Waxy.org is the sandbox of Earthstation 5, the peer-to-peer software developer that declared war on the entertainment industry and told them to "fuck off," officially announced that they've hired Sex.com's former owner Stephen Michael Cohen as a consultant. The Economist originally broke the story in the U.S., after first being discovered by German technology magazine c't.
Cohen is a good fit for the controversial company, having built a small empire on shady business practices and evading the law. In their background story of the Sex.com domain dispute, Salon.com summed him up as a "a convicted felon with a penchant for offshore investing, porn and Internet empire-building." After being handed a $65 million judgement in the case, he fled to Mexico to avoid paying up. Sounds like a perfect match, no?
I've included the entire message from ES5 president Ras Kabir below, which was found on their community message boards.
Please Take Notice
Posted by Ras, Jan 3 2004, 06:33 PM
Let me make something very clear. We offered Mr. Cohen an executive job with our company. He initially turned us down, however after several telephone calls, he finally gave in and agreed to help us in the capacity of a consultant. We now have Mr. Cohen permission to disclose his indentity.I have read some of the transcripts in the sex.com case presented to us by Mr. Cohen’s attorney. Further, I have read everything that the current owner of Sex.com (Mr. Kremen) has published on his web site.
What I can tell you is Mr. Cohen has a judgment against him for over 80 million dollars including interest and attorney fees. The original judgment against him was for 65 million dollars and that judgment was a CIVIL Judgment, not a CRIMINAL CASE..
What I have not seen in the press to my surprise is Mr. Kremen’s deposition where he stated he had no interest in Sex.com. It seems that these issues are now coming to light in Mr. Kremen’s case with Network Solutions.
My research staff has informed me that when Mr. Cohen had Sex.com it was making in the upper hundred’s of millions of dollars annually and today under the current management (of Mr. Kremen) it is almost worthless with very few hits and almost no advertisers. That says a lot about Mr. Cohen’s skills and that is worth a lot to our company.
According to the court records, Mr. Cohen was NEVER involved in Spamming. All of the money made by SEX.COM was made through memberships and advertisement.
According to our research, between the years 1995-2000, Sex.com had several million adult customers (monthly) paying up to $4 per minute to view Sex.Com website content making it the most lucrative online website in the world. In addition, Sex.com had mass income from banner advertisement, online sex feeds, and other content.
I have read the notices that were filed with SPAMHAUS and others. Each of these notices talk about an ISP known as Sand Man Internacional that listed Mr. Cohen’s as the administrator. However, in one of the depositions on file at the SEX.COM site, it clearly states that Mr. Cohen was not running that ISP at the time.
Needless to say, Mr. Cohen is no saint by any means and yes he does have a criminal record for bankruptcy fraud while representing a client. Most people on this earth I find are staintless. I have a rule; if you born on this planet and you have a birth certificate, you are aren’t a saint either.
It is well known in the press and even Mr. Kremen admits that Mr. Cohen is worth more than 100 million dollars today, and that he has received no funds from his judgment by Mr. Cohen.
We take security of our employees, partners and the ones that help us very seriously. There are many people in Palestine that do not like the fact that we have a Jewish partner and this has caused us some serious problems here in Palestine. Mr. Cohen is not a partner of our company even though we did in the past offer him a partnership of which he turned down.
Of top of that as the press will tell you, Mr. Cohen has several homes located in the South of France and Mexico, a private jet and is the part owner of numerous casinos and several businesses throughout Europe.
Mr. Cohen of course states he has no money and is currently living on welfare in Mexico.
Whatever the case may be, he doesn’t need us; WE NEED HIM because regardless of the Sex.com issue, he is recognized worldwide as the creator of the largest and most lucrative internet site in the world.
Ras Kabir
President of Earthstationv Ltd.
A Palestinian Corporation
9:03 AM
No amount of consulting will keep ES5 from being a festering pile of dogshit.
10:10 AM
Curiouser and curiouser
10:14 AM
I seem to recall reading some allegations that there were signs pointing to ES5 being run by that guy anyway -- with the "Jenin refugee camp" story being a front?
10:12 AM
As I understand it, this "fuck off" attitude of theirs is the only reason anyone gives a shit about them anyhow.
So now I'm going to get anti-RIAA spam from them? nice...
4:13 PM
This sounds like some terrorist plot to infect every computer in the civilized world with there software. Then one day, they will hit a button and bring every computer system down at the same time. Paranoid? Mabey.. But as my pappy always used to say, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
Case in point:
1. There is no legal disclaimer on their site. You have no way of knowing what you are putting on your computer.
2. they are based out of a terroist country
3. They have no revenue model, and claim to be supported by nameless billionairs in the area.
4. I just FEELS creepy.
10:28 PM
this is why i stay with my beautiful little mIRC or DC++
10:10 AM
Go good COHEN! Fuck them!
10:11 AM
I love a guy who knows how to take control. It sounds like Cohen is that guy. I wish I knew him.
10:13 AM
Kremen is a loser and Cohen knows how to kick ass! We will do wonderfull things for Earthstation5. Looks like we will be getting lots of free sex!
10:15 AM
I knew Steve Cohen from Sex.com. He will kick ass in the P2P world. Just watch. No other company has a chance with him in the ballgame. Good move for ES5.
10:18 AM
Cohen is involved in Earthstation 5. Oh Shit! He's at it again. Here comes another 100 million dollars. Where ever this guy goes, he makes money. I also knew him from Sex.com. Our company was paying him over 200,000.00 a month for years. He takes no shit and he does kick ass. I will have to write to him.
12:27 PM
Wow, 5 Pro Cohen comments in the span of 8 minutes. Are all of these from the same IP, Andy?
12:38 PM
Yep, all five comments originated from 209.205.208.65, which is an ISP in Mexico. If I had to guess, I'd say it was Cohen himself or a close friend, since he's rumored to live in Mexico.
8:53 PM
I do not work for Cohen nor is my IP the one you listed. I stand by my statement and I posted it.
Jordan
10:41 PM
wow cohen or associate, you're a real bastard.
11:06 PM
If you say so, buddy. The access logs say that you found my site by searching for "earthstation cohen" on Google, and typed five comments in a row. Ten hours later, you came back to read the comments. 45 minutes later, you posted the last comment from a school computer in Cleveland, Ohio.
6:09 PM
I love this site, even though I only rarely visit.
It is in my favorites. There is always something interesting to read or see here.
Thankz,
Bubba
CA
What the fcku is this cohen thnig?
8:41 PM
I have been using ES5 for about a year now. Its a great p2p program. The guys there have succeeded in creating a masterpiece. My download speeds are averaging 320k. Most people dont care who Steve Cohen is or anybody else. Everybody loves their programmer Sharepro and Filehoover. Those are the "brains" behind ES5. Ras and Steve just financially back it.
8:46 PM
Hi guys. Just read about Steve Cohens association with ES5.Com. Pretty exciting. Check out http://forums.es5.com cuz ES5 has got the biggest p2p forum and according to CNET they report in their press that ES5 is currently the largest p2p network in the world. All that from Palestine? I'm not sending any more checks to the Red Cross anymore. LOL. Well since Arafats still bunked up on house arrest in Ramallah, I guess anything goes over there. Also check out http://adult.es5.com
3:24 PM
I began using es5 recently and really like it. why? Probably because they offer free online sex movies and the naked news for free. Thanks Steve!
6:34 PM
I don't know about all this sex.com scandal (?), but when I was working at a file listing Web site, I received some very irate e-mails from the ES5 developers about their listings. They were angry and unreasonable about the pages before they were finally resolved. They also sent a sample screenshot of the program with copyrighted films being traded through its connection. ...Subtle.
Palestinians or not, they have a serious attitude problem.
6:56 AM
Earthstation5 is supposedly a trojan horse and very dangerous to your computer unless you take precautionary measures. The discoverer speculates that the RIAA (or more likely, the labels themselves) started this up secretely to attack online users who share content. Cynical, yes, but I wouldn't put it past them: Read Here: http://clearstatic.org:2396/node/view/287.
Too bad, I thought earthstation5 would have rocked. Hopefully someone even smarter will start another similar p2p scheme (but share the source code) so everyone can verify its security. Also, in exchange for 100% privacy, i wouldn't mind a couple of banner ads (but no spy/adware). The p2p community is waiting.
3:30 AM
The cracker who posted about the "trojan" was known to have personal issues with ES5, so even though the bug was real, his conclusions were ridiculous fear mongering.
The so called "trojan" was a part of remote upgrade code, which was immediatly removed after the vulnerability was found. This stuff is as old as it gets...
7:04 PM
Let's face the facts: Cohen might be brilliant not likely. How come he has a no bail allowed arrest warrant facing him – one that will not allow him out of jail until a give 5 account firms investigates any wire transfer offshore he ever made. ? How come he lost his $4M house in San Francisco? How come Kremen (http://www.sex.com) or http://press.sex.com is quoted weekly in the NYT, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, etc.. How come Kremen is the only person to beat VeriSign ever (in the appellate courts), which a trial for damages only? That is because anyone who handles others people property do so at risk.
11:33 AM
Steve Cohen Rocks!!!!
6:19 AM
ES5 is a bunch of crap anyway. In the beginning they operated from Level3 amsterdam the netherlands. Stephen Cohen himself visited the place and placed the hardware. He also ripped the hardware out in the middle of the night when level3 was about to pull the plug since they never received any payments. He took of with the hardware to where-ever and probably pulled the same stunt on another colocation company or whatever.
The ES5 client did work though, I do not know how it currently works but I do know that the bulk of the initial files were downloaded from a guy called daniel who is supposedly Cohen's son. He is also the moderator and chief on the es5 forums. He used his own name in the beginning but changed it after a while. The machine "daniel" ran his client on was located at level3 and was filled by using other p2p programs like kazaa to search for popular stuff and then resharing it with ES5.
All in all I can't blame them for trying to promoto their product anyway they can, but I can't really understand all the bull around Cohen. I've allways thought ras kabir and cohen are one and the same person.
6:43 PM
well? are you going to respond SharePro?
One day soon, I will tell the entire story. The truth is, was, and always will be that ES5 was only out there to provide an alternative solution to anonymous p2p. There was never any bad intentions to delete files or mishaps. Our mission was to provide an anonymous p2p network and application and teach people.
What type of security and anonymity could the owners, makers, and even members of ES5 boast about if they cant even protect their own identities.
Steve Cohen is currently sitting in some Mexican jail for something related to his sex.com days. Personally, I never cared for Mr. Cohen (haha...for those of you who remember, he tried to hijack ER from us!)
As far as I remember, Steve only offered a bunch of old ideas and started a bunch of fights with ZP. At the time, there we're a couple of Steve's and I hated all of them.
Both Steve's dared (by offering 50,000 rewards, etc) to idiots like Random Nut to see if they could break into ES5, and created a lot of problems for the people like myself and Filehoover who we're working our asses off to build the community and promote from beta a nice p2p program. ES5 wasnt released perfect. It had bugs. But we had alot of experience, adrenalin, and enthusiasm to continue the mission. Bad hype got in the way.
Every word that came out of my mouth was manipulated. I once said that I had a couple of BT sites (at the very beginning of Bit Torrent) and was using them for bandwith experiments. That was understood by a bunch of idiots to mean that I was dos attacking BT sites. So again, I found myself wasting time measuring each and every word (in my long ass educational essays that I would write...) before actually posting them.
Most people enjoyed my posts because while some came as a result of the hype and negative talk, the majority stayed because they found that ultimately, our entire community was made up of down to earth people.
We all found ourselves fighting and digging shit up on ZP instead of focusing on the real important things. Funny, but ZP realized that starting shit with us proved very stupid because their site is still owned by the same makers of DRM (digital rights management) and people who make real cash off of spying on peoples network traffic.
But nevertheless, time has proven that none of the people in ES5 had bad intentions. Our "p2p integrity" has been proven by the mere fact that we did many things that other p2p networks and management only dream about. All of the specualtive negative ideas about ES5 proved to be bullshit. When Random Nut created an exploit to erase peoples files, it was actually me who threatened his life (Yeah, I know, I went a little bit too far...). So how the hell people could publicly claim that ES5 was made to erase people's files is beyond me. Truth is, in the backround via Forums PM's, the owners of Slyck, ZP, P2PNET, etc., all knew that to be bullshit and wrote me letters telling me that they knew it was bullshit but promised "revenge". My attitude at the time was simply to tell them to fuck off.
The fact that nobody really knows how the routing was done speaks for itself.
According to the article, ES5 died in Sept 2005, "shortly before Steve's arrest". Hmm... How many people believe that ES5 died less than a year ago? That article at Wiki was written on August 6th 2006, which is several years after ES5's departure. Amazing how people are still digging. But the dates, times, and framework of the article are totally disportional to reality ( God knows that I havent been with ES5 in over 2 years), so I'm not even going to waste time editing the article and providing the real set of events.
For the matter of conversation, there is no physical proof of anything written in that article. But make no mistake, there is also nothing to disprove the article. Facts are generally based on 3rd party evidence. I didnt see any evidence in that article to support any of the theories presented.
Unlike the Washington Post, CNN, etc., who have editors to ensure that every word is REAL and can be PROVEN, you all must know by now that WIKI is nothing more than a community website allowing anybody to edit any definition without any real scrutiny. My theory is that on August 6, 2006, years after ES5's absence in cyberspace, somebody has still got a "hard on" for information. Anything recognized as ANONYMOUS is mistakenly understood as a SCAM.
The fact is, I may be English, American, French, or Italian. Nobody will ever be able to connect myself or the other people who participated with that project because as I've said a million times, true p2p is not about headtrips regarding racial or ethnic backround, sexual orientation, politics or religion. God forbid we limit ES5 to a ISP in Europe or a person named Steve. The reality is that ES5 was a network and community of many people and none of the people who participated can be found today. I am just one of many.
Nobody cares who provides them the music, movies, games, etc. Was ES5 just one big anonymous proxy as reported? The truth is, today, nobody knows (...or cares). Was it in Palestine, Europe, America, or the Far East? Hmm...Good question, but no answer...
Our original objective was eventually realized. We proved that one can be online and remain anonymous. Steve Cohen willingly released his own identity. The others in the group and community continue to remain anonymous.
When Random Nut tried to erase people's files, I did a simple WHOIS for Kazaalite.com and then cross checked the information with a couple of articles written on Cnet.com about a university kid from Scotland who built Kazaa Lite. I printed the information and everybody went apeshit. Amazing how little shits like Random talked so much shit about us being a conspiracy when in fact his own true colors were revealed by his own malicious actions.
At the time that we released ES5, the entire internet had thought that anonymity was increasingly difficult if not impossible. We proved otherwise. More importantly, we tought others. So our objective was reached.
Yes, Filehoover and I did plant false information in different places to send the RIAA, MPAA, newspaper journalists, etc., off in the wrong directions. (I imagine this gives a bunch of groupies now the right to run off and scream "SharePro lied to us...!)
The reality is that I never lied to anybody about things that they needed to know (i.e. Security, P2P, etc). Who I am is simply none of anybody's business just like your home addresses, phone numbers, etc., are none of my business.
P2P is not personal and should never be limited to a guy named SharePro, Filehoover, ES5, etc. Many of you remember when P2P first started. The thought of being able to trade files and meet people without the headtrips of their religious or political backround, geographical location, etc., was a thrill for first time p2pr's. The ability to join for free and get files for free hooked most of us onto the drug called p2p.
Hackers like Random Nut no longer had a job. No longer did people need to HACK to get unauthorized files. In the BBS days, people would hack into systems to get software (not everybody had the money to pay for games, software, etc).
I always figured that anybody who wants to know who I am only wants to know to cause me damage. Why else would anybody care who I am?
We spent a great deal of time not only protecting our identities, but also making sure that your identities we're safe.
The fact that the Washington Post and many other first rate magazines sent journalists around the world into dangerous places to try and get information (and turned up with nothing...) shows you all that the RIAA, MPAA, Investigative Journalists, etc., will go very far and hire the best minds to get information about us. Haha...They all wasted their money. So allow me to be very bold (several years after the fact...) and say that we are very good at what we do because we succeeded in fooling the entire world.
I personally know alot more than I like to talk about regarding the techniques. I can teach network anonymity, but most security deficiencies on networks are not because of computer mistakes, rather because of human error. In short, doing what everybody thinks your going to do and/or being stupid and sharing secret information with the public. Good security depends on private information remaining private. I never liked some of the people at ES5, but I wont sell anybody out. Some of the people at ES5 hated me, but they never sold me out.
The moral is that a good community (public or private) needs to rely on eachother. Assholes like XTR, Bsmuv, Punk, Random Nut and others who erased p2pr's content simply because they didnt like me or our community are bogus freaks who should never have had the privledge of entering into our community.
At any rate, there will come a time that I will talk. I may even release the code of ES5 as open source.
But to answer your question, if I edit Wiki and show evidence via 3rd party non-ES5-affiliated websites that actually track and monitor networking traffic that the article in Wiki contains details that are not true, what do you think would happen?
Answer - The person who wrote the article would continue searching. Personally, I like the idea that makes it look like Steve Cohen was ES5. Steve was an asshole from the get go, so I truly do hope that he's enjoying his once-a-week meal in a Mexican jail. But I wont provide details to help and/or hurt Steve or anybody else regarding ES5.
Even after Punk, XTR, Bsmuv and others fucked with ES5 Forums, I didnt release their IP addresses or any other information I had about them. The came to ES5 as NOBODYS and I helped them create an online persona, gave them mod powers, and instead of fucking with me, they fucked with the community.
If they had my name, they would have gone straight to the RIAA. I know who Punk, Bsmuv, XTR and others are. I know their names, addresses, etc. Again, there was a time that those people we're in good grace with me so they shared the information with me. I even know the company that Bsmuv and his old DJ partner worked for.
Unlike them, I'm not a drama queen nor do I become vendictive. They didnt get what they wanted so they erased p2pr's content. What they never understood in grammer school is that THERE IS NO FUCKING DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A "REASON" AND AN EXCUSE. The reality is that they we're angry with me, and instead of dealing with that anger directly with me, they decided to erase other community members thoughts, ideas, pictures, and informative posts and yet today NOBODY CARES WHY THEY DID THAT. ER became alot larger than ES5 forums ever were with zero hype.
Bsmuv Radio is dead. Crapfiles forum is a black hole with zero substance. XTR committed suicide.
So it doesnt matter how much shit people have talked about me, at least nobody can say that I erased p2pr's content and nobody can say that I sold out. All that bullshit about ES5 being some malicious p2p program to erase peoples files was bullshit and everybody always knew that.
It's amazing how many people are full of conspiracy thoughts regarding ES5 yet the same people, and others, eventually show their true colors. As I have always said in the past, ALWAYS ASK YOURSELF WHAT THE AUTHOR OF THIS (OR THAT...) ARTICLE HAS CONTRIBUTED TO P2P.
All you know is that somebody on August 6th edited an article on Wiki regarding ES5. The original article on Wiki has been edited so many times, and most times the different writers contradict eachother while competing to write negative shit about the only fucking p2p network and community who truly provided an anonymous peer 2 peer working enviorment.
Anyway, if the RIAA, MPAA, or author of the various WIKI articles all jumped in the air holding their breathe waiting for me to talk.... to provide more accurate details on ES5...Allow me to say
I HOPE THEY ALL CHOKE!
I hope that answers your questions!
Cheers,
SharePro
3:29 AM
The IP that that "PRO Cohen" poster used is an ISP that was called Pacnet. Back a long time ago, Cohen RAN Pacnet and used it for all of his personal internet connectivity. I know this personally because I am very educated on Cohen and his networks. More info? http://www.sexdotcom.info