The raids prompted changes to the Scene. A second high council of piracy was convened, with all the major leaking groups in attendance. In some dark corner of the Internet, the “other RIAA” hashed out new leaking standards, new technical specifications for mp3 encodings, and a new regime of security countermeasures for “official” groups. Groups took a second look at their topsite permissions, and ordered security directives to their members. These changes were easy to agree upon but difficult to implement. While RNS had a formal command structure, a hierarchy of titles, and delegated areas of specific responsibility, Kali’s authority didn’t extend to the physical world. And this raised an interesting question: how did one actually “lead” an anonymous quasi-criminal Internet cabal anyway?
The answer was through the chat channel. In the wake of the raids, Kali moved #RNS off the public servers and onto a home computer in Hawaii, hosted by a member named “Fish” (he kept aquariums). The chat channel was password encrypted and login permissions were restricted. Fewer than fifty IP addresses in the world were permitted to access it. From a technical perspective, then, control of the group belonged to anyone with the power to edit these login permissions. These elites had “operator” status in the chat channel, which was designated by the appearance of the @ symbol next to the participant’s name. That’s how you could tell “@Kali” was the leader—he was the one with the seashell.
But Kali wasn’t the only participant with operator status. Fish, who owned the computer, also had control. So did a presence named “@KOSDK,” who ran the channel in Kali’s absence. KOSDK was the only other member of the group Glover communicated with on a regular basis, and, like some online version of Clark Kent, he never seemed to appear in the channel at the same time as Kali. Indeed, for a while Glover suspected that KOSDK and Kali were one and the same.
In time he rejected this idea. The personality behind the screen name was too distinct. Patrick Saunders also interacted with KOSDK frequently, and he too was certain that this was a different person from Kali and not just a manifestation of the same deity. KOSDK hailed from Tulsa, Oklahoma, had mainstream musical taste, lived a rural lifestyle, and had moved into the ripping coordinator position after Simon Tai had stepped away. Saunders affectionately referred to him as “the Farmer.”
In theory, then, @Fish, @KOSDK, and @Kali all held equal power in the group. In practice, it was Kali who issued the orders. Nevertheless, such a diffuse power system would not have been possible in the real world—it was a function of the anonymous nature of Internet group dynamics. Participants in RNS spent thousands of hours in chat channels together, but were under strict instructions not to reveal personal details like birthdays and real names. Identity was nebulous and not persistent. One created one’s screen name anew with each chat room login, and this could even be changed in-session with a simple command. Thus Kali wasn’t always “Kali.” Sometimes he was “Blazini” or “Lonely.” Sometimes he was simply “Death.”
While the group could hide itself behind encryption and aliases, it could hardly mask the destructive effect it was having on the recording industry’s revenues. This brought attention too, and journalists were starting to poke around the fringes of the music-leaking Scene. A December 2004 article in Rolling Stone was the first ever mention of RNS in the mainstream press. “CD Leaks Plague Record Biz,” read the headline. “In a four-day period, one group leaked CDs by U2, Eminem and Destiny’s Child,” read a caption below. Bill Werde’s article only briefly surveyed the damage the group was causing, but it included an ominous sentence: “A source close to Eminem said the rapper’s camp believes Encore was leaked when it went to the distributors, who deliver albums from the pressing plants to chain stores such as Wal-Mart.”
Werde’s source inside Eminem’s camp was wrong. The CD hadn’t come from the distributor; it had come from the pressing plant itself. Glover had leaked Encore and, just three days later, U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. (Destiny Fulfilled had come from the Italians.) But the press was getting closer to two of RNS’ best assets, and it was the kind of attention Kali didn’t need. Already spooked by the Operation Fastlink raids, he began a focused campaign of counterintelligence.
First he stripped the group’s NFO files of any potentially damaging information. These files were RNS’ release notes, and they had once acted almost like newspaper mastheads, listing the group’s command structure and the person credited with the source of the leak. Now they didn’t even list the name of the group. Stripped of the weed leaf and the smoke trails, they became cryptic valentines to the recording industry that featured just two lines of information: the date the album was leaked and the date it was due in stores.
Kali pruned the group of deadweight, kicking out marginal contributors and hangers-on. He directed all communication through the encrypted chat channel, and banned insecure methods like AOL Instant Messenger and email. He issued a blanket prohibition on all interactions with members of rival groups, particularly anyone known to have been a member of APC—he suspected the Feds would try to flip someone in that group to get to his. He reiterated the command that no logs were to be kept of any of the group’s chats, under any circumstances, ever.
Most important, he reasserted the prohibition against physical bootlegging. This was a headache the group didn’t need. Once an album was uploaded, the compact disc it was sourced from was to be destroyed immediately, and any local copies of the files deleted. No Scene material of any kind was to ever be encoded as physical media, and for-profit sales were forbidden absolutely. The prohibitions had teeth, and in late 2004 a member named “Omen” was booted from the group after he confessed to bootlegging. This attitude was encouraged by the constituent members of the “other RIAA,” and was spelled out explicitly in one of their internal documents: “If you like the release then please go out and buy it. We are not here to line the pockets of bootleggers.”
Yeah, right. Dell Glover was not trading in these moral ambiguities. He thought Kali was paranoid—a natural response to persecution perhaps, but one compounded by the aftereffects of his medical marijuana prescription. The two talked on the phone three or four times a week now, but they weren’t exactly friends. Their relationship was icy and uncertain, and, from his position of social isolation in the group, it was Glover alone who best knew Kali’s wrath, frustrations, ambitions, and desires. Most of all, Glover knew that while Kali might eject some small-time bootleggers for show, there was no way he was touching “ADEG.” Kali needed him desperately, and, like a jealous lover, feared losing him to some other group. Operator status notwithstanding, Glover had the upper hand.
So he didn’t follow the Scene rules. He used AOL IM when he felt like it. He kept a duffel bag full of leaked CDs in his closet. He didn’t buy albums anymore, and he wasn’t interested in earning brownie points from some Internet nerd cabal. He only cared about topsites. The more he could join, the more leaked movies he could get. The more leaked movies he could get, the more DVDs he could sell.
The movie man was back. In addition to Shelby and Kings Mountain, he branched out into Charlotte. He moved 300 discs in a good week. That was 1,500 dollars cash, no taxes. The price of DVD spindles was dropping rapidly, his supply of movies came for free, and his margins were swelling as fast as his pockets.
Demand was intense, and he was unable to meet it on his own. He began to move discs on consignment through local barbershops. At the beginning of each week, he would drop off 400 discs a piece to three trusted barbers. Those barbers would usually move the discs by the end of the week, and he’d return to collect his share of the profits—$450 a spindle, or roughly $900 a week per shop. His best salesman made more selling bootleg movies than he did cutting hair.