Clifford makes a number of disclaimers on his public website. He tries to defend his program from the status of "Trojan Horse" by implying that a trojan must carry some sort of payload, something to be delivered to the user of the executable.

In my eyes, the hidden connections it makes to the website are most certainly a payload. He tries to say that trojans must use deviant methods. I would say that tricking a user into misunderstanding what they're downloading.

A user, when trying to run his illegal copy of Unreal Tournament 2004, is giving implicit assent to run Unreal 2004. NOT the program it's posing as.

I suppose it would be a waste of time to mention that the backweb connection and method of delivery qualifies it, without debate, as a trojen by Internet Security Standards. Even "phoning home" is illegal. It also happens to be a class F cyber crimes felony if it takes place between two states (or if the connection goes out of the state). His own logs, accessible on his own site, show that this has indeed happened.

He also publicly shares illegally obtained information on his site. I don't care if it's the color of my hair, publicly sharing illegally obtained data is illegal, and counts as a separate felony.

Open your eyes, dissenters. This man is a criminal. Sure, he only targeted other (alleged) criminals. Sure, he had good intentions, and went to pains to make sure no damage was done, and even that users would not be liable for their transgressions. (Though this is questionable when he publicly posts IP's that any cop can track down with a half hour on the phone to the ISP.(which can be determined by two minutes at a computer.) ) It's still breaking the law. Ignorance does not equal innocence, and good intentions don't make his own transgressions any less.

While I admire the ingenuity required to put all this together, I myself would have suggested greater discretion in the face of so much potential liability.

EricE (at) his (dot) com [email concealed]

"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."--Winston Churchill.

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