According to a lengthy article posted at The Raw Story, San Diego Republican Chairman and head of the state party’s budget committee Tony Krvaric is co-founder of Fairlight, one of the world’s largest and oldest software cracking rings. Krvaric, known online as “Strider,” started Fairlight in 1987 with two friends, “Black Shadow” and “Gollum.” The group of Swedish high schoolers quickly rose to prominence among online bulletin board users for cracking the copy protection on Commodore 64 games that Krvaric would “borrow” from his job in a Swedish game store. After the games were cracked, Krvaric and his friends would post the software to the Internet where it would be downloaded by other users for free.

The Raw Story chronicles Krvaric’s cracking accomplishments and Fairlight’s history, which includes setting up offices in California, recruiting new crackers, and selling a variety of goods from game copying devices to nonperishable foodstuffs.

Krvaric has failed to publicly respond to the allegations, but an alleged internal communication by Krvaric has been leaked to the Internet:

“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!”

The supposed letter also stated:

“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…. 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, 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.”

A list of Krvaric’s Commodore 64 cracking accomplishments can be found here. For further reading, check out the full article on The Raw Story.

Ben Kuchera over at Ars Technica reports that a surprising number of UPS workers are being fired for stealing copies of Rockstar’s [tag]Grand Theft Auto IV[/tag]. Despite the collective cries of [tag]gamers[/tag] that GTA doesn’t lead to real [tag]crime[/tag], it seems that the opposite is occasionally true–if not in the way we expect. A UPS employee reports that this phenomenon is novel to GTA IV and has not occurred on this scale with previous big-name releases. Three workers were fired in a 24-hour period and further questioning into suspect conduct will be conducted in the near future.

“As long as the people loading the packages are doing their jobs, it’s easy to track down,” [a] source told Ars. “It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? It’s a game about theft, and people are stealing it.” His eyes began to shine as he said, “and I get to terminate them.”

While the shiny-eyed joy of firing employees is mildly disheartening, the fact that individuals are willing to commit theft and potentially lose their jobs over an early copy of a [tag]video game[/tag] is unbelievable. The informant at UPS further reported that these copies are largely being stolen for personal use, not for resale at inflated prices. No word on whether the thieves are going for the standard or collector’s editions, but I imagine that lockbox would be hard to stuff in your pants.

Fox news recently ran the above segment chastising Xbox 360 game Mass Effect for displaying “full digital nudity and sex” and for degrading women by allowing a male character to dictate sexual situations. Unfortunately for Fox, and correctly pointed out by Mr. Geoff Keighley of SpikeTV, Mass Effect features neither of these scenarios.

Mass Effect, which has been widely lauded as a critical success, does feature a brief “love scene” contingent upon certain relationships being cultivated throughout the game. However, this scene features at most a brief glimpse of an ancillary character’s posterior and can be experienced as either a male or female character (depending on the player’s preference). This is a far cry from “full digital character nudity” and is certainly devoid of any misogynistic intent.

I believe that Mr. Keighley did his best to accurately describe what occurs in the game, but it is disconcerting to hear Cooper Lawrence freely admit to having never played the game and continue to assault its content without any actual base of knowledge. But, the true highlight comes near the end of the clip when host Martha MacCallum replies that it is “unfortunate” that parents must “control what their kids are seeing.”

Is this really the current state of parenting in this country? Do Americans really want the government to decide what is and isn’t acceptable for us to watch? Mass Effect’s content could not be considered “obscene” by any stretch of the imagination and falls well within the category of “protected speech” under the First Amendment. Is this a right that we are willing to compromise in order to ease the hardships of parenting?

For even more disgust see: Jim Sterling at Destructoid

For the third consecutive year, Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy released her list of the top ten games that parents should avoid purchasing for their children this holiday season. Not surprisingly, every single game on this list is rated “M” for “Mature” which according to the Entertainment Software Rating Board (“ESRB”)means:

Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.

Telling parents not to buy their kids an “M” rated game is the equivalent of telling them not to take their child to an “R” rated movie; this should be common sense. Would you take your 9 year-old to see the movie Scarface? No. Then why would you ever think to buy him the game based on the film? While I 100% agree that most of these games should not be played by children, I that think the real solution is to create informed parents. Teaching parents about the ESRB and the various video game rankings is a far superior long-run initiative that has already proven successful in the movie industry. Sure, Ms. Worthy may receive a little less press and fewer hits to her website, but surely that’s not her motivation for compiling this list, right? I’m sure that making “Top 10″ lists is the normal business of all prosecutors in the great state of Michigan.

Here are the games that Ms. Worthy not-so-subtly implied are responsible for high crime rates among youth:

1. Grand Theft Auto
2. Manhunt
3. Scarface
4. 50 Cent Bulletproof
5. 300 The Videogame
6. The Godfather
7. Killer-7
8. Resident Evil 4
9. God of War
10. Hitman Blood Money

For more info see: GameRush Entertainment
Wired