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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."
...and a foreign permanent resident who is said to have been purchasing cracked software from Fairlight since 2001.
As far as I know, these releasing groups do not charge for their releases, they make them available free over FTP/IRC/USENET.
Cthulhu Saves.
I refuse to believe that pirating will ever be "eradicated" or even slowed down. As long as there are 'haves' and 'have-nots' there will always be people who will hack their way up in the world. If Chippendale or J & G Stickley were alive today, they'd point out the fashion in which they are imitated or flat copied in furniture design. Everything has someone copying it, right down to designer shoes and haircuts.
I believe the spirit of piracy, be it software or music or the high-seas, is a definite part of the human nature which cannot be removed. When someone is cooller or has something you want, you always find a way to get it. Lawn fertilizer, high-end cars, stylish clothing...you find a way if you are human and put those things on the top of your list of important bullshit.
Drake would copy DVDs if he were here today...and wasn't he knighted or some bullshit?
-- the only good thing the French ever did was two chicks at one time
I am surprised that they didn't use Freenet or MUTE to organize their files. Freenet also has an open source anonymous email client called Freemail you can download, its still alpha though.
Also if you want to encrypt your hard drive try open source Truecrypt, its the successor to Scramdisk.
As much as I hate to admit it, software "piracy" is bad and no matter what excuses peiople come up with. There are many improvements to be made with the current system but that's not the main issue at the moment. Still though, copying and cracking software is wrong. I'm not justifying it for myself either, I know it's wrong.
Then again, the bad part is that the happened on request of the US customs. ( Over here in the Netherlands at least.. ) The idea that 'my'* goverment bends over to the US will without any investigation on it's own and just raids places the US goverment tells them to, scares me. What if I suddenly become a PITA to the US goverment? Will my place be raided too?
This is something very concerning. There are so many laws and regulations that nearly any normal living person is, unwillingly and unknowingly, violating some minor laws and regs. If people really wanted to fuck you up, they could just throw any laws they can find at you until they find SOMETHING you violate. Scarey thing is, what if the US goverment decides to fuck up someone's life abroad in the name of "fighting terrorism"? Will 'my' goverment roll over, bark thrice and give a paw at the US goverment then, as well?
* ... 'My' goverment as in... "I didn't vote that lying bastard PM of ours into power, thank you." goverment.
Hate me!
It's somewhat necessary to note that Fairlight is not just a warez group, but also is a famous demoscene participant, having produced leading demos/intros/graphics and music in c64 and pc sections.
Fairlight is more than just the scum everybody will certainly take them for. The present demoscene has it's early roots in hacker and cracker groups. As a result, Fairlight is probably the longest standing group in the scene, and it is no surprise they are linked to the warez scene.
Another thing to note is that the current entertainment industry (think games and movies) is filled with loads of people working their ass off, that got to know their tricks of the trade *because* there was/is a warez scene.
The system is a hypocrit.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
I've never known any pirate who did it to make money. I know a guy who distributed for profit, but he was a wanker and as soon as people found out they stopped supplying him.
I hope the articles figures at the end come to pass. Reduce piracy by 10%... Then we can see clear evidence that all these figures thrown around about losses from piracy are utter bullshit.
For over a decade now the software industry has always put out figures that say they lost X millions of dollars due to piracy, but they do that by counting every pirated copy as a lost sale, which is of course complete fiction.
It's funny. They say about taking Fairlight down, but back last year Fairlight said they were quitting the scene anyway.
This "war on piracy" is a storm in a teacup. Law enforcement rattles a few sabres, takes down the members on the fringe. Prune the branches a little, but the central tree is still there.
And to think, there's probably rapists, murderers etc... Who would maybe have been caught had the resources for this been diverted to real crimes instead of pissant cracking groups. So nice to see that the streets are now safe from some software pirates, while shits like Ken Lay and weasels from the likes of Enron and other completely corrupt boards who defraud tens of thousands of people continue to go free. Nice to see the priorities are right here...
And in the article it says someone was arrested for BUYING software from Fairlight... Since when is buying pirated software an arrestable offence?
Law Enforcement: Proudly Bought to you by the software companies of America...
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
But stopping three people who are putting out hundreds/thousands of bootleg CDs is easier than trying to get 1000 who create just one or two bootleg CDs.
Besides, now the perps will know that they could be nailed at any time because the Law is watching for them.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
The whole thing looked like a front, and it might as well have organised crime painted all over it. That family was just selling the disks for someone else, in exchange for a small cut of the profits. Granted, this was quite a while ago, and it might well be that organised crime has taken a step back now that most stuff can be had for free on the Internet. For a fact, I see very few 'proper' (i.e. pressed rather than burned) warez CDs anymore, although from what I hear, organised software piracy is still rampant in places like the middle east, Asia and China.
"Traficking in stolen goods". Knowingly buying stolen goods is an offence in many countries. I'm not sure how this would apply to software, since it isn't really stolen, but illegaly copied. Who knows? It might be illegal as well (IANAL).
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
same old incorrect assupmtion: people would spend all their money on legitimate software if it weren't for the existence of warez.
this might be true in some cases, but i'm certain that a majority of the time people just don't have the money to buy a certain program, because:
-they are poor (software companies wouldn't get their money either way)
-they are trying a program out of curiosity and not need (software companies wouldn't get their money either way)
-they want the software only for some small aspect of it which is not alone worth anything close to the cost of the full package (software companies wouldn't get their money either way)
sometimes of course professionals pirate software out of greed. but i would be very surprised if this were anything but a small minority of cases. billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.... don't make me laugh.
if the software companies want to eliminate the petty piracy i've outlined above they should devise ways to compete. ie, highly inexpensive "lite" versions, or demo versions that actually WORK a bit, or stripping off various modules from a given software package and selling them at very lo w prices.
just some ideas.
It's funny. They say about taking Fairlight down,
but back last year Fairlight said they were quitting
the scene anyway.
fairlight did shut down. However enough members
decided to keep on going, begged the leaders to be
able to use the name. Leaders, graciously, let
the name go, but asked to notify people that old
leadership quit and that this is new fairlight.
This is also the reason why Fairlight for last
year has been dragging behind.
And in the article it says someone was
arrested for BUYING software from Fairlight...
Since when is buying pirated software an
arrestable offence?
No, the idea is that there was a member of
Fairlight who sold warez to some high scale knock
off artist.
So FBI started fighting knock off artist, followed
to his source and found out it was someone from
fairlight, since Fairlight was king under old
leadership they figured that Fairlight is still
a good target to go after to scare everyone else.
And hence we are here.
Does fairlight do any legal stuff too? Going back a few years now, everybody I know got all their Amiga 500 games off the Fairlight catalogue. I always presumed they were acting on behalf of all the game developers, especially since they posted their stuff in public places and newspapers all the time.
Then we can see clear evidence that all these figures thrown around about losses from piracy are utter bullshit.
I don't think they are BS, actually. I actually do think that unauthorized distribution of software is something which is surprisingly harmful to our ability to obtain quality software at low costs (or even free of charge). However, companies like Vivendi-Universal and Microsoft make it sound like they are the victims (when in fact they are the benefactors) of these crimes. Here is how it works:
Tim O'Reilly wrote an article describing "piracy" as progressive taxation. He observed, rightly, that the most commonly sold items were pirated at a disporportionate rate (i.e. MS Office is pirated many many times more often than Corel's equivalent, etc).
While this metaphore *may* hold water for the entertainment industry (where alternatives are only alternatives in so far as people have limited time and money), it is not adequate to describe piracy of Windows, Office, Photoshop, etc, because in these markets alternatives are alternatives based on other things (investment in proficiency, functionality, efficiency of accomplishing a task). Therefore, piracy of one Eminem CD does not imply the loss of a total sale in the entertainment industry, while a pirated copy of Microsoft Office does.
When someone pirates a copy of MS Office, they are willfully making the decision not to pay for a product, but they are also making the decision not to investigate other alternatives. Thus, in the absence of MS Office piracy, OpenOffice might find a larger audience. In the absense of Windows piracy, Linux would have a larger audience.
When I was in Indonesia, I witnessed the effect of a crackdown of unauthorized, unauthentic ("pirated") software. The result was, unsurprisingly, that many businesses chose to move to Linux rather than pay Microsoft for licenses.
Unlicensed distribution of software is damaging. We in the open source community are its primary victims because it denies us the opportunity to make a sale. Cracking down on piracy, therefore, is (I believe) beneficial to all of us.
I do, however sympathize with people who worry that this is part of an overall process which seeks to DRM-ize all content, but this is another question. My answer to it is simple, though it does require a life-style adjustment. Simply don't do business with bad companies, especially those presume that because you do business with them, that you are a criminal. If we do this, then the bad companies will go away, and we will be able to select which companies survive. But this takes spreading the word.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Thoreau (from Civil Disobedience):
Gandhi (from the Nobel website):
Martin Luther King (in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail"):
Funny, I was thinking about this just yesterday.
Libraries have been around for hundreds of years, and a lot of people in the corporate world want them banned. (Seriously, do the research.)
So I was thinking, you can go and borrow books for free... Books have been around for hundreds of years... And then I thought of a more modern invention. The video tape. You have to PAY to borrow them from a video library.
Draw your own conclusions. You don't need to me to hammer home what the point is.
Sure, have maybe a couple of guys trying to infiltrate the software cracking groups to take them down, fair enough. But a massively global coordinated takedown like this? Gimme a break. That's like the police busting down your door for copying that Doors album back in High School.
There's a serious gap between technology, warez, and executives in big compagnies. I'll go on this a bit lower.
Also, if they are doing this to "save an industry that has serious money loss due to piracy", I don't like the comparison, but to put it in their perspective; when you bust a drug dealer, you just open a market for the others, when you bust a drug producer, you just clear the way for another to outsource his production. So this logic is a bit flawed. In my perspective, piracy in itself isn't the bad thing. In fact, a lot of people here probably got hold of a software because it was available cracked, and then they went in a company and made a license bought.
Going after those people won't change a thing, disrupt, maybe, change? probably not. What should be done seriously and ressources invested way more into is to hunt down and even close down (to name an example I am very familiar with) Multimedia companies producing video games/movies/web sites that run 95% off pirated software (and the 5% legit being the machines shipped with windows on it). Some of those companies are operating in over 8 digits revenues and CAN afford the license buying, even if it wouldn't be all in one shot, they could at least show sign of good faith and shell out on a regular basis on a budget.
Joe Pimple at home doesn't kill an industry, he learns a software/tool (thinking stuff like maya/xsi/autocad/etc) that he can't afford (well until recently, now most company got an educational discount or free version, i'll get to this). Those 7-8+ digits small and medium companies *ARE* the ones actually STEALING ACTUAL revenues from software manufacturer.
Yes there's the BSA... but a lot of you probably know a lot of companies that never got checked or heard about a friend working at a place that is running totally not legit. Why the heck does joe pimple gets his life fried while others are actually making way more money and are way more morally wrong than joe? Ressources like this should be helping organization like the BSA, and the BSA should be less picky on companies trying to balance their budget while trying to reach 100% legitimacy. Of course those 95% illegal companies are creating jobs, but again, that logic is wrong since they are "killing an industry" with high-tech jobs... (and most of those multimedia companies have crappy underpaid/overworked conditions where only the owners are getting filthy rich).
That's my rant. Next is the distribution channels and the fact that we're in 2004. For god's sake, why can't we just buy GTA Vice city for 20$ and leech it off a server instead of paying 40$ for a printed box, media, distribution channel, and retailer profit? Maybe *THAT* would help prevent piracy. I know for sure that I'd be jumping back in the gaming world if it wasn't so freakingly expensive to play a game. Last games I bought that were a good investment were quake 3+ team arena, and mech warrior 3. Next time I'll pay more than 40$ for a game it better grabs my attention and my addiction as bad as quake did, else it's just not worth more than 20$, period. Don't give me that "it costs to create and budget" thing, logic here is I didn't buy it because it's overpriced, I didn't pirate it, I tried a demo if it was available, found I had a bill to pay and didn't want to shell out that 40-60$. so they didn't "lose to piracy" they simply "lost because they can't adapt to what a lot of people have been asking for years and should be available in 2004". They lost a sale. Period. The price difference isn't profit loss, it's all that extra non-needed layers added to reach people that could go direct (you could have both, then you'd get the best of both world). Took too long for apple to come out with iTunes, so I guess we won't see a movie nor a game distribution channel based on this before quite some time and the dinosaurs running things will still hide behind the law to try and fix things, and unfortunately for them and also for us, it will damage more than help. People wi
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.