San Diego Republican Party Chairman's "Warez Dood" Past Surfaces

Although many conservative politicians take a dim view of games, Tony Krvaric, chairman of the San Diego Republican party, likes them a lot. Problem is, as a kid he didn't so much like paying for them. According to an excellent article at The Raw Story, Krvaric is one of the co-founders of Fairlight, a "warez" crew that grew to international infamy before crashing in 2004 after an 11-country investigation led to 120 arrests. Although one of his crew mates and fellow co-founders Pontus Berg (known as 'Bacchus') has implicated Krvaric with Fairlight as recently as 2004, the party chaimran maintains he had severed all ties with the group in the early '90s.

According to the article, Strider (as Krvaric was known) got his start cracking Commodore 64 games as a teen in Sweden during the late 1980s. Working in a game shop gave him access to new releases, which he took home so that he could dismantle their copy protection and post the cracked software on electronic bulletin boards.

Strider's drive for adulation in the crackz community led him to be very open (and very stupid) about his exploits. He even posted a list of games he'd cracked on a C-64 site, including his photo, biographical details and his first name, describing himself as a "coder, cracker and organizer for Fairlight". It confirms that Strider has since moved to the U.S. where he has become a financial consultant and key Republican in San Diego. The site also lists Strider's motto: "Kill a commie for your mommie."

More conservative software piracy after the jump!

Sometime around 1992, Krvaric came to the U.S., settled in California and open a games business:

Krvaric formed Fairlight PC to specialize in games for the new PC's, but by the end of 1992, a set of high-profile arrests for credit card fraud among his American associates apparently led Krvaric to exit the PC game business as well and into a new operation called FairLight Trading.

However, even this new enterprise was operating in a legal grey area. According to a 1996 version of Krvaric's webpage, "We are a trading company engaged in wholesale of various goods. Among our current offerings are Super WildCard DX 32MBiT Super Nintento(tm) back-up units."

The Super Wildcard DX was a copier for Nintendo games, put out by a Hong Kong company as a backup system, but also used for illegal copying. That kind of circumvention device was made illegal by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which was already in the works by 1996, though not passed by Congress until October 1998.

According to The Raw Story Krvaric isn't shy about his past, or at least figured the Republican party would never connect him to his "warez dood" past. The email address he listed with the San Diego County Business directory contains his nickname (strider@cts.com), and when he ran for the San Diego Republican Party Central Committee, supplied the League of Women Voters with an address at the Fairlight domain.

Krvaric did not respond to Raw Story's requests for an interview, but he did send a message to his fellow Republican committee members last week, complaining of a political motivated "hit piece":

Apparently there’s a hit piece floating around on me, “exposing” my wild high school, teenage years where I was in a computer club where we swapped Commodore 64 games (similar to how kids swap mp3 music files these days)," he wrote Monday. "This was in the 80’s, on a computer that’s long since defunct!

I’m sure glad they didn’t look in to my elementary school years, as there’s some really embarrassing stuff that I did in 4th grade," he continued. "BTW, I also heard a rumor that another fellow committee member (who shall remain unnamed) once made a tape copy of his friend’s favorite vinyl record.

I don’t know who is spreading this," he concluded, "but just wanted to let you know what’s going on out there. Likely it’s someone who wants us to take our eye off the ball in 2008, be it the democrats, labor or someone else. Either way, we’re not going to let them get away with it. Thanks for your leadership.

After moving to San Diego, Strider was asked in an interview if he had any regrets about his 'hacking' days.

"No," he replied.

With California employing 40% of the industry's professionals across more than 190 companies and generating about $2 billion a year, it's unlikely his fellow Republicans are going to be quite as blase about their chairman's as Krvaric.

[via The Raw Story]