The First Shot in the Internet War
The fact that a message had been sent via ID Talk meant the recipient was sitting right in front of a computer. So when Yoo Jae-won requested a voice call, it was accepted within seconds.
—Chairman? Can you hear me clearly?
“Yes, crystal clear. How about you, Alan?”
—Perfect on my end as well.
Once the connection was established, they first confirmed the call quality. If the network was congested, the audio could degrade below that of a regular phone line, but when the connection was stable, it was far superior. Since Korea and the United States were on opposite sides of the globe, a conventional call would have noticeable lag measured in seconds, yet ID Talk’s voice communication was nearly instantaneous. Moreover, the latest version of ID Talk now displayed a small mixer interface during calls, allowing real-time adjustment of audio quality. Both parties could instantly tweak volume levels and bitrate.
“Electronic Arts stabbing us in the back like this—what on earth is going on?”
—To be precise, it’s not just Electronic Arts. Several other software companies are involved as well.
Alan began his explanation. The root of the problem lay in cloud server rentals. The data center in Coyote City had become the responsibility of Nextcomcast following the corporate separation. Although ID Technology also operated numerous services that utilized servers, it was far more efficient for Nextcomcast, which controlled the backbone network, to manage them. Consequently, the cloud server rental business had also fallen under Nextcomcast’s purview.
From the user’s perspective, however, little had changed. Once you contracted for a certain bandwidth and daily traffic allowance, you could use the server as if it were your own. When the data center had first opened and the service was being promoted, there had been few takers. But once its utility became widely recognized, a substantial customer base emerged—universities, corporations, and even individuals looking to launch new ventures.
—A significant number of those customers posted pirated content. Illegal sharing occurred on a massive scale. The plaintiffs are claiming that the responsibility lies with us, the owners of the servers and the network.
“Good grief. That’s like suing the gun shop because a robber used their store to steal weapons.”
—Strictly speaking, we’re not even the gun shop, are we?
Alan was right. If one were to draw an analogy, the data center and the information superhighway were like a luxury apartment building and the newly paved roads connecting the apartments. How the rented apartment was decorated and used was entirely the tenant’s responsibility. Yet Electronic Arts and the other plaintiffs were holding ID Group accountable for failing to prevent the sharing of pirated material—as if the landlord should have policed illegal interior renovations in a leased apartment. In practice, that would mean monitoring everything a user did on a rented server and intervening whenever something illegal occurred. It sounded plausible at first, but it made no sense. The moment a cloud server was leased, that space became the tenant’s private domain. Watching what was uploaded there would constitute a serious breach of corporate secrets or personal privacy.
Of course, Yoo Jae-won had no intention of defending illegal sharing. Software sales constituted a major portion of ID Group’s business. At least half of the top ten most-shared titles on the internet were likely ID Group products—Wolfenstein, Doom 1 and 2, the Android operating system, ID Office, and so on. Given their enormous market share, the volume of piracy was correspondingly massive. It would not be an exaggeration to say that at least half of the legal department’s workload involved fighting pirated copies.
—The plaintiffs appear to have prepared their case thoroughly. They retained Dewey & LeBoeuf, one of the major firms on the East Coast, as counsel and are seeking ten billion dollars in damages.
Dewey & LeBoeuf. A massive law firm with roughly 1,200 attorneys. The ten-billion-dollar claim was enormous, yet not entirely unrealistic.
—There’s no need for concern. We will win this case decisively.
Alan rarely made absolute guarantees. Especially with a case of this magnitude, such confidence was unusual. Nevertheless, his tone was firm.
“I agree.”
The conversation circled back to the beginning. No one sued a gun shop or a gun manufacturer for compensation when a robber used their product. The same principle applied to the internet. Compensation should be sought from those who actually infringed copyright, not from Nextcomcast, which merely provided the lines and servers. Crucially, the terms of service in the cloud server contracts explicitly stated that Nextcomcast would strictly protect user privacy. They also stipulated that any illegal use of the rented servers would be the sole responsibility of the contracting party.
Yoo Jae-won spent another thirty minutes discussing response strategies with Alan before ending the call.
“Well… this was bound to happen sooner or later.”
Reflecting on the conversation afterward, he realized it had always been inevitable. What still irritated him was that President Hawkins had filed the lawsuit without any prior notice. Given the partnership between them, at the very least he could have given some warning. Furthermore, if Electronic Arts and the others had reported illegal sharing posts as they appeared and formally requested blocks, ID Group would have handled them immediately. In fact, numerous posts had already been removed through such procedures. Yet for some reason, Electronic Arts and the other developers had quietly collected evidence and then unleashed everything at once. Yoo Jae-won couldn’t tell whether they genuinely wanted to catch the pirates or simply wanted to land a blow against him.
“In any case, the important thing is to see this through to the Supreme Court and establish a precedent. It’ll also serve as a warning to those who engage in piracy.”
Since the battle had begun, Yoo Jae-won intended to take it all the way to the federal Supreme Court. Once the legal boundaries of responsibility for internet service providers and cloud services were clearly defined, the ruling would stand until the United States itself collapsed. At the same time, those who had misused the cloud service—created for legitimate purposes—to distribute pirated material would face prison time and heavy damages, sending a powerful social message.
Still, the road to that goal would be arduous. Court cases did not reach conclusions overnight. The lawsuit against Microsoft had concluded unusually quickly thanks to overwhelming evidence; a matter with this many legal gray areas would drag on much longer.
“Even this came earlier than expected.”
According to the master plan, copyright conflicts had been projected for the late 1990s at the earliest. He had anticipated large-scale sharing of not only pirated software but also digital music and high-definition movie files once internet penetration reached a certain level. Yet the clash had arrived several years ahead of schedule.
“So many people seem to think the internet is some kind of lawless sanctuary.”
The root cause appeared to be a widespread misconception that cyberspace was a place where anything was permitted. Newspapers and broadcasters frequently used the word “cyber” to describe the online world, as if it were entirely disconnected from reality. At the same time, advocates of the sharing ethos had multiplied. In this field, Richard Stallman had long been active through the Free Software Foundation, and more recently the number of supporters had surged with the rise of Linux, an operating system whose entire source code was made public.
Yoo Jae-won viewed open source favorably. Software developed through voluntary contributions had achieved performance comparable to commercial products, and in some areas even surpassed them. The problem was that some people had distorted the spirit of sharing. Freeware did not mean “free of charge,” nor did it imply that commercially released software should be distributed gratis. Yet some had twisted the concept to justify freely sharing everything from games to professional software costing hundreds or thousands of dollars.
“I wonder if warez sites have already appeared.”
Illegal sharing almost always evolved into illegal profit-making. Warez sites were the prime example—places that openly distributed all kinds of software. People drawn to them flocked in, advertisements appeared, and the operators profited. Moreover, the ads were rarely legitimate; most promoted prostitution, gambling, and other illegal activities.
Yoo Jae-won immediately connected to the Coyote City data center and began surfing. Any files within ID Group’s own domains could be searched using administrative tools, but for boards on separate domains, direct searching was the only option. Of course, he had no intention of manually typing every registered domain address like an idiot. He already possessed a sophisticated search bot incorporating twenty-first-century technology—too valuable to release publicly just yet, so he kept it for personal use.
When he executed the program on the server, a search window appeared. He paused for a moment, considering his options.
“If I search for Doom 2, the results will be endless.”
The sheer volume of pirated Doom 2 copies was overwhelming—like cockroaches that kept multiplying no matter how many you crushed.
“Something more specialized, with fewer legitimate users, would be better.”
Having made his decision, he typed “Prime Cut Studio version” into the search field. It was a video editing program built on Android’s native codec. Developed from a proposal by ID Technology programmer Justin Abrash, the software originally cost only ten dollars. What had begun as simple cutting and joining of video files had grown through multiple updates into a powerful tool capable of adding various effects, layer and multi-track editing, and even broadcast-quality production. The versions had accordingly diverged into Home, Professional, and Studio editions, with corresponding price differences: ten dollars, fifty-nine dollars, and one hundred twenty dollars respectively—still far cheaper than competing commercial editors.
“There it is.”
Less than a minute after initiating the search, cracked versions appeared—dozens of them.
“Whoa. The total download count exceeds two hundred thousand.”
Even more striking was the number of people who had actually downloaded them.
“How many legitimate packages were sold?”
Yoo Jae-won accessed ID Group’s internal network and checked Prime Cut’s sales figures. In 1993 alone, 92,000 packages had been sold. More than twice as many people had obtained the software through piracy as through legitimate purchases. In his view, at such a low price and with such easy availability, most people should have bought it—yet far more had opted for the illegal versions.
Browsing the site itself was eye-opening. It was filled not only with Prime Cut but with a wide array of professional programs covering graphics, audio, and more. Current games were also abundant, including NHL 94, released by Electronic Arts just days earlier.
“They’re not playing around.”
What made it “serious” were the garish advertisements plastered across every available space on the site. Exactly as he had expected, banners for cyber gambling dens and adult sites lined the pages. Naturally, every ID Group product was also present—from Android Alpha to version 2.0 Enterprise, along with all of ID Software’s games. It looked as though the operators were attempting to create a complete archive of every game and commercial software title released in the world.
“Chandler’s Free Software Site, huh.”
The site’s grandiose name was almost comical. Richard Stallman would have been horrified. Disgusted, Yoo Jae-won captured multiple screenshots of the pages hosting ID Group products and forwarded them to the legal department. Since ID Group’s copyrights had been infringed, immediate legal action could be taken.
“This is war.”
The ten-billion-dollar lawsuit spearheaded by Electronic Arts was the largest single threat, but the mushrooming warez sites could not be ignored either. In the past, the internet’s early lack of proper direction had forced society to endure enormous trial and error. The same mistake could not be repeated now. Determined to set things right from the very beginning, Yoo Jae-won felt his fighting spirit ignite.