# JEFF SMART'S ILLEGAL

An article rewritten from the underground fanzine "In Medias Res" by King Fisher. Original text by Zike (Per) from Z&Z productions.

We all know that you got busted, but what happened?

May 18th 1989, 7 a.m. (morning). Bell rang. (Oh... I know him aswell - Ed), three policemen came (they came? Hmmm... -Ed (Ed is getting drunk -ed)) and looked through my room, searched through everything, took all my computers, disks and magazines away.

November 6th, 1989, high noon. Had to get to court. Said I never swapped pirate software. Judge said he didn't believe a word.

May 22nd 1990, five minutes to twelve. Second time at court. Judge said five witnesses had testified I never swapped software, one said I did. Case was dropped because I was "presumed innocent".

October 9th 1990, around five. Never equipment back, but I did. Only my 1541 was not working anymore, until today...

Illegal #37 was released years ago, when did you decide to push out #38 and why?

NORMAN (CONAN, ex-lead-cracker of ELITE fame) and me had telephone chats almost every day and we went on talking about going to VENLO (meeting) again to check if everything was still allright... I had the idea of accompany our trip to VENLO with the final release of ILLEGAL #38. NORMAN thought that was a cool idea, amd without having a computer ready of being into business or whatever we managed to push it out in time. Only thing that worried us later, was that VENLO was a great heap of shit, so it was not really worth the effort. Having looked at ILLEGAL #38 again, I thought it was a great issue for all the old guys who joined the years 1986 to 1989 at the top, and it were the old guys who liked it most. Thinking about another issue released, I probably shake my head, because there's really not much time left for doing it, BUT if there is anyone who would take over the spreading and printing I would work on it, too. The thing I had most joy was writing the "STORY OF SYSTEM FOUR", where I could slag anyone off without letting anyone know (until now -Ed). Sound wicked, I know, and so it was.

You knew that I was the first to push out a pirate magazine? The first ILLEGAL appeared in January '86 and covered two (admittedly very bad) pages! Anyway, the biggest problem every month was to release it in time for meetings and parties (Yeah... We know the feeling... Phew... -Ed) Greatest circulation was when it has been released at the PCS-SHOW '88 in London. I guess there were more than 1000 copies going around... Best thing happened was having MITCH of Eagle Soft Inc interviewed for Illegal and seeing groups getting angry on demo or cracking group's chart. Liked the way it was spread though it's thousands times easier if you arrange a mag on disk, right?

Watch out for I.M.R. issue #2, featuring JEFF SMARTS OWN COLUMN!

(Unfortunately "In Medias Res #2" was never released, as far as I know.)