This is not a group, but a trend by some crackers in the mid-1980s on the PC to dump commercial games and hack their copyright screens as public domain software. It is unsure why this was done, other than to share on commercial networks such as CompuServe and legitimate BBSes?

Ton Neff in his Oct 1985 The Dirty Dozen text documents the trend on IBM PC BBSes.

These are illegally copied programs being distributed as "public domain" on various IBM PC bulletin boards across the country. Most of them are commercial pirate jobs, although a few of them are legitimate freeware or user supported programs that have been hacked up by people with warped minds. The category of each one is listed.

Games mentioned include:

• Bushido
• Kong
• Novatron
• Rogue
• Stargate
• Zaxxon

Eric Newhouse revision of the Uploaded Program Alert List from September 1986 greatly expands the number of discovered games using the fake "public domain" notices.

In the case of games, there's a tendency for the pirate to patch a clumsy "PUBLIC DOMAIN" notice over top of the original copyright. ZAXXON.COM is a prime example.