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."

Comments

Not a good effort.

[Anonymous Coward]

They will never stop piracy 3 people at a time.

Re:Not a good effort.

[Goldberg's Pants]

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...

Re:Not a good effort.

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Here we go again! Would you suggest that we only address the most heinous crimes and ignore all of our other laws? Most of the laws we have are there for a good reason, and they should all be enforced. If we don't enforce all of our laws, why even bother writing them if all we really care about are rapists, murderers, and corrupt board members?

Re:Not a good effort.

[MattyCobb]

Here we go again! Would you suggest that we only address the most heinous crimes and ignore all of our other laws? Most of the laws we have are there for a good reason, and they should all be enforced. If we don't enforce all of our laws, why even bother writing them if all we really care about are rapists, murderers, and corrupt board members?

I think what he was suggesting is that other crims, such as rape, murder, and corporate corruption, should be concentrated on much more than people pirating video games. Also, piracy is different. Murder, most people will agree is bad. However with piracy it depends on if you agree with the law or not. I for one pirate tons of movies. Sorry, I do. I download movies first ALWAYS. If they are good I THEN go see them in the theatre. Same with CDs. I have a huge collection of DVDs and CDs. If I actually like what I download, I go out and buy it. If its crap, I delete it and move on. I see nothing wrong with that. I am not taking money away from creative artist. I am just making sure that those people who make crap don't get my money and the people who actually make GOOD movies/cds/games do.

... that and I have to find SOME justification for my ungodly expensive home theatre setup that I blew like 1/2 a years pay on :)

Re:Not a good effort.

[D'Sphitz]

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...

So next time you're in a car accident, or your home is burglarized, or someone swipes your wallet, you'd have no problem if the cops didn't show up because they're all trying to solve rapes and murders? Hell, why on earth are we paying cops to enforce speed limits and arrest shoplifters when the manpower could obviously be put to better use catching murderers.

According to your plan, our only rights are the right not to be raped or murdered. Rather than trying to fabricate ill thought out justifications for your blatant criminal activity why don't you just admit to yourself that "yes I steal and I have no remorse". Maybe you'd retain at least a tiny bit of respect for not insulting my, or anyone elses intelligence with your lame excuses.

Re:Not a good effort.

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

They didn't just catch three people in this operation, but they took down several servers, some of which the operators might not have realized were even being used for warez distribution.

That's bullshit. I know some people who've been raided here in the Netherlands, and I can tell you that almost all of those confiscated servers were in student dorms and connected to university networks; most of them on 100mbit lines, some on 10mbit lines.

It's the fat lines those groups are after, you would need thousands of cable/dsl lines to "race" an ISO (these groups are in competition to get the cracked versions out as fast as possible). And they're not hacking those boxes, they're paying for them with status as a "courier" or with real money. I know students who've been offered 100 euro a month or more to put a 10TB server in their room.

Price of games

[mldkfa]

As long as it costs $40 for a game or $100 for software there will always be people pirating.

I wish...

[bo0ork]

...they put all that effort into hunting criminals that actually hurt people (as opposed to wallets).

Re:I wish...

[Homology]

...they put all that effort into hunting criminals that actually hurt people (as opposed to wallets).

Try tell that to the Enron employees that lost their pensions. I'm quite sure they would like to see white collar criminals spend some time in jail.

11 Countries?

[bedurndurn]

So they conducted raids in 11 countries and nabbed three key people? Must be one hell of a bad day to be a lackey. :)

Prediction

[williamstephens007]

I bet that most were users of the Linux operating systems and "anti" Microsoft people. Typical criminal profile.

CD copiers

[king_penguin_05]

I think we all know, however, that what they have seized is the equivalant of several thousand cd copiers.

Re:strange

[kryptkpr]

A friend that's close to the scene tells me that for the past while FLT had been selling leech accounts on their private dumps. He quoted $800 usd for leech on a 7tb server with a 1gbit connection.

I guess they sold to the wrong person, and they got busted..

Re:Copying games is worse than rape

[josh3736]

Does anyone else see something wrong here?

Yep. More and more in this country, punishment for what in all actuality are petty crimes is greater than that of serious crimes such as rape, theft (the real kind of theft where you actually take property from someone else), and murder/manslaughter. It is made even worse when new laws are passed that make it illegal to do what was already illegal anyways. Case in point: DMCA. It was already illegal to copy the new Britany Spears CD and sell it on street corners, but now it is *more* illegal becuase you bypassed that copy protection just to do it.

Since everyone in this country is becoming a criminal, my advice to all of you is don't drop the soap.

Both good and bad.

[Dark Lord Seth]

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.

100 cd copiers?

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Fair light on Fairlight

[andr0meda]

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.

people were laying across borders

[morcheeba]

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.