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Operation FastLink Yields Three Arrests
Doomrat writes "As promised (see previous story), Operation FastLink has led to the arrests of 3 key members of the Fairlight group. NHTCU officers and local police executed search warrants and arrested three men at separate locations in Sheffield, Manchester and Belfast. Over 200 computers have been seized, along with 100 CD copiers. Raids were carried out in the UK, the U.S., Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Singapore and Sweden."
They will never stop piracy 3 people at a time.
...that Osama bin Laden isn't part of that group. But then you'd think he was, the way the cops talk about them.
As long as it costs $40 for a game or $100 for software there will always be people pirating.
...they put all that effort into hunting criminals that actually hurt people (as opposed to wallets).
Does everything include nothing?
Consider the costs of pulling an international operation like this compared to the amount of funds gaming companies will be able to recover if and only if the warez market really slows down. Do you still think it was a good and/or a necessary effort? I don't. I think the operation is a total failure if only 3 people get arrested, and a couple of comps and burners get seized.
I see some tax dollars getting wasted on ridiculous crusades.
Since everyone in this country is becoming a criminal, my advice to all of you is don't drop the soap.
What we need is a "War on Piracy!" The more endless wars to distract us from reality, the better, I always say.
Since at least one of your statistics is in disagreement with information available at the Department of Justice website, I'm curious to know where these numbers come from.
Average time in prison for rape: 3 years
Average time for copying games without selling: 4 years Does anyone else see something wrong here?
If it's true, yes. Where did you get the statistic?
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Rape victims don't donate to political campaigns.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
Was it really 100 cd copiers or was it just 2 52x cdr drives?
Remember the funny games they play in these kind of reports like the RIAA counting every 40x copier as 4 copiers or something ridiculous like that...
Or did out of all 120(!) searches find 1 cd burner at each location! Oh wow what pc doesnt have a cd burner standard...
FLT doesn't distribute anything on CD it just goes up on the top sites and then trickles down to the average "d00d" from there. It's a "non-profit" operation.
Also the crap at the bottom about increasing Englands GDP and created 40,000 jobs! Get real! It's not creating any wealth in fact its reducing wealth because now people have to waste money on this software that would have been spent on something else. To improve the GDP production has to go up. In a way all this did was decrease over all production because now there will be less copies of this software. (true now the money will get funneled into the corporations that own the IP to these products but it's just swapping the money around not creating any new value)
Neither Freenet nor MUTE works very well on large (600MB++) files.
Someone mentioned that rape carries less of a jail term than piracy does. It's very simple to understand why. Rape has nothing to do with corporate interests, thus Congress cares less about a woman being violated in the worst way possible, and more about protecting the interests of their campaign contributors.
I would -never- had bought Neverwinter Nights and its two expansions had it not been for downloading it first.
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Not only was the parent [grandparent in my case] redundant but it's not a good point.
It takes time and effort to make a decent program/game/util/etc. 40$ for a multimedia rich game [like UT2k4] is certainly not asking too much.
And quite frankly, if you can't afford a game or don't agree with the price don't buy it. Where the "it costs money so it's ok to steal" logic comes from I'll never fully understand...
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I mostly agree but a minor nit: cracking software is not wrong. I should be free to defeat any copy protection methods so long as I am not distributing software to others. CD checks are really annoying.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"The NHTCU quotes an IDC study that estimates that a 10 per cent reduction in UK piracy would contribute $17.5bn for the UK's GDP, indirectly create 40,000 jobs and generate $4.1bn in tax revenue." I love insanely inflated figures like that. Imagine what a 10% reduction in piracy could do for the US economy! We could probably save social security or institute a national health program by eliminating piracy. ;)
he has a decent point.
No he doesn't, you just need some basic economics and legal knowledge (common sense wouldn't hurt too, but let's not ask too much).
the fact things are overpriced will lead to pirating, because the pirates will either be able to offer it for free, or for a lower cost.
There is no correlation between pricing and piracy, and I challenge you to find any evidence to the contrary. And thanks for your insight that thieves can offer things they steal for cheaper than a companies that invests a large amount of money into a game--brilliant!
pirates are competition for the companies they pirate from, illegal, yes, but competition nonetheless.
Wow, another amazing insight. Being stolen from is not competition, that's a complete perversion of economics.
and companies also would like something like this done to legal competitors as well, kinda sad. but still, the parent has a good point.
Is this anything other than typical anti-corporate babbling?
Still though, copying and cracking software is wrong.
Scenario 1 -- I have a few kids that run loose in my house. (I'm not some SOB who puts them on those leashes, wtf is that all about.) They seem to manage to get into my computer room sometimes and play frisbee with my CD's. If I didn't have a *legal thanks to fair use* copy of my software that I *paid for* I would be SOL.
Moral: Copying software is *NOT* always wrong.
Scenario 2 -- I have a killer cool gaming rig that I then go out and buy all sorts of games. I bring home a copy of latest game X and lo and behold the copy protection that the feckless losers at the publishing co installed (Note, I said publishers not developers. Most times the developers realize that protection is a waste of time and it's the damn suits who insist on the protection.) does not seem to work right with my CD-ROM drive. Now I can't play the game that I just *paid for* and when I go to try and do anything about it all the morons at BestBuy can do is sit there with their thumbs in their asses and if I'm lucky give me store credit so I can go maybe use it on some overpriced RIAA crap that will proably install deathware on my PC when I go to play it there anyway. But luckily instead of having to deal with all that I can download a crack and play the game I paid for!
Moral: Cracking software is *NOT* always wrong.
Rant mode off.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
You arent preventing a thing. Keep giving into the delusion that your preventing piracy, keep sending people to jail for 5 years for selling there used cds on ebay and sharing music while the rapist goes free, while Bin Ladin's followers fly another plane into a building. We all know the corporate lies we have been fed and they they feed us well. Trade a life for a corporate dollar without remorse, we all know the amounts of money they dontate to the government to fund our meaningless heroes the FBI so they can hunt down 12 yr old girls who share Britney Spears albums, maby the occational cracker who is replaced in seconds as your brilliant FBI team takes them down. (thx for ManHunt Razor911) This is a game of cat and mouse and we all know the cat will never catch all the mice, and we will ALWAYS get our cheese. Your Freedom is a Lie. Corporate whores.
Umm, I don't think you understand the level these guys are on. These aren't some end user "warez doodz".
There is a post talking about how ONE of fairlights distro sites was a 7TB site with a 1 Gig connection!
These guys aren't fucking around with some little p2p bullshit man!
I'm gonna bite the troll...
I got my career started using pirate software. Let me immidiately say that in no way to I think what I was doing was good, right, or moral, but it was necessary.
I needed to become certified for the purposes of expanding my business, consulting. This was a number of years ago. So I used pirated Microsoft products to train on and become familiar with.
As soon as my initial lack-of-investment came back to make me money, I promptly purchased legitimate licenses for all the software I was using. It's important for my business to operate legitimately, and it's the morally and legally right thing to do, so I did it.
Again, I don't condone what I did, but I made it right, and I wouldn't be where I am now without it. There's just no way a small business with almost no initial capital could purchase some of this software without going into debt--which wasn't an option at the time.
What moron modded this bullshit insightful?
Kiddie porn rings are busted everyday, but it's not Slashdot worthy because it doesn't in some way involve software that costs money.
Nazi groups have a right to say what they want, and you have a right to not read it.
This shit is about as insightful as suddenly realizing that the sky is blue on your 30th birthday.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
In certain industries (including the one I'm currently working in) the fact that many of the people working in it learned on illegally obtained software is both 1) tacitly understood and 2) never spoken of.
We can speak of law, IP, and morality all we wish, but at the end of the day there are many people with drive and talent who, for whatever reason, opted to do something illegal to get what they felt they needed.
I really don't see that changing.
good or bad, it's nowhere near other crimes. Murder, Rape, let's not forget international terrorism. From the article it seems that a HUGE amount of manpower and time went into this "raid" and that it was wholly unsuccessful.. (Aren't CD burners free after rebate these days?) With the resources devoted here, as it's been said before, maybe we could have caught a murderer who got away, a rapist off the streets. Something that's more helpful than a couple of crackers.
Yes, it does make a difference.
Since you are not part of the so called scene I
will explain it to you. These people do it for
the adrealine rush of
1. cracking great protection
Ha, this company payed $5,000 for newest
protection (usb dongles, securom, safedisk,
cdzilla) and it was a 5 minute to crack
2. library archivers
Ha, I have 5000 cds of games archived since
begging of the scene in the very early 1980s
note: MP3 pirates trade more new songs a day
than there is minutes to listen
them all. ( http://mp3hq.net/ )
3. racing thrill
Ha, . When did you download Doom5? I
had it 5 hours ago ( so called 0seconds warez )
Now, you will say that majority does this to
get things for free, majority? maybe, but they
are not part of the scene, they dont know the
scene, they dont feel it.
Majority of downloaders sit on p2p, be it
bittorrent or ed2k network or dc++.
You see, the people in the scene make no profit,
generally they rarely even use the things they
pirate (they dont have time to play games, or
watch movies, as the next thing is coming out
within next hour as listed by http://nforce.nl/ )
p2p users make no profit, but they avoid costs
to play newest game, they avoid paying but get
the benefits.
and then you have got the BAD BAD type of a
whore to sells warez, the type that actually
makes a profit.
Lets do now a karma evaluation:
1. scene member
does not sell -> makes no profit
does not use -> no loss of sale
2. p2p / leecher
does not sell -> makes no profit
but does use -> potential loss of sale
3. warez seller
sells, makes profit, by DIRECTLY taking money
away from the developer
And you have a face to say that it is not better
neither morally nor legally if one does not use
and does not make a profit? I fail to see your
logic.
Are these three responsible for all the *(&^%*& crap in my inbox that's been advertising apparently legal versions of Photoshop, MS-Office, Windows and so on?
If so, I don't feel quite so sorry for them.
Ripping off poor corporations is one thing. Insulting me like this is quite another.
Cogito, ergo sig.
About time! Im tired of being allowed to download music legally.
On another note, when you attack make sure you hit the CRTC headquarters. To canadians that would be like the berlin wall coming down. OK, over the top i know but PLEASE bomb that building first.
Because of the US$ difference and what is reasonable in most places in the world. That US$10 shareware program will buy the author 3 big macs but it will cost the buyer a weeks food in some parts of the world. That results in cracks and once the cracks are out, they flow all over the world.
Being stolen from is not competition, that's a complete perversion of economics.
It's not a perversion of economics, how can economics be perveted? That's like saying the black market is a perversion of economics. Its also like saying a humming bird is a perversion of physics.
If the cost of stealing something is less than the cost of buying then it is economical to steal it. The cost of stealing is of course chance of being caught and penalty of being caught. Also of course amount of effort. If it takes 8 hours to pull off the theft of something worth $50 then you might as well just work for a day and buy it.
However, when things are so expensive you can't possibly buy it economics says your only option is to steal it. It's like drugs. Sure they are illegal but if you can make enough money doing it someone will do it.
Also you slyly equate conomics with "competition". But isn't monopoly capitalism a natural end point of free market economics? Yes. So really if anything is a "perversion" of economics it would be anti-trust laws...
I hereby declare that since you feel someone out there should make software out of the kindness of their hearts, YOU shall write all the software I need, in your spare time, and have it run reliably, and that it be available to me right now. Oh, and I expect 24/7 technical support.
... gee kinda sucks for you to know you won't be getting paid a penny to do it since you need no incentive.
... I expect all the capitalist moderators to be laughing hard, modding me up as insightful, and all the communist hive-minded slave wannabe's like the author of the post above me to mod me down as a troll.
Get to work, I need that software, my way of life depends on it!
but I sure love that you absolutely will have that software ready for me no matter how many months of 24/7 labour it requires of you, just to satisfy my needs. I have no doubt that your love of free programming for my profit, at your expense will ensure that I will get a superior, better made product!
Now stop reading this and get to work!
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
>> As long as it costs $40 for a game or $100 for software there will always be people pirating.
> People will even pirate data worth 99 cents...
Furthermore, people will pirate if it is priced at $0.00, see for example some GPL violations.
The first two refer to the cost of acquiring a copy as opposed to pirating one. It's impossible to break the GPL by acquiring copies.Your example refers to pirating the copyright, but there is no offer in the GPL to acquire the copyright at any cost.
Imagine you went to a GPL project and offered to buy the copyright wholesale (which may theoretically be possible with some projects like Qt or MySQL). That is the real price they're pirating. Did you think the value of the leaked Windows source code is the price tag of one retail copy? Because that's what you just suggested.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Personally I'm unhappy some of the Fairlight gang have been busted, they've done some good releases in their time.
I warez games because sometimes the warez'd full game is available before the demo and I wanna know what its like.
If I like the game I buy it - after all, I have a job, and the cost of 2 or 3 (or more) games a month hardly registers on my statements.
I DON'T buy the games when they are shite, however, which is the main reason I continue to warez. Put simply, publishers such as Electronic Arts do not deserve my money. I have numerous problems with games I've purchased from them in the past and these bugs and glitches still aren't fixed at present. The only real reason I would buy something like Battlefield Vietnam, with all its bugs and issues, is if it was just about fun enough to justify playing it with a group of friends. Fuck playing on public servers where 85% of people are assholes.
Anyway, this operation gets the 'good guys' a bit of publicity, they get to spout off about how piracy benefits organised crime and terrorism, while at the same time nothing is done about a root cause - piss poor quality control and customer support.
Actually, piracy of application software is especially bad because it's unique amongst IP protected works in that one piece can be substituted for another. If you can't afford one CD, you can't buy another different CD that has all the same value to it. And piracy is bad in this case because it [i]badly[/i] hurts lower price competitors.
What art software do you want to use? Adobe Photoshop, for a few hundred dollars? Or maybe Paint Shop Pro, for less? Or maybe HandyPaint (fictitious) for even less money?
I mean, those extra features in Photoshop you probably aren't going to *use*, are you? So we may as well buy a cheaper one? PSP, then? Well, maybe. Or maybe that's too much...
Oh, right. You're a pirate. So you aren't going to pay for any of the software. So, might as well pirate Photoshop 'cos you don't care. And JASC and HandySoft get hosed, because their attempts to offer reasonable budget alternatives only leads to them being passed over by people who aren't paying for the software anyway.
Worse yet, if you get busted, the settlement money goes to Adobe. Even if, if it wasn't for piracy, they would have bought Jasc's product.
With the way Slashdot sometimes posts articles talking about some company possibly violating the copyright of the GPL in some random situation, you'd think Osama Bin Laden was the CEO for every company in the business world.
But I guess copyrights are supposed to be enforced only when it comes to something Slashdot tells you is Good(tm). Not when something is Bad(tm), like actually PAYING for shit.
What? Do you have any idea how economics works? Look, you calculate the relative expected cost and expected value of stuff when you make economic decisions. Piracy's cost is not $0, of course, but some larger value due to the risk of being caught and the inconvenience of downloading. Furthermore, you don't get the added value of support, printed manuals (well not these days), etc.
So piracy really is competition to the real product. Let's say I decide that pirating Photoshop has a "cost" of $200 due to the relatively low probability of being caught (of course, there are big fines, etc. if I do get caught, so $200 might not be unreasonable). Now let's say Photoshop retail costs $700. If I am rational, I will download Photoshop rather than buy. So if Adobe wants me to stop pirating, they should lower the cost for Photoshop or attempt to raise the cost of piracy by increasing fines and cracking down on copyright infringement.
Of course, if I'm in Adobe's target market, the cost for piracy is much greater; my business could tank, I have employees that might snitch, etc. So maybe it would "cost" me $2000 per copy. Clearly I am better off with Photoshop retail.
Interestingly enough, with this analysis we might come to the conclusion that piracy actually helps consumers. We end up with lower prices since software makers no longer have monopoly power over their individual products. If Adobe suddenly raised the price for Photoshop to $3000 and piracy was not an option, many people would be forced to pay the new price. But Adobe knows that even businesses would begin to pirate if they raised the price high enough.
So these students can afford to pay $30K-$100K for their education but can't afford a few hundred dollars more for tools that will be invaluable during the span of their careers? You know why the don't buy Photoshop for After Effects? Because they don't have to. They can get it for free. They can't get a diploma for free, so they pay for it. Believe me, if they absolutely had to have Photoshop, but couldn't pirate it, they would pay the $500 or so it costs, "poor art student" or not.
I love it how they make these people out to be filthy criminals who are out to hurt everyone. They fail to mention the intelligence needed to crack protections such as securom or the new starforce 3. They fail to mention how this drives programmers to learn more and protect their software. Many people gain the interests and skills needed for jobs from this sort of behavior.
As stated before, people will just rise up to replace these leaders. Quit trying to scare these people and go after the huge public which gets cracks and serials off of websites and p2p. Scare the public and it goes internal to where there is damage control. Obviously Operation Bucaneer achieved nothing and the same will come from these busts.
It sucks now, but I think you'll get your day in court. There is no way any family judge will condone this sort of behaviour. Get a lawyer ASAP.