Thusday 10th September (3:30pm GMT) - ATN WHQ Siteop Dead

I must thank the two persons who mailed me about this story.
Carabus the ex-Activation (ATN) WHQ siteop who was busted for child pornography just over a week ago was found dead inside his appartment on Tuesdays.

Heinz J. Schaefers, age 35 was discovered dead in his bath tub with his risks slit, police said. They also stated that the Heinz appeared to have been dead for at least a day or two. "There were no signs of any struggle or other indications of anything other than a suicide," Sgt. Alan Raynis said.

Schaefers was describe as a small player in the child pornography ring he admitted to being apart off. Police did not believe he molested children or profited from child pornography. Because of that let him go after agreeing he would face trail on October 1st.

Wednesday 9th September (8:30pm GMT)

In another embarrassment for Reflux it seems Divine (arch rivals?) have managed to fix the bad copy of X-Plane. While Reflux’s fix required the complete repackaged good copy of the software (75 disks). Divines fix renames the directories to what they should have been in the first place using some simple 16kb zipped batch files.

Tuesday 8th September (4:10pm GMT)

What has happened to all the scene news pages?! Warez News has not been updated, Scenelink is now completely idle both webpage and irc channel. And finally Blackacid's page looks like it wont be returning for some time if at all.

Sunday 6rd September (2:30pm GMT)

Reflux has stuffed up another release this time it is X-Plane (c) LAMINAR RESEARCH (which is a technically a simulator rather then a game). Their quality checks failed causing invalid long directory names in the ACE files. This means you have to redownload a 75disk repackaged version if you have the bad original. Reflux no matter how hard you try and blame one person, their bad actions reflects on the group as a whole.

Saturday 5rd September (8:00pm GMT)

The Scene News has had a minor face lift, hope you like it.

Friday 4rd September (3:00pm GMT)

Ahhh September is here and so is the start of the big releases. Two highly hyped games have been released today, firstly Paradigm released Need For Speed III (c) Electronic Arts. Unfortunately some people have been having big problems with this release with some claiming that it is beta. There is also a 20 disk car view and speach addon floating around. Class released the over-hyped and very over rated Dune 2000 (c) Westwood Studios at 43 disks. Just a note to Revenge what the heck is point in releasing 230megs worth of video addons when there are ISOs?

Thursday 3rd September (2:30pm GMT)

I've sure you have heard via your local news networks about that international kiddie porn bust. Well it seems it has caught the warez scene by surprise, unintentionally. Here is a letter that is being passed through the sites at the moment.

MAXIMISE THIS TEXT FILE	***** MAXIMISE THIS TEXT FILE ***** MAXIMISE THIS TEXT FILE


ATN (ACTIVATION) CLOSES IN DISASTREROUS CIRCUMSTANCES
(4th September 1998)

This is Jinponius - ATN Founder / Prez / Trader

As many of you are aware, there were world-wide porn busts.  Unknown to anyone
in ATN, the ATN WHQ siteop has been caught and charged with possession and
distribution child pornography and is due to begin trial in 30 days.  He is 
also likely to face mass piracy charges too, as police also took almost a
terrabyte of pirated software from his apartment.  This letter to everyone
is intended to inform and warn you of the consequences of the events in the
past 28 hours.

Early morning Sept 2 1998, in response to electronic surveillance by the US FBI,
US Customs Dept, and the US Treasury (apparently responsible for more than
banks) sent 15 armed agents to the HOME of Carabus in Connecticut, USA. They
seized his computer, some 1500 cds containing masses of software and also illegal porn.
This raid was one of many made at the same time around the world and in many countries
breaking a world wide porn ring called the WonderLand Club.  How Carabus was brought
to the attention of law enforcement agencies is a question unanswered.  Carabus
was told he had been "screened" by law enforcement agencies, where they had monitored
his two Carabus@ email addresses and his ICQ.  He was shown print outs of his recent
email - so much for privacy on Hotmail.

Carabus was released not long after the raid, because the contents of the PC and
the CDs need to be examined with a fine comb before any arrest is made.  The next
move of Carabus was to go to work later in the morning, give a brief note to the
#ATN98 channel via his bot that he had been busted, and immediately close down his bots.
He then proceeded to destroy his server - CP ATN WHQ, which was untouched due to a
search warrant being unattainable - protected by the University that hosted it.
30mins later Carabus appeared on IRC, and messaged myself.  He told be that he is in
trouble, that he had been raided for software piracy. He DID NOT bother to tell me
that he was raided for child porn.  He also said there is going to be a trial, and that
it is likely he will be deported back to Germany, and lose his job.  He is also likely
to face a big fine and/or imprisonment.  He warned me that they have all information
relating to the existence and activities of ATN, and I was told to go in to hiding on
IRC, change site IPs ports etc etc.  When asked how clued up on warez and the scene
are these authorities, the reply was that they are well educated on the matter.

Since Cara was a senior in ATN, he had access to the ATN MS EXCEL ADMINISTRATION FILE.
This file was sitting on the HDD of the computer that was seized.
This file contained member info such as Nick, Country, ICQ UIN, LOGIN, PASS, IDENT,
IPs (some static ???.???.???.?? and some dynamic), and also showed what sites each
member was on.  On another Tab in the excel file was a sitelist, giving information
such as site name, abbreviation, IP, PORT, Location, Speed, and channel.
This file was protected by a password, which I have no doubt is nothing more than
a formality for opening, since the FBI had even been cracking the "Russian encryption
of porn" that we have heard on the news.  There we must assume that the FBI and
other law enforcement agencies will not only have the static IPs of some very
upset people, but also the IPs of many scene sites.  The following is a list of
scene sites listed in the ADMIN FILE:

5th Element
AF1
BBRO	* ATN INTERNAL SITE
CP	* ATN INTERNAL SITE - WHQ
Cemetary Gates
CNE	* ATN INTERNAL SITE
COD
CPD	* ATN INTERNAL SITE
CPD2	* ATN INTERNAL SITE
EMF	* BOOKWARE SITE
FRAG	* OLD IP B4 IT WAS BUSTED
FNL
MSV
MF
NBM
NC
NON
ProjectGenocide
PrimeMover
QC
Reality FLuX
RF	* ATN INTERNAL SITE
SAD
Sanctuary
SoliD Disruption
SaraPaX
TBP
SLR aka The Cellar
TB - The Labrynth
TDR
TT
TH - RTS WHQ
TUK -The Ultimate Kingdom
TWL
TWH
VXS	* ATN INTERNAL SITE
VF
WOC
WTC

I urge all siteops to take action - either close down or change access details.
Only (2) of the forementioned sites (SAD AF1) are not located in the countries
where the raids took place.  This does not mean authorities will not act in Hungary
upon request of the authorities from other countries.  I applaude the AF1 siteop for
taking prompt action before there was even confirmation of the exact situation.

The authorities have all Carabus' IRC logs, ICQ message, email messages, and many
IPs of sites and the account details of 70 or so ATN members.  This is cause for
extreme alarm considering every file will be screened on his PC by experts.
Carabus is facing piracy and pornography charges, therefore it is reasonable to assume
not only porn activity is being clamped down, but that the authorities are likely
to take this opportunity to take down the scene sites.  

If the authorities fail to recognise these sites as significant top sites, then it is
reasonable to assume that these sites listed in the ADMIN file could be deemed to be
distributing illegal pornography by authorities.  The ADMIN file contains NO reference
to the contents or purpose of these sites - so could be mistakenly implicated in the
child pornography ring.  That is why immediate action must be taken, according to news
reports, screening of Cara's HDD is well underway, and the news reports more raids are coming.

Before I summarise, I would like to take an opportunity to thank everyone for helping
myself and my creation, ATN, for giving us a chance.  We formed in Sept 97, and closed
at my command at Sept 98.  I apologise for the problem that has arisen, I wish there
was something that I could have done to prevent it.  
I only first started thinking that Carabus was a paedophile when I heard on the news
that the organisation that had carried out the raid on Carabus, had at the same
time performed porn raids across the USA and in cooperation with other countries around
the world.  Constantly monitoring the news and webpages in USA, I finally came across
the information I have been dreading (http://www.courant.com/news/article/ctnews1.stm).

I am scared to think of how long Carabus has been electronically monitored, many people
could also be in danger.

Summary:
1) Only ONE ATN member is busted and is facing child porn and piracy charges.
2) Siteops must take action to protect themselves and their site, it does not matter
   where you are located, the governments are working in tandem.
3) If you think you are in danger, follow your instinct, safe than VERY sorry.
4) On behalf of Carabus, ATN and myself apologise for the threat that is b4 us all.
5) Heinz J. Schaeffers aka CARABUS - YOU ARE ONE SICK MOTHER FUCKER AND I HOPE YOU
   SUFFER THE PAIN THOSE CHILDREN DID.  I HOPE THEY WARMLY GREET YOU IN PRISON.
6) Thanks for reading this letter, it is important to me that you are warned.
7) CARA IS COOPERATING WITH AUTHORITIES ACCORDING TO THE NEWS !!?!
   WTF DOES THAT MEAN?

I am upset to see all my effort go wasted like this, ATN was a good group that 
deserved a better end.  Thank you to all ATN members (bar one of them), you are fine
people.
My final words are "linfXp should be unbanned - its the only way anyone can trade 0sec,
especially from distant locations, and it is freely available to all.  Any serious
group has at least one group shell trading box".
THE END

Wednesday 2nd September (2:00pm GMT)

It seems Class is the most popular group in the scene today according to a new poll conducted by the Just The Facts magazine. Out of the 600 votes received so far Class has gained 39% of the count. Surprisingly Divine (18%) is coming second with Razor and Paradigm (14%) both neck and neck for third place. This poll can give you an idea of the number of clueless people who are into warez when you consider Divine's complete lack of quality and Razors total lack of releases.

I was mistaken when I claimed that Reflux's release of Robert D. Ballard's TITANIC: CHALLENGE OF DISCOVERY was an educational title. TKLP sent an annoymous and misleading email in reguards to this topic so I took it upon myself to find out more. If one goes to http://www.pimcom.com (Panasonic Interactive) it states that the title is indeed a game.