers to a community of individuals and groups, that are both interested and active in the creation of computer-based artwork. ... Remorse ASCII, or Remorse 1981, is the official ASCII sub-label of ACiD Productions. ... Waterford is a borough located in Erie County, Pennsylvania. ... April 3 is the 93rd day of the year (94th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 272 days remaining. ... 2000 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December This is a timeline for events in November, 2000. ... 2001 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December Events: October 2 - Bankruptcy of Swissair. ... Warwick is a city located in Kent County, Rhode Island. ... April 24 is the 114th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (115th in leap years). ... 2003 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The City of Los Angeles (from Spanish Los Ángeles , meaning the angels), also known as L.A., is the second-largest city in the United States in terms of population, as well as one of the worlds most important economic, cultural, and entertainment centers. ... January 22 is the 22nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Galesburg is a city located in Knox County, Illinois. ... April 4 is the 94th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (95th in leap years). ... Independence Hall Philadelphia (sometimes referred to as Philly or the City of Brotherly Love) is the fifth most populous city in the United States and the largest city in the state of Pennsylvania, both in area and population. ... June 21 is the 172nd day of the year (173rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 193 days remaining. ... Horsham is a census-designated place located in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. ... May 22 is the 142nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (143rd in leap years). ... Warminster Township is a township located in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. ... July 10 is the 191st day (192nd in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 174 days remaining. ... Eugene is the third largest city [1] and boasts the second largest metropolitan population [2] in the state of Oregon, and is also the county seat of Lane County, Oregon. ... August 19 is the 231st day of the year (232nd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Gilbert is a town located in Maricopa County, Arizona, USA. Gilbert was the fastest-growing incorporated place of over 100,000 people in the US from 1990 to 2000, as well as in the 2002, 2003, and 2004 Census estimates. ...

External links and references

• 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
• Central Coast man faces extradition to US
• Internet Archive backup of www.drinkordie.com (2001)
• 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)

• Defacto2 Drink or Die repository