Operation Fastlink Nets 1000s in Pirate Sting

womanfiend writes "The Iowa City (Iowa) Press Citizen has been reporting the last two days about "'Operation Fastlink,' a multi-national investigation launched in April." Apparently, the investigation has netted a local college student hosting 13,000 titles worth a bundle of money both in simple value and liability for as many times as logs show the titles were downloaded. According to the P-C: "...'Operation Fastlink,' which targeted the underground community's hierarchy with [FBI] agents conducting more than 120 searches within 24 hours in 27 states and 11 foreign countries. At the time, authorities identified nearly 100 people as leaders or high-ranking members of international piracy groups." Sounds like somebody's in deep doo doo."

Comments

Call me when the headline reads:

[Chatmag]

1000's of spammers caught in sting.

Re:Call me when the headline reads:

[b1t r0t]

Isn't that what 'piracy' is, counterfeiting?

Counterfeiting is when you try to pass something off as the real thing.

An MPEG2 file named "Gigli.mpg" is not a counterfeit.
A DVD-R with Gigli.mpg burned to it and "Gigli" written on it in Sharpie marker is not a counterfeit.
A DVD-R with a scan of the Gigli disc art printed on it with an inkjet printer, in a DVD snap case with a scan of the Gigli cover sheet is a poor counterfeit.
A DVD pressed in Hong Kong with the Gigli disc art silkscreened on it, and a 4-color printing of the Gigli cover sheet is a good counterfeit.

The same applies to money:

A piece of paper with "ONE DOLLER" written on it is not a counterfeit.
A piece of paper where someone has drawn something vaguely looking like US currency but with no attempt to copy the artwork or face is not a counterfeit.
A xerox of a $1 bill, trimmed to size, is counterfeit, especially if you attempt to pass it off as such, like by using it in a vending machine.
A $200 bill with the face of George W. Bush is not a counterfeit. Neither is a $3 bill with the face of Bill Clinton.

I'd reply to this

[atarione]

.... but I'm too busy formatting my HardDrives..Must destroy evidence.....mmmmm evidence

yeah the American people

[Shakrai]

Sounds like somebody's in deep doo doo

Because our law enforcement is acting on the behalf of private companies (who should be filing civil suits against these people) instead of going after the rapists/murders/terrorists of the World.

Well in fairness they are still going after them -- this just seems like wasted resources to me.

Re:yeah the American people

[danheskett]

The wholesale looting of others intellectual property is a very destructive thing. Of those 13,000 titles you can very sure that among them were titles by the non-industry powerhouses.

I've worked as an employee and contractor to a number of small niche players who wrote popular useful software but were ultimately forced out of business due to the direct and indirect effects of piracy.

It is criminal what is being done to some of these companies. When you have a potential customer base of perhaps 5,000 you really need to make sure that you do exactly what your customers want.

I helped organize a QA and customer satisfaction drive for a niche regional software provider. We surveyed every user of the software. Took suggestions and complaintants and feedback on every bit of the application. All told we collected, ranked, anaylzed and implemented 6,500 changes ranging from minor tweaks to major rewrites. It was an 18-month project. Every issue was documentated, analyzed, and every user, every issue recieved a human-authored note that dealt in depth with the issue.

At the request of several users the licensing was vastly simplified even though it meant - at best - a 15% decline in revenue. A solid base of the users/sysadmins complained about the technical measures used to prevent licensing violations. They were removed completely and the honor system was instituted.

After the project, the application won numerous awards within its industry. User satisifaction with the application went from 62% to 98% between the versions. The average site had about 10%-20% smaller licensing costs. Support calls dropped 50% in 3 months. A comprehensive professional written and edited user manual was given to every user, and a robust feature request/enhancement/bug tracker went live.

It was vastly successful. Yet, within 12 months of that release, the company closed its door, and released the code from escrow to the clients. 40 programmers, QA, and support people lost their jobs, and the owner - a very nice woman - was financially ruined. A number of the customer sites also went belly up - as many as 10.

The software was an investment to be sure, but allowed you to run an efficent, competitive, and focused organization. When the anti-piracy features were removed competitors with pirated editions sprang up, offering similair services at lower prices - part of which was because the new enterprises could escape making an investment in software that their competitors did have to make.

The fact is that in this situation everyone knows what happened. A few key employees from one established place took a copy of the server with all the data files and software and all that, and went to establish a competitor in an adjoining state. Same product, 25% cheaper. That 25% is almost entirely made up by the fact that they did not license the software everyone else has to pay for.

In this case, private litigation is useless and slow. The software company and several established reputable companies ended up being run out of business by a truly awful display of poor ethics.

Pirates destroyed the lives of many honest people here. This software package that was cracked and passed around so viciously on many of the big warez networks was the lifeblood of a vibrant partnership of interests. And it was trashed so that a quick buck could be made by a few destructive people (who ended up closing up shop when the easy money was over; they didn't charge enough or save enough to make it through the long slow periods that are inherent in the industry).

Bottom line is that this was a true shame. And it's not all that uncommon. Government acts on behalf of people, and many times, that means acting on behalf of businesses. It's sure easy to be pissed about the FBI spending moneny on anti-piracy, but it has very real economic effects.

Law-enforcement, including the FBI, is generally well-funded. There really isn't a great battle for r

Re:yeah the American people

[danheskett]

Sorry, I checked with legal, and as I know work for a competitor of the software, I can't really say. The product was a vertical market app used for the medical industry: essentially managed your entire office, billing, insurance billing, scheduling, etc.

Piracy is going to happen, you have to factor this into any software sales. Even if you hadn't removed the licensing features they would have been worked around anyway given enough time. (Assumming the software was truely popular enough)
No, not really. Every copy of the software used an active form of product activation, and required regular checks against a master database of legal copies: the client could go to a secure website and get a new pre-keyed version delivered by e-mail. That would only work on one PC - determined by a powerful hash of various system bits - and at one location. Every set of binaries was unique, and it was in daily communication (internet connectivity to a remote server was already required for many features). It was virtually foolproof. There really was no widescale way to fake the system. Maybe you could spend hours and make one copy run wrongly, but really, it couldnt be done on a wide scale.

Yeah, piracy is bad, but lets be honest here... most companies don't pirate software that is critical to their infrastructure as they need support contracts when something goes awry
I say no. I see it all the time. Every day actually. Companies - big and small - pirating infrastructure software on a daily basis from both big and small companies.

Re:yeah the American people

[Famatra]

"In the meantime, consider the "artificial monopoly" that keeps millions of folks in business. "

Or slavery that kept the south in business with cotton. What is your arguement that we can tolerate something bad (like stopping information flow or slavery) if it gives us jobs or coin?

[The] free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny...Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
- Commissioner Pravin Lal, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Wrong Department

[TrollBridge]

Should read "From the finally-going-after-the-lawbreakers dept."

We pissed and moaned when the authorities went after the makers of P2P software, crying that they should go after the people doing the infringement.

Predictably, now that authorities are actually going after the infringers, we have something new to piss and moan about. Let's get consistent, can we?

Re:Wrong Department

[NDPTAL85]

Do you think every company that depends on intellectual property is some huge megalithic entity? Aren't some of these companies small or midsized businesses that will go OUT of business if they can't get paid for what they're producing? So when those companies go under and those folks lose their jobs is that not an important issue? The perpetrator of the crime may appear generally harmless, but you greatly underestimate the amount of economic damage one twerp behind a keyboard can do while still in his mother's basement.

Come on Teal'C. I would have thought you'd have a much higher sense of honor than this! JaffaKREE!!

My collection is bigger than yours ...

[orangeguru]

Why are some people so stupid and put everything they collected online - especially when it's pirated? It's like screaming 'get me! get me!'

And in other news...

[suso]

Copy protoction still fails to stop rampant software piracy.

Don't copy...

[Phixxr]

...That Floppy!

College kids?

[tomstdenis]

I can imagine that call home

"Yeah mom, I was expelled. Why? Oh, uh, um, the FBI caught me using my net connection to distribute movies illegally. Yes, yes. With the computer you bought me. What? No. The tuition you paid is not refundable. Books? I'm off campus in under 24 hours, I don't have time to sell them. Another college? This is on my permanent record. BTW you wouldn't happen to have a couple thousand to settle this case would "

Tom

Re:College kids?

[krbvroc1]

Yeah, before you know it, these little fuckers will be ripping the tags off their mattresses! Obviously, P2P is a gateway crime to bigger things.

I once heard that Bernie Ebbers of Worldcom once shared a copyrighted VHS tape with his neighbors. If he had only been stopped then...

false Math

[hhawk]

"personally responsible for as much as $200,000 in losses to the industry"

That is making the assumption that everyone who pirated software would actually buy it and if they bought it they would pay full price..

Re:false Math

[I8TheWorm]

It doesn't matter if they would have bought it or not. The fact is they are in possession of the song/movie/software. Possession of the song/movie/software is how the companies that provide it earn revenue. So simply by having it, they have bypasses the revenue piece of the puzzle. That is, in technical accounting jargon, attributable to operating loss.

Re:false Math

[deblau]

The big change that accounting needs to incorporate is that traditional rules of economics simply don't apply to intangible 'property'. Economic principles and markets operate on the assumption that goods are scarce, which is false in the case of intangibles. If I build a chair and someone steals it, I'll write that off as an operating loss. If I play a record and someone tapes it, there's no loss. Economists have to bootstrap scarcity into the equation using legal fictions like "copyright".

To make the distinction crystal clear, if the guy from TFA had stolen a CD from Best Buy, it would be operating loss for Best Buy. If all he stole was the music on the CD (which he borrowed from a friend because he couldn't afford to buy the disc), no loss. The reason I know that there's no loss is that if there were, it wouldn't be claimed by only Best Buy, but also by everyone else who sells the same CD. That doesn't make any sense at all.

What little I know of basic microeconomics tells me that what's going on here is a black market. People aren't willing to pay full price, so they pay less through non-legit channels. The point is that they weren't willing to pay full price, so you can't count them as customers in the first place, hence no "lost revenue". It was never there to begin with, which is what I think GP post is saying. Again, the reason that this scenario is different from ordinary retail is that the thing being 'stolen' is intangible. If my CD ends up in someone's hands without them paying me for it, I can (and should) nail them for it. This situation is different.

Black market transactions take into account the cost of being discovered. This guy is facing 15 years in jail. Usually, this cost prevents black markets unless there is a serious cost/value discrepancy, such as (in this case) artificial scarcity through legal fiction. From what I understand, the reason there's so much piracy is that many people feel that the scarcity is a little too artificial. If the sales price would come down to something actually approaching marginal cost, maybe there would be less piracy. If the music distributors can't sustain at MP=MC, then they obviously can't compete in an open market, and should fold. This is the basic cycle of destruction and renewal brought about by technological advancement, and it's been working fine for several hundred years. Why muck it up now?

Just goes to show

[Heem]

Many have gotten real bold about how they go about sharing things. In the old days it was like you had to be "elite" or "31337 d00d" in order to get to the restricted files on the BBS so you could download them at 2400 baud. Typically this meant that you knew the sysop, or were a friend of a friend. We have gotten too lax in the way that people are just randomly sharing out everything. Want to share stuff and download? I agree, but take it to encrypted tunnels on IPv6.

Re:Just goes to show

[I8TheWorm]

The problem is that everyone does not agree that file sharing is ok... and I'm one of them. There are more people murdered every day now, but that doesn't mean the laws should be changed because it seems a larger percentage of poeple think it's ok now.

Laws are not necessarily made to prevent bad behavior, but to prevent behavior that is considered harmful. Murder is an obvious one. But taking software/songs/movies without paying for them is harmful to the people that put it together. And don't think for a minute it's hurting the label/movie executives. It's hurting the few people they're going to lay off when their revenue dips.

I think your assumption that everyone is alright with file sharing is way off, given that not even everyone on /. thinks it's alright.

15 years....

[orion41us]

"Desir, registered as a student at the University of Iowa, waived indictment and pleaded guilty Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Des Moines. He faces a maximum 15 years in prison on felony counts of copyright infringement and conspiracy. Sentencing is set for March 18."...


Ok - I know it was wrong - but 15 years! come on, 2nd degree murder is right aroung the same Sentence for ILLINOIS, anyone else think that this is a bit much....

Re:15 years....

[curious.corn]

Ok but as I said about another guy getting buried in jail for stealing CC off a WiFi network: there's a limit to the cumulability of certain crimes; you can't transform a relatively minor crime in a life sentence by stodgily adding up jail time per act * number of violations. If anything it should have a Log progression and in any case a cap; nothing less severe than loss of life / pain should be punished with more than 10 years. Corp Excecutives get away anyway so being tough of little guys is maximally unfair... On the other hand, a sentence to some socially useful job is way more effective towards social rehabilitation / damage repair.

Now we know...

[mshiltonj]

... why our intelligence community can't catch Osama bin Laden -- they are being used as flunkies for the MPAA/RIAA.

I feel so much safer knowing those dangerous file-sharers are off the Net and no longer threatening the American way of life.

I can now look forward to the next riveting season of MTV Cribs and see millions of dollars being wasted by morons with good lawyers.

And the usual BSA propaganda

[pommaq]

From TFA:
is personally responsible for as much as $200,000 in losses to the industry
Business Software Alliance, which represents several software manufacturers, examined the two computer servers linked to Desir and reported that each contained client titles exceeding $2,500 in retail value. The $2,500 value is a benchmark in the federal criminal code.

This is, of course, complete bullshit. It's like Adobe always trying to claim that 12-year-olds warezing Photoshop are thousands of dollars worth of "losses" when there's no way in hell they would be able to buy the software. In many instances the widespread warezing of their software actually helps Adobe, since in a couple of years those 12-year-olds are going to enter their professional lives trained on Adobe's product, not their competitors'. Doesn't matter, though, piracy is wrong and you shouldn't do it (like doom2 said, if you're playing a pirated copy you're going to HELL) but these claims always strike me as ridiculous. Sure, send him to jail for a couple months or whatnot, but don't yell about how one pirate cost you bullions and bullions of dollars because it just isn't true!

Re:Amen to that!

[3terrabyte]

Yea, but you don't get 15 years in a federal prison for speeding, do you?

Because we don't have enough people in jail

[HangingChad]

There's got to be some corner of federal prison somewhere we can stuff the infringer gang. Because obviously we don't have enough of our population in jail now that we have to give college students 15 years and remove any possibility of them ever finishing school and doing anything productive.

This way we can pay to keep them in prison, then continue to pay when they end up going back and back and back because they can't ever get a job anywhere.

But we sure showed them we're serious about getting tough, didn't we? Ha! Just like getting tough on drugs. That's been a really successful program, too. Got tough on those druggies to where today the cost of drugs is...well,lower than it used to be but that's besides the point. You gotta throw those bastards in jail! Not a grain of common sense, but we're definitely tough.

Aren't Fed Law Enforcement Priorities Broken?

[swb]

For example: This priority -- I can't even believe that a group of serious adults gets up in the morning with the idea that they're working to end the vast and dangerous conspiracy known as the "bong industry".

I can accept that they'd go after commercial counterfeiters and pirates of intellectual property, but given the extent of fraud and other naughtyness associated with spam (ie, selling prescription drugs), why hasn't the FBI gone after that before college kids trading bad movies they'll never watch and probably won't even have five years from now (hard disk crashes, changes in life priorities, etc), let alone wouldn't have bought or paid to see anyway (and despite the fact that the movies have probably broken even or made a profit *anyway*).

I'm sure if they actually *did* investigate spam via stings, they'd find massive tax evasion, fraud, violations of more substantive drug laws, and a bunch of otherwise legitimate corporations collecting a tidy profit by selling services needed to run a spam operation. Which is probably why they won't make the effort -- whenever big business gets involved, somehow the law doesn't seem to apply.

Oh well, at least we'll know that "college kids" and "bong makers" can be safely removed from the Bad Guy checklist.

Re:Aren't Fed Law Enforcement Priorities Broken?

[LurkerXXX]

And exactly why should they limit the profits? If someone wants to spend $1,000,000 for a ticket to see a two hour movie, I'd consider it insane, but it would be their choice to make. Why should they be regulated on how much they can charge for the entertainment they produce?

It's entertainment. It's not food or some basic utility (electricity, etc). You don't *need* to see any movie. If you want some entertainment you go see whatever you find entertaining that you can find for a price you think is reasonable. Don't want to spend $7 for a movie ticket? Don't. You don't NEED to see it. And you don't have a RIGHT to see it at some price you consider reasonable. Get over it.

It's good... I don't care...

[erroneus]

Commercial software is good in a way and bad in others. Blah blah blah.

I like open source stuff. I get warm fuzzies any time I run it for anything I do on a daily basis. I don't waste my time with games... haven't for years... (one day I found myself calling in sick to work because I wanted to play a game... omg... I'm addicted... so I quit... after I finished the mission of course!) But I can see where there are plenty of areas where certain commercial apps are 100% necessary. (Use photoshop because the gimp isn't quite "there" yet...)

I personally, think "misappropriation" of software for personal and non-commercial use should be "ignored" though it should never be considered "okay." (I think games, if they are good and worthy should be paid for as a means of applause.) But the commerial benefit of misappropriated software is way out there "wrong."

These college kids are not the users of the software. I remember back in those days myself. It was just cool to try to get the latest "whatever" was out there and share it. When Win95 was new, it was the coolest thing ever to play with. Sleek new UI, came with TCP/IP already and a browser too! MSIE was my favorite back in those days... it was included with the OS! How convenient! And free? Who could beat that?

Are they really causing a lot of damage to the industry? I just don't know the answer to that question... I just don't know. Do I feel like these kids are "evil" and just want to do damage? Hell no. Should they be shut down? Hell yeah! Should they be allowed to lead a normal life afterward! Hell yeah... the first time only. Do it again and f@ck'em!

That's my few cents anyway...

Re:Can somebody tell me...

[avgjoe62]

What exactly does the arrest of criminals by constitutial and fair procedures have to do with "My Rights Online"?

According to those same "constitutial and fair procedures..." all of those arrested are inncent, not yet criminals. Once the charges are proved, then you can call them criminals. Untill then, they are suspects awaiting trial to determine if they are criminals.

And actually, this has a lot to do with your rights. I've said it here before (and I'll keep repeating it until you folks get it :-)) that the old line "If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear." is about as big a fairy tale as you can find. False accusations, and the arrests they can lead to, can ruin your life without your ever being convicted of a crime.

This has everything to do with your rights. The sooner you realize this, the safer you'll be.

Re:Can somebody tell me...

[maximilln]

THEY ARE BREAKING THE LAW! LAW ENFORCEMENT GOES AFTER THEM!

It's not my law and it's my right to speak out agains the frivolous use of my taxpayer money to enforce the rights of the yuppie next door to his latest finger-painting. Screw him. His work sucks, his art sucks, and it's not worth my protection.

Also, pursuit of unlimited profits IS a right. It's capitalism

You want to be a hard-nose? Fine. Copying is a right. It's called nature and nature existed long before capitalism.

providing jobs for millions of Americans

Has nothing to do with the DMCA or file-sharing. Artists existed long before any laws.

The movie industry funds a lot of other industries, and perhaps you should take an economics class to learn about it.

I did. I learned about monopolies, cartels, and money-laundering. Perhaps you slept through those classes.

Re:Can somebody tell me...

[hesiod]

> Did the system work? Kinda.

NO, not at all. If you were innocent and had ANYTHING adverse happen to you (excluding work time missed to be in court, and I don't even agree with that) the system did not work. You were bullied into paying $5000 that you should not have. THAT MEANS THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN.

I can't see how you aren't totally pissed off about that. I don't know what kind of job you had in college (or if your parents are/were wealthy), but many college students don't have 5 grand to their name, let alone able to shell it out suddenly due to a wrongful accusal.

Of course, I have my own reasons to believe the system doesn't work. I was accused for possession of pot, although they had no proof that it was mine -- it wasn't on my person or in my car. They said "no charges will be filed," 1 year probation, then it gets expunged, so I took your stance (although I was not fined) -- sure, nothing bad will come of it, so I'll just play along.

Two years later, I have an FBI record and am almost denied a job because of that (I explained the circumstances and our HR director said a similar thing happened to someone else there and basically ignored it). That was the only time I've ever encountered the police for anything other than traffic violations. Certainly not worthy of an FBI record, but there you have it. I'm on par with an international terrorist because I liked smoking pot when I was 23.