OHIO BBS RAIDED BY FBI AGENTS

  (Feb. 2)
  The FBI has raided a Boardman, Ohio, computer bulletin board system called 
"Rusty & Edie's," accusing the operators of illegally distributing copyrighted 
software.
  The Software Publishers Association, which worked with the FBI in investigating 
the case, said in a statement from Washington the agent seized computers, hard 
disk drives and telecommunications equipment, as well as financial and 
subscriber records during the raid last Saturday.
  The SPA says the investigation started several months ago, "following the 
receipt of complaints from a number of SPA members that their software was 
being illegally distributed on the Rusty & Edie's BBS." The trade group says that 
as part of the investigation, it downloaded copyrighted business and 
entertainment programs from the BBS.
  The system, established in 1987, was described one of the largest private 
BBSes in the country, with 124 nodes available to callers and more than 14,000 
subscribers.
  "To date, the board has logged in excess of 3.4 million phone calls, with new 
calls coming in at the rate of over 4,000 per day," the SPA stated added. It 
included "over 19 gigabytes of storage housing over 100,000 files available to 
subscribers for downloading."
  The SPA said the BBS had subscribers in the United States and several foreign 
countries, including Canada, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Finland, the 
Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
  For a fee of $89 a year, "subscribers ... were given access to the board's 
contents, including many popular copyrighted business and entertainment 
packages," the SPA statement says.