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

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?

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!'

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

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..

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....

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!

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: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.