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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."
...my pirated copy of Spiderman 2.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
They will never stop piracy 3 people at a time.
Looks like we'll have to invade.
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?
So they conducted raids in 11 countries and nabbed three key people? Must be one hell of a bad day to be a lackey. :)
Join Team Slashdot at Folding@Home
Remember the Animaniacs Country Song?
Raids were carried out in the UK, the U.S., Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Singapore and Sweden.
Add intelligence/investigative services of each country, we have a new song!
Ughhh... I need sleep.
"Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky"-Pink Floyd
Average time in prison for rape: 3 years
Average time for copying games without selling: 4 years
Does anyone else see something wrong here?
melissa
...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 bet that most were users of the Linux operating systems and "anti" Microsoft people. Typical criminal profile.
William Stephens
MCSE,MCDST,Well Respected VBScripting Guru
williams007@yahoo.com,(212)275-4831
I think we all know, however, that what they have seized is the equivalant of several thousand cd copiers.
"I can't drive 55. It only goes 38."
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.
It's only a matter of time until someone does a "War on Piracy" version of Traffic. Tobey Maguire as a head of a piracy cartel?
Ashcroft announces War on IP Terrorism--Bush invades Antartica to in a preemptive strike to stop the infiltration of underwater penguin operatives bent on creating a network of secure operations.
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
Why can't they just grow up and catch some real criminals.
Real criminals fight back. I hope you're not suggesting that our brave officers of the law should put themselves at risk like that. If they all get killed chasing terrorists then who would that leave to protect us from the warez kiddies?
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!
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)
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.
The people arrested were actualy laying on the interesctions of various country borders in order to make their arrest harder. A very clever tactic.
One guy was on the Franco-Sweedish-Hungarian-Israeli border, another one was on the German-Belgium-Danish-Netherlands border, and the purpored ring leader (aka "Long Larry") was sprawled out along the US-UK-Singapore border.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
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.
"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. ;)
Once again, Canada has been ignored. Bastards.
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?
Then why is shareware cracking so prevalent? Registration fees are rarely priced as high as retail software.
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!
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.
With out piracy lots of software wouldnt have such a huge userbase. Windows? Photoshop? I use Photoshop 7 which I dl'd for free but other wise I would never have bought it for home use especially at $1200 CDN. Now because I would not have bought it in the first place Adobe lost no money and get free advertising as I tell eveyone Photoshop kicks ass. Now if I was making money off it and used it in a business I definatelly would pay for it.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
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.
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'.
the most ironic thing is that the leader of Razor 1911 was just sent to jail a few months ago
they're playing whack a mole!
11 countries 3 arrests, now how does that work. They raided in 11 countries only 3 people were found that means in 8 countries they found jack. The fact that they had so many unsuccessful raids means they were trying that many targets means even the cops know that FLT is far to large to be taken down.
. . . when all they'd really have to do to catch every copyright misappropriator would be to release some spyware that calls home if the machine has the NFO extension associated with a text editor :).
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.
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
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.
In a time where millions and millions of people are exposed to the process of software making, why do we need to "provide an incentive" to create software? If one of these millions is only willing to create such software if guaranteed a copyright, then someone else would be willing to create it for the fame or love of programming - and probably do a better job.
Do we really want a society in which it is illegal to share and copy information, where people go to prison for giving software copies to their friends? Where it is illegal to learn from and understand the information we are exposed to, and share it with others?
Is the dubiously-required incentive worth all this?
I think it is clearly outragous - and the more arrests like this one, where obviously no life is at stake, nor is there a threat on the continuation of the creation of software will ultimately turn public oppinion against copyright.
I thought all they did was make those scroll-y things. Didn't realise they were still cracking software. What about Triad? Northern Lights? OKS Import Divsion? Red Sector?
Was that 100 copiers? Or was it 25 quad-speed copiers?
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
>> 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.
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.
Not much of a surprise... first Asscroft came for the bongs, then he came for the porn...when he came for the warez there was no one left to speak up.
It has been a good few years, but it is now time for Fairlight to close its doors for good. Many reasons have made us come to this judgement but we feel it is for the best. The scene is getting to be a dangerous place. Not only do we have to fear from the feds but also the unhonorable ones in the scene who lower themselves to narq the competition. Retiring on top seems to be the best decision for us. We want to thank all those throughout the years who have helped us in one way or another.
/Team FairLight
I guess they didn't follow their own advice. It seems Fairlight reactivated 2 months after that message, possibly under new management or because whatever FBI sweep was going on at the time was over.
"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'll bet this figure doesn't even come close to holding true. According to this logic the bust should show an immediate "burst" of revenue next quarter.