Steve Mentzer: Pirate. You are no longer welcome.

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

Note: the following is a fairly long posting, but I and many others
feel that this is relevant to the Apple II community at large.

In article <55ojr1$48i@client2.news.psi.net>,
Steve Mentzer <smentzer@pacbell.net> wrote:
>Check on my FTP site... follow the links at 
>http://home.earthlink.com/~smentzer to access my FTP site at home..

   Well, if you can spell 'earthlink.net', that URL used to head off
to your home WinNT3.5 box. [It doesn't anymore, for reasons that'll be
very apparent in a minute.]

   I dropped by this ftp site, and the contents were most interesting.
For someone claiming to "support" the Apple II, Steve Mentzer's ftp
site had copies of JUST ABOUT EVERY COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE GS
SOFTWARE.  The latest stuff from Shareware Solutions II
(Convert.3200), the complete line of the Byte Works products, a lot of
Softdisk and Softdisk GSs, most of the GS+ Magazines, AWGS, ProSEL,
Proterm, and the like. Plus, a few of the more popular PC games in
their commercial (not shareware) versions: Quake, Abuse, Duke Nukem
3D, etc.

   As I said before: those who pirate stuff from 10+ years ago are
damn likely to pirate the latest software. How much revenue has he
deprived Joe Kohn or The Byte Works of? [Tip: if there's to be any
support by programmers, they need tools. And the person doing a heroic
job producing these tools needs to earn a living.] There is no excuse
to pirate stuff from 10+ years ago, and there is certainly NO EXCUSE
WHATSOEVER to pirate what you can _BUY FROM THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR_.

   Email was sent out to the earthlink sysadmins, and the companies
with products on your site. [A copy of this email is attached below.]
Softdisk, Crack dot com, Joe Kohn, and Mike Westerfield of the Byte
Works responded within hours, irate. The sysadmins of 'pacificnet.net'
responded that an account that Steve Mentzer had there had been axed
due to activity concurrent with account cracking. [Turley can give
folks a description of what a broken into account feels like... it
ain't fun.]

   Earthlink has apparently suspended his account for now; he's
reduced to posting messages from psi.net, but with a return address of
pacbell.net. He tried changing the link that used to go to his home
machine to my home page, a trick that fooled nobody since I took down
the original html source code, and the pirate site was accessed by
many when it was still pointing to his home machine.

   Only the truely _STUPID_ would advertise themselves as a big pirate
with the latest stuff and their name on it. Only the stupid would get
themselves kicked off one ISP after another, and resort to cracked
accounts to steal, not pay for internet access. Only the stupid would
give random ftp users access to most of their PCs hard drive and say
"please don't try to crack this machine." I believe we now know who
that is: Steve Mentzer.

   I and many other developers who have had their work BLATANTLY
stolen by this pirate urge you, the Apple II community to reject this
asshole, to harass him at every sign of his pirate activities, and
to make him pay for the lost revenues to the developers who are still
supporting him. [Other folks who saw and verified this act of piracy,
feel free to join in.]

   I and others have facts and evidence. I urge you to consider it,
and make a choice how to deal with someone charged with these items.
Once again, I remind others that piracy for the hardcore unrepentant
pirate does not stop at 10 years ago; they'll do their best to suck
the lifeblood out of this community. The Apple II spirit is NOT in
piracy or division; it's in supporting the legal, moral, and ethical
efforts of others, and purging disease.

Nathan Mates


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