Monthly Archives: March 2019

A Pirate’s Lament from the Barras

First of all, some exciting news: Zippy of The Medway Boys, a legendary Atari ST cracker from the early 1990s, scanned a substantial part of his letter archive for us. These letters will appear here in the very near future. For today, we have chosen a very peculiar document from his collection: A leaflet, approximately from 1992-1993, distributed by commercial software pirates at the notorious Barras street market in Glasgow, Scotland. After one of the usual Christmas time police raids, the announce the end of piracy at the Barras and deliver a lengthy rant against the industry, politics and the media. As Zippy notes, however, “of course they were back the following week as usual”. Something like this is really hard to find, as there is an abundance of voices from scene members of that time, but hardly any from commercial pirates. So, enjoy this historical document! Included is also a contemporary newpaper clipping about the FAST and police investigations against piracy at the Barras. You can download the hi-res scans here.