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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.
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. :)
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...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.
Since everyone in this country is becoming a criminal, my advice to all of you is don't drop the soap.
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
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.
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
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 greater crime, of course, is spreading Britney's music. With or without permission.
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.
"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!
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.
. . . 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 :).
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
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"
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.