The Los Angeles City Attorney's office drops the case against Sysop Tom Tcimpidis for lack of evidence and in the "interests of justice". Tom Tcimpidis had previous had his system seized for the posting of a pactel card code without the sysop's knowledge.7AM, 02/07/85: Pursuant to a telephone discussion w/ Reginald Dunn, head of the Criminal Division of the LA City Attorney's Office, I was informed that the prosecution believes it has insufficient evidence to continue the prosecution of Tom Tcimpidis, Sysop of MOG-UR. This determination was made after I requested a review of the case on 1/11/85 after the departure of city attorney IRA Reiner to become DA and while the City Attorney's office is being run by the Civil Service staff pending election of a new City Attorney. Mr. Dunn has given me his word that the people will seek dismissal of the charges against Tom under California Penal Code Section 1385, I.E., Dismissal In The Interests Of Justice. Under California law, such a dismissal is "w/ prejudice" and the people cannot refile the case subsequently. To put it succinctly, a dismissal will terminate the presecution permanently. As the members know, the City Attorney's office has previously reneged on representations made to me regarding dismissal of the charges....I wish to assure everyone that I have known Mr. Dunn for 10 years, and I trust his word completely. If he says the case will be dismissed, I am statisfied that such an action will occur. We win. Win....win....win....win....My thanks to everyone who contributed to supporting Tom and I in the defense of this matter. I consider this to be a major victory for the rights of free speech over the "Big Brother" machinations of the phone company. I would be grateful if you would download this message and place it on other systems throughout the country.....This is a very big victory, and the BBS and Modem Communities should know about it. Again, thanks for the support. Best wishes to all, Chuck Lindner Attorney for sysop Tom Tcimpidis 8PM, 02/07/85: The case of People V. Tcimpidis, aka use of a modem, go to jail, was dismissed in the "Interests Of Justice" this morning, 02/07/85. As noted earlier, this dismissal is w/ prejudice, and Tom is now free of the pactel scourge. Another small step for something resmbling justice.
Source NIA #68March 9, 1985Police in Cherry Hill, NJ, seize a BBS called "Hackers' Heaven" and question a group of local BBS users, soon referred to by the media as the "Cherry Hill Gang".About 35,000ドル worth of computer equipment has been confiscated from two homes in Cherry Hill and one in Voorhees Township as part of an investigation into an alleged ring of youthful computer hackers, Camden County Prosecutor Samuel Asbell said yesterday. Investigators with search warrants seized computers, modems, printers, disk drives, software and other equipment, which four residents of the houses allegedly had used to gain access to Dial America, a two-year old long distance telephone service based in Camden, Asbell said. Although no arrests were made during the Saturday sweep, Asbell said his office planned to charge about 20 South Jersey youths with using personal computers to make long-distance calls through Dial America. Most of the members of the alleged ring live in Camden County, all are males, and the oldest is 20, he said.
March 18, 1985Thom Henderson announces in FidoNews that the FidoNet (now in hundreds of nodes) requires some sort of formal organization to handle administration, software distribution, and oversight. This will manifest itself across the next years as the International Fidonet Association (IFNA).
Source FidoNews Volume 2 Issue 7April 1, 1985Thom Henderson takes the reins as editor of FidoNews, replacing Tom Jennings (who had requested a replacement starting with the first issue of FidoNews and who had missed a number of weeks producing the issues).
Source FidoNews Volume 2 Issue 8April 22, 1985Tom Jennings announces in FidoNews that FidoNet, now too large to be run from a centralized location, will be broken up into smaller nets to allow better communication and administration.
Source Fidonews Volume 2 Issue 10June 12, 1985FidoNet switches over from its previous node numbering system to "Regional Nets", where areas of the country (and later the world) are assigned as "regions", controlled by a "region coordinator" and controlling the nodes beneath it. This new numbering/naming system is used by Fidonet to the present day.This Is It! This is the week we've all been waiting for! On Wednesday, 12 June 1985, we switch over to regional nets. Stay on net one until Wednesday, then set your net and node numbers to the new system before the Thursday morning national mail hour. Also, pick up a copy of the new node list (136), and install it on your system Wednesday. I'd also advise everybody to set their alternate net and node numbers to their old node in net one, just in case someone sends you mail at your old address. Keep it like that for a week, maybe two, then the heck with it. Anybody who hasn't converted by then, too bad. It's taken awhile to get here, and I know it's going to cause some confusion, but I really believe it'll be worth it in the long run (say, a month or two). - Thom Henderson
Source http://195.226.109.55/jhassler/wif/doks/fnews/fido217.txtJuly 1, 1985Fidonet BBS Sysop Bob Hartman announces that he has recieved permission from his company to hook his FidoNet BBS to their USENET Newsfeed, allowing the Fidonet Network to read and post on Usenet. (The process is better refined across the coming months.) His connection is called the "UN*X Gateway".FIDONEWS -- 01 Jul 85 00:00:25 Page 5 A few FIDONEWS issues back, someone mentioned the idea of hooking the Fido network into the USENET network. The author correctly stated that the only problem with that was getting a USENET host to cooperate. Well, I have been able to take care of that problem by getting my company (Automatix, Inc. in Billerica, MA) to agree to letting us access the USENET articles of interest. Actually, since I am the UUCP/USENET/remote mail/telecommunications guru at Automatix, I gave myself this permission. It took me about 4 hours, and a lot of testing, but I currently have our VAX 11/780 running 4.2BSD UNIX sending selected USENET newsgroups to my IBM PC running Fido. I use KERMIT to do the actual file transferring. Currently, it just sends one very large file with the newest news from all of the groups batched into it. I am still working on a program to unbatch them at the PC end, and place them in separate news directories (as is done on the VAX). When that is complete I will have to add support for replying to the news articles (this will undoubtedly be the hardest part). Anyone interested in receiving any of the USENET news via FidoNet mail, please let me know what newsgroups you are interested in. Currently I only send net.micro.pc and net.lang.c, but that can be expanded. If you are not sure of what USENET is, but you might be interested in finding out, send me a FidoNet message, and I can send you a list of all of the available newsgroups, and a short description of what USENET is. Bob Hartman SYSOP: Fido # 10101 in Net # 101 (101/10101)
Source http://195.226.109.55/jhassler/wif/doks/fnews/fido220.txtJuly 4, 1985Tim Stryker launches Galacticomm and its main product, the MajorBBS Software Package.
Source http://www.hal-pc.org/journal/12caught.htmlJuly 12, 1985The Private Sector BBS, official BBS of 2600 Magazine, is seized by law enforcement officials for "complicity in computer theft".On July 12, 1985, law enforcement officials seized the Private Sector BBS, the official computer bulletin board of 2600 magazine, for "complicity in computer theft," under the newly passed, and yet untested, New Jersey Statute 2C:20-25. Police had uncovered in April a credit carding ring operated around a Middlesex County electronic bulletin board, and from there investigated other North Jersey bulletin boards. Not understanding subject matter of the Private Sector BBS, police assumed that the sysop was involved in illegal activities. Six other computers were also seized in this investigation, including those of Store Manager [perhaps they mean Swap Shop Manager? - Shark] who ran a BBS of his own, Beowolf, Red Barchetta, the Vampire, NJ Hack Shack, sysop of the NJ Hack Shack BBS, and that of the sysop of the Treasure Chest BBS.
July 18, 1985The SysOp of the Private Sector BBS is formally charged with "Computer Conspiracy" by the Middlesex Country Prosecutor.
July 31, 1985The SysOp of the Private Sector BBS is charged with "wiring of his computer as a Blue Box."
Source 2600 Magazine, August 1985 IssueAugust 10, 1985Paul H. Levy releases "The Ultimate in WarGames Dialer Programs", Ultra-Dial version 5.1.Just When You Thought You'd Never Find A Better Dialer... /**\ <******> <********> -------Com-WorxS O F T W A R E <********> --------Systems <******> \**/ |--------------------------------------------| | The Ultimate In WarGames Dialer Programs | | ======================== ULTRA-DIAL v5.1 | | | | Revised As Of 8/10/85 | | Written And Compiled By: Paul H. Levy | | (c)1985 Paul Levy | |--------------------------------------------| Welcome To The World Of WarGames Dialers! If you are a past user of the ULTRA-DIAL series or a new one, you will find ULTRA-DIAL version 5.1 to be an utterly different and amazing program.
September 23, 1985The Zeta BBS in Australia joins Fidonet. Running on a TRS-80, it is the first non-IBM node to join Fidonet.
Source http://www.nick-andrew.net/projects/trs80/zeta-bbs/October, 1985Three hackers from Norway (known today as Doctor No, Insane TTM and Sector9) create a Commodore 64 Demo group called RAZOR 2992, which they quickly rename to RAZOR 1911, which translates to 777ドル in Hexadecimal. This group later becomes one of the more infamous cracking/piracy groups and BBS networks.On a rainy evening back in October 1985 three young Norwegian guys decided to form a computer group. We were not exactly sure about what we needed the group for but we were really inspired by other big groups at the time, such as Flash Cracking Group 1941, Section 8, Electronic Cracking Association 1998, ABC 1999, Jedi 2001, 1103, Djenghis Khan, Hellmates, SCC, Dynamic Duo etc. These three founder members are today known as Doctor No, Insane TTM and Sector9.
November 1, 1985QuantumLink (Q-Link), an online service for using games and programs on Commodore 64 and 128 computers, begins operation. QuantumLink eventually renames itself to America Online in 1994.