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'Operation Site Down' Closes 8 Warez Servers
JerkyBoy writes "The Entertainment Software Association today hailed efforts on the part of 'U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice's Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section, U.S. Attorneys' offices nationwide, and participating foreign law enforcement officials' in the shutting down of at least 8 warez servers that specialized in the distribution of pirated games. With the code-name "Operation Site Down," close to 100 searches were conducted globally (U.S., Canada, Israel, France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, Portugal, and Australia) within a 24-hour period, resulting in the identification of 120 individuals who are likely to be pursued by the U.S. Department of Justice."
And you know, warez puppies are traded like cigarettes in lock-up.
This prison rape is brought to you courtesy of the fine folks at Electronic Arts.
Muahahahaha >:-)
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
It still doesnt matter. Everyone is still going to do it. Like shutting down napster... like that was going to change anything! Someone just developed a method to get round the law.
Isn't "Operation Site Down" a bit obvious for a code name?
Are they even trying with these operational code names anymore?
If you'll excuse me, I need to begin "Operation Orange Juice Drinking" before the scheduled commencement of "Operation Work Going".
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
Cue hordes of slashbots who think copyright infringement is their god given right screaming how evil these corporations are for not giving out their intellectual property for free.
How is the USDOJ going to persue people in other countries? Extradition sounds too severe for bootlegging. Isn't this something each foreign law enforcement agency should deal with?
After all, I am strangely colored.
More than what you see with the supposed war on terrorism eh?
I guess we know where our political masters priorities lay. Ted Dibiase would be proud.
Back to the point: The proprietors of those warez sites should consider Barbados or Switzerland. Over there, the law will take quite a time to get them and the moment they sense "danger", they can morph into an entity completely different.
That codename sounds more fitting for script-kiddie basement hacking than a law enforcement operation.
Great, now where am I going to go to find ads for my penis-enhancement products?
The thing that worries me isn't that the warez sites are being closed down, but who's closing them down.
Notice that the article pretty much says that the US took the lead. Now, I wonder why they might be doing that? How much money does the government receive from various association? Hmm, I think a lot.
Now said associations are pressing their rent-a-congressmen into action against people in foreign countries.
I wonder when we'll start having people sent here to stand trial for something that wasn't really even a crime there? Better yet, when will we be able to take their belongings and their families belongings when they end up in a form-letter-lawsuit from one of said associations?
The US is now a bunch of jack-booted thugs leaning against a wall in an alley behind some massive corporate entity. Cigarettes rolled up in its sleeve just waiting for one of the suits to come and ask for a favor.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
...wouldn't the money be for these operations have been better spend closing down phishing sites?
I'm just thinking it would be better going after the real criminals.
-- A good compromise leaves everyone mad. --Calvin and Hobbes
"Operation Bomb The Crap Out Of Your House"
So us tax payers have helped catch 120 dangerous criminals in a global anti criminal investigation that most likely cost hundreds of thousands if not millions to organise and see through , and will cost countless millions more in prosecution hearings . . .
The vast majority of these individuals were most likely not even profiting off of this (if any , the details are not that clear)
The world is now a safer place , we can rest easy in our beds as EAs multi billion dollar profits don't take an insignificant dent from these hooligans
One for justice , one for liberty
Um sarcasm aside , 12 sites and 120 people is not even a tiny dent , 12 new sites will spring up today , and 12 tomorrow whilst hundreds of thousands if not millions of others download warez.
Hit the route of the problem , over pricing and then you may get somewhere.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Actually the oposite is true. Large scale production software has such ridiculously high profit margins, that bootlegging actually greatly reduces the cost to the end user be forcing the companies to compete with the bootleggers.
Examples can be found in the music industry (lowering of prices) , and in software (Microsoft introducing budget versions to compete with bootleggers).
Basically, if you reduce bootlegging, software will go up in price as competition reduces. Its basic economics really.
Really, people need to start calling out the Software companies for insulting everyones intelligence with the whole "piracy increases prices". Whats sad is even governments repeat it, even while knowing full well that it actually benifits the consumer.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
You know, I would never hire a guy known as 'poop' anything. Get a new userid, 800k+ ones are not that leet antway.
A guy who could hire you.
hey, DOJ, now that you've completed a international campaign to bring down some 7337 w4r3z d00d5 how about catching that guy....oh what was his name?....the man with the beard that was hiding in the cave....you know the tall guy who wanted to kill all Americans...oh yeah, Osama Bin Laden, why don't stop wasting resources on low level crap and catch someone that the whole nation wants caught?!?!
The US hasn't recentlt had much problems in enforcing it's view on justice on the rest of the world.
Speedy Gonzales ?
How come they only shut down 8 servers if they're conducting searches in 11 countries?
I have a photographic memory for numbers. I know almost a hundred of them.
Ah, I can see it now .. warez peddlers from outside the US snatched off the street into a van and then flown to Syria, Egypt or Diego Garcia for interrogation. Gotta love using those terrorist treatment procedures to strengthen the software industry!
That's all they got? 120 people across all those nations? Those kind of figures won't even slow warez down. When I was in school there were probably ten people in my IT classes that were heavily into warez. That was in class, in one school, in one state of Australia. And yet across nearly a dozen nations they bagged only 120? Calling this a major victory is like saying World War Two was won by wiping out one squad of SS troops. They got a long way to go before they even start making waves, particular with the good old fashioned way of exchanging CDs amongst peers which is particularly hard to stop.
Pirated OS, pirated appz, CDs full of keygens, "crackz" and "serialz", etc. The I switched to Linux and all OSS. I can't run AutoCAD at home anymore as a result, but I have a legal copy on my work PC, so no big deal. I feel so much safer now. :-)
Anybody here knows which sites were brought down?
Need a color? Try 100 random colors
An interesting drama-type thing from the view of the criminals is The Scene; the first 9 episodes in a torrent are here. They seem slow to release though; one wonders how it can take 3-4 weeks to record 20 minutes of desktop screenshots...
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Wow! A whole 8 warez servers? NOW which of the other 1.6 million will I choose from?!
Why are they supposed to be funny? Why are there prison rape jokes? Is it supposed to be creative? What goes through the heads of these people? "Hmm, I'm a fool let me think of a prison rape joke". Write to your G damn senator instead.
.. why doesnt anyone give a shit?
... but there is no way MOST people deserve it. Imagine if someone who did heinous acts with your loved ones gets to go to prison and "have fun". There is no way most VICTIMS of prison violence would inflict it's cruelty on anyone. On the other hand, the perpetrators .. they will benefit from it .. and enjoy their prison stay. When you consider that the justice system is screwed up and has very little safeguard to protect an innocent person of being convicted of crimes.
.. society will be no better (although that matters little .. considering we'd be doomed to hell for allowing such cruelty to be perpetrated to the undeserving).
.. What about our domestic prisons? That's the root cause.
If everyone knows prison rape is happening
Maybe there are some monsters who "deserve" the treatment
The founding fathers of this nation ensured that America would not become a cruel and evil state by writing it into the constitution that people be spared cruel and unusual punishment. Anyone who has even the slightest faith in God (creationists), or knowledge of history (evolutionists), should realize that cruelty will not and has never helped the survival of any state.
Most people sent to prison, such as theives are sent for reform not to extract vengeance upon them. When they come out
Have we become evil?
There are people who bitch about Gitmo
Hey, didn't you read: they're shutting down of at least 8 warez servers. Do the math. The way I understand it, all 9 sites have been shut down. No more warez. It's over. No more illegal internet activity. Not ever.
...oh wait
Did it ever appear to the WAREZ idiots that if they did not pirate things like Photoshop that Adobe MAY be able to charge less money?
I don't buy this excuse anymore, look at the price of console games, where casual copy (or casual piracy if you want call it like this, but there in no slaughter, no vessels, no murders and no parrots)... i was saying, casual copy is completely out of question but still the price tag of console games is not low, at least i don't consider 60 dollars for a game a low price...
Yeah these guys are a menance alright.. Warez you say!!
Nice work.
Never mind the resources could have been better spent else where.
Pablo
"Back to the House of Pain"
Even though I have benefitted from warez myself and think they are one of the main reasons why big software still thinks about how high they price certain software, I do want to say: Good Riddens.
Good Riddens, because software piracy is as a whole supporting large crime organisations world wide. Don't believe me? Well in a previous job I had colleagues making an extra couple of hundred a month selling warez compilations (Twilight?). Word was that the group they came from was running trucks with a complete cd production factory in the back of a truck somewhere in Eastern Europe. Same goes for all the pirated stuff you find all over Asia, Latin America and Africa. Now those are not legitimate businessmen doing legitimate business. So the money ends up in the hands of mobs, who use it for other crimes.
Now the arrest of these morons (probably students) won't make a real dent in the problem and won't lead to a full sollution, but if the justice department doesn't do anything, it will continue to grow unchecked. The more it is criminalized, the less people will get on board with Warez groups and the more the justice departmen will be able to treat it like real organized crime.
(There goes my karma)
Use Adsense for Charity
Okay already, enough stick. Can we please have some carrots now?
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
We bring you yet another valiant exploit on the part of America's demoniac Attorney General, as part of the Bush administration's continuing war on peace, happiness, and anything else worth preserving in the world.
At a recent interview, Speedy's mood was triumphant.
"As our beloved Leader has often said, we are unflagging in our commitment to extend death, misery, and tyranny to every corner of the globe.
Wherever happiness exists, wherever human beings may have been under the illusion that they may be safe, wherever justice may have existed in the past, we will travel, and we will unleash our fury upon the most innocent.
The President has vowed that he will not rest until all that was previously good in the world has been erradicated, until the environment, human self-determination, and the cause of anyone to feel or seek joy have all been completely destroyed. The prisons will swell with the innocent and the unjustly accused, rivers the world over will run red with blood, and all lands anywhere in the world other than our own will be made desolate, while we enrich ourselves and ensure that our immediate loved ones alone will have any sense of safety.
We will sweep aside all opposition in our path until we have fulfilled this mission.
Onward!"
Conspiracy program about Waco on last night.
One thing they mentioned in that which may be relevent to this is that the FBI hit waco with so many feds/helicopters/tanks was to show how well they were doing and to go to committee to ask for more money.
A fund raiser as it were. I wonder if this is the same thing?
Software is not overpriced if people are willing to buy it. Just because _you_ don't want to pay the price doesn't mean it is necessarily _overpriced_.
Good rationalization of criminal activity though. It's expensive so I should steal it instead of buy it/not have it.
Lol, nice one mr Anonymous Snitch
Do you really think these guys are not aware of public warez offerings on IRC?
I would imagine getting to the root of the problem, i.e. taking down the crackers themselves and their supply + distribution channels is a lot harder than taking down large sites that redistribute. I'm guessing that busts like these are more or less scare tactics to get to the "root" indirectly. Don't know if it works though (?).
I just visited the #linuxwarez channel, and if I were law enforcement, taking down something as small as that would seem like a waste of time.
Does this remind anyone else of the raids on speakeasies in the twenties? These "get tough" tactics are likely to be as effective in stopping file sharing as Prohibition was in stopping drinking. When laws exist that make the majority of the population criminals, and I've seen estimates that more people download copyrighted files in the US alone than voted in the last Presidential election, then it is time to try the lawmakers...not the people.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Here in New Zealand the police were also contacted but upon learned it just was a bunch of geeks with some computers they said "Nah we can't be bothered". Instead they raided the local gang and recovered two cannabis plants.
right, so do you think there's no propietary software for Linux? Not everything for Linux is free.
An interesting take, but I don't see any logic to support it, and I doubt you have even the most basic grasp of any flavor of economics. Software companies are competing with other software companies, not with pirates. You have absolutely no idea what the profit margins are on any "large scale production software" so please save the bullshit and stop implying any knowledge of the subject.
Unless you'd like to actually quote some figures for us, you're welcome to try and back up your asinine assertions.
CD's cost $2-3 more then they did four years ago at discounters and there's rampant price-fixing across the entire music industry. Piracy has done nothing to lower the price of music. (You keep saying bootleggers, but that's an incorrect usage of the term.)
Microsoft's "lower priced offerings" are really an attempt to stem the adoption of open source software in developing nations While they won't openly condone any sort of piracy, Microsoft has reaped incredible benefits in the past through the direct piracy of their software, driving it to be the dominant choice across the board in computing.
Piracy may not have any effect on price, but that doesn't open doors for any sort of moral justification either. Stealing is stealing, and you should be judged equally regardless of the entity you're thieving from.
Has this pirate been caught already?
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Not if you don't want it to be.
There are 100% free/open-source distributions out there. And if you ask anyone at the GNU, then Linux is just a kernel. And as far as I can remember, that is all free.
The U.S. Department of Justice can jump and shout and stand on its head all it wants, it has absolute zero jurisdiction over any other country, although some U.S. authorities might like to think they do.
Coca-Cola, sometimes War.
this ac is just pissed cause he got +kb'd
that is pretty sick
Those jokes are not funny at all and they never were. Why not go ahead and "joke" about people being killed in prison or contracting HIV ? Not that funny any more ? Thought so.
The US is now ... Now? You think this is new? Even online, it's not new. Read "The Hacker Crackdown" by Sterling about Operation Sundevil, circa 1994.
Best Slashdot Co
Yes it is really good news for game creators !
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
"With the code-name 'Operation Site Down,' close to 100 searches were conducted globally (U.S., Canada, Israel, France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, Portugal, and Australia) within a 24-hour period, resulting in the identification of 120 individuals who are likely to be pursued by the U.S. Department of Justice."
Damn! If only Osama had been running a Warez server!
The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act.
8 sites...that's got to be like every single warez site in the country!
Wonder how many millions were spent on this "massive" take down.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
With the code-name "Operation Site Down," close to 100 searches were conducted globally (U.S., Canada, Israel, France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, Portugal, and Australia) within a 24-hour period
Geek translation: http://www.google.com/search?q=warez games&codename =operation site closedown
Actually, I believe that shutting down napster did have an effect. There was a good long period of time where Napster was the utopia of music. It was like the world's largest music store, and best of all, everything was freely available at the click of a mouse.
Almost everyone I knew had used napster at one time or another to download a song, and there were many people who'd amassed hard drives full of copyrighted music. Because napster was so easy to use, it had almost become a cultural thing and I think a lot of people skimmed by the fact that what they were doing was illegal. These people then started to hear reports in the news about how the RIAA was going after people, and maybe that gave a few of them pause, but file trading didn't really abate that much.
I think it wasn't until Napster shut down that it finally clicked for a lot of people out there. They finally realized that it was illegal, and in spite of any moral ambiguities about stealing from wealthy corporations, it was something that was going to be prosecuted as a crime.
There may be just as much piracy now as there was in the day of napster, but I think the majority of the casual users that tried napster then are not participating now over PtP networks anymore.
iTunes has made it just as easy to get a song or album, and they've made it just as easy to pay for it, providing a viable and legitimate alternative to piracy. The Yahoo music and "napster to go" offerings further increase the options for legitimate and easy digital music offerings.
If napster hadn't been shut down, I don't think the casual users out there would have gotten the wakeup call they did. Furthermore, if napster hadn't been such a success, I don't think software companies out there would have bothered to develop legal digital music sales solutions to the degree we see today.
It's a bit odd, but I think the legal music trade industry of today owes a lot to the illegal music trade of napster.
:::: the insomniac's digest
You can find "comments" from the scene people here along with a copy of two search warrants by the RCMP for two of the raids that occured in Edmonton, Canada. (Coral Cache of the above, just in case)
Some information about Site Down can be found here.
And whoever is saying that RCMP is targetting sceners, take a look at their Strategic Priorities... My bet is that, just as it happened in the States, they are being pressured by the CRTC (Canada's equivalent to MPAA and RIAA all in one), and with that new DMCA-like law, what could possibly stop them from raping every canadian file trader like they did (and continue to do) to the US'?
You didn't hear it from me!
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
They might persuade them to go for a scenic jet ride
They closed down 8 warez servers. Okay. Any guesses as to how many there are worldwide? Any guesses on how much "Operation Site Down" cost? Should it be called "Operation Waste Money"?
I noticed that none of the countries involved were in Asia which is...umm, a rather large contributor to warez, to put it mildly.
They shut down some sites to the (supposed) benefit of a handful of corporate entities. How about doing something useful, like aggressively shutting down phishing sites. You know, where criminals are trying to steal thousands of dollars from as many victims as possible? I know, I know, stopping kiddies from playing games that they couldn't have bought otherwise is important, and you politicians have to try and keep some of the lobbying pressure off of you from Copyright Barons. However if you want to help the population - you know, the actual people that elected you, not the corporate entities that now get to steer you - try concentrating on phishing, spam and worms. Oh, and figuring out a way to make Microsoft bear some actual liability for the multitude of security problems they have introduced which has affected millions of people a hundred times over would be a step in the right direction too.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Be careful of what you say about are next Supreme Court Justice!
:)
He can have the DoJ go after you and when you appeal your case all the way to the supreme court, he will vote against you.
We may have a naming conflict here... I thought that was the code-name for any /. post that links another site?
Not warez servers, COURIER SERVERS
There is a big difference between taking down the redistribution servers and taking down what amounts to the 'warez' data warehouses.
They targeted the private servers the couriers for the big groups used. These servers are very fast, and very private. They exist solely for the purpose of spreading warez to the redistribution channels.
I think a drug dealing analogy is fitting. Think of the warez web sites and the kids selling dope on the corner. This bust didn't target the nickel and dime hustlers. This bust targeted the high ups who unload the shit from the boats by the 100 of Kilo's.
It won't matter at all though, except possibly to make some zero day releases a few days behind.
"Piracy costs the entertainment software industry billions of dollars each year, harming businesses and their employees who work on the development and distribution of game products, "
Oh cry me a river.
That's only the case if you assume that every copy=one real customer lost. Back when I was into the warez scene, I had intalled and deleted hundreds of games/utils/applications. Some within minutes after muttering "this is bogus".
If someone had totalled up the number of applications, utils, and games, there is no way I could have even afforded 10 percent of that. (I actually did buy what I liked, but to put me on the figurative hook for half-hour glances at packages, well, that's dumb).
I assume that my experience is not unique.
All that is totally ignoring the _fact_ that various companies who shall remain nameless depended on warez to gain marketshare *cough* autocad *cough* Windows.
Thank Gh0d for Open Source. Everything is legit now, and kicking back some cash gives a warm fuzzy feeling, rather than the feeling of being ripped off. It's been that way for almost a decade now, and I like it.
--
BMO
Perhaps the most underrated comment on the topic. Businesses are not going to say "Hey, we can actually sell new ____ for 10 bucks less! Let's do it!" No, instead they're going to say to themselves something like "We've reduced our costs by $10 per unit. Now we're making _____ more per game on opening day!" They use piracy (arrrrrrr!) as an excuse to raise prices ("because you thieves are hurting our bottom line!") and then when it's not a major issue anymore (as in PC gaming), they don't restore prices to what they were, because they still sold enough copies at the $60 price point to make it more profitable than the $50 price point.
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
I considered it kidnapping my self... and should never happened...seems like the US of A wants to police the world
Just because copyright may not ethically be a legitimate reason not to copy these companies works, does not mean that there are not plenty of others. Every time you use the works of an immoral company like Microsoft, you are strongly supporting them. This is true even if you didn't pay them and they would prosecute you if they found out. There are no legitimate reasons for running their software, whether you pay them or not.
I suspect more slashdot readers get this than you may think. Just because I never run the sort of software they happen to prosecute for does today not mean I find the enforcement by the thought police a good thing. Tomorrow they will likely be prosecuting people for running Linux and free software. This sort of censorship, driven by corporations, will happen first in America.
I am sure they are happy they shot 8 whole sites down. Tomorrow there will be 12 bigger sites up, but hey, the are closing in fast.
Just my 2 cents...I probably don't know what I'm talking about but whatever...
;). Instead what they will do, is make a different version, stripped down and with less features (ADOBE PHOTOSHOP and then you have ADOBE ELEMENTS) and sell it to the more price conscious consumer. So now they are catering to both markets (increase market not cut prices lol) :P
:P
Regarding : only 8 sites were shut down but
thousands will spring up
This is not napster, where thousands COULD spring up as replacements, these were I'm guessing TOP sites. Where minimum requirements were lots of HD space (in the Terrabytes), and a fat pipe T3 and OC3's. So thousands of replacement sites will not just spring up and NO the release groups will not have your cablemodem site you run out of your house as a HQ.
Regarding : Extradition
President Bush has probably tied this to the fight against terrorism. Note this is probably Bush's logic (Piracy directly or indirectly brings in funds through the it's sales to buy arms. The warez groups are not terrorists but by putting this stuff out, even for fun makes it available for terrorists to sell. The other countries will probably comply to extradite because hey it's the fight against terrorism "YOU are EITHER WITH US OR AGAINST US".
remember that line? hah!
Regarding : Software prices are expensive as they are because of the pirates, and ADOBE would probably charge less money if it wasn't for them.
I'm sorry, but come on, ADOBE is a public company responsible for it's shareholders to MAXIMIZE profits, increase earnings and silly stuff like that
Price cutting is not a marketing strategy when you have a VIRTUAL MONOPOLY...they did just buy up MACROMEDIA...so much for competition eh
Prices go down because of competition example : AMD vs INTEL
Regarding : That's all they got? 120 people across all those nations? Those kind of figures won't even slow warez down.
It won't slow it down? The last release (Game) not (APP) or (MOVIE) was July 2nd, today's post is July 11th...that's 9 days without a game relase, where on AVERAGE releases were released every couple of days. This could be just a quiet down/cooling off period but that remains to be seen.
Regarding : A whole 8 warez servers? NOW which of the other 1.6 million will I choose from?!
8 top sites, there are not that many top sites, and you probably were never on one of them, this is not a slight in any way towards you...and even on the top sites not everyone in a release group had access to them. Say 10 release groups had access to 1 top site, that site will take only a handful of members from that group to allow on. Groups were competing with other groups to get onto sites. The 1.6 million sites (bottom of the chain) you refer to will RECYCLE what has currently been released and probably not supply something NEW.
Games and Apps releases are not like MP3s where you can just buy for 15$ at the store press a button to rip it, and trade with your buddies.
Games and Apps releases are not like DVDrips where you can buy them for 15$ or rent them for 5$ press a button to rip them and trade with your buddies.
Games are 50'sh bux each, which require security removal which I take it is not easily done with a press of a button. Apps are 50-10,000$ which require security removal as well. So not only do you need initial funds to acquire the release you'll need some techinical skills to remove the protection.
Final thoughts...finally
Most of these groups did it for fun, With President Bush passing that new law where it makes it much more of an offence to trade and stuff (10 years?) it is no longer FUN...
Since President Bush is on his crusade as is, he ought to look at SPAM. The profits of that crap HAS to be funding terrorist groups!!!! haha...
Its about time they had a victory from their 'Don't Copy That Floppy' (17MB) Advertising Campaign.
May this post be indexed by spiders, and archived for all to see as my Internet epitaph.
It's the only place I've been to that sells all sorts of pirated software... in supermarkets.
Who is he ? In the past years I've seen tons of people getting banned from lwz due to scorns insanity. He even messed around with all the other ops of that channel and pissed plenty of them off. Lwz is nothing more than an dead channel full of freaking faggots without life. No communication nanymore, no chats, no talks nothing.
Hi Mr troll
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
...bombs exploded all over London.
Do you think maybe our tax dollars are being wasted? Maybe instead of cracking down on petty 'thefts' where its highly questionable whether they result in truly measurable losses or rather increase sales in the long run, they should...I don't know...crack down on mass murderers with bombs??
Not necessarily. Warez is what gets most people used to those high-cost programs. If noone pirated Photoshop people would buy the lower priced alternatives instead. That means all the people looking for work at the big companies have no experience with Photoshop and PSP would probably vbe the most widely used program. Since a company is more likely to buy what their employees can handle they won't get some high-cost package noone ever used before. I.e. the less people learn to use Photoshop with their warez copies the less companies are going to buy Photoshop.
Same goes for all other high-cost packages like 3d Studio MAX or Maya.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
it's "Sklyarov", not "Skylarov", although I know the latter seems much more pleasing to the English speaker.
So there's an office of Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section in the U.S. Department of Justice? Talk about conflict of interests.
google.com/seach?q=warez+ softwareo gle.com/seach?q=cracks ...
google.com/seach?q=free
google.com/seach?q=pirated+software
go
They need to run "Operation Pick Better Operation Names".
Yeah. That's what I was kind of pointing at. Kind of sucks that the mod's call me a troll because I call using WAREZ WRONG and I call downloading MP3's WRONG. Note that I detest DRM still and I am on the side of LEGAL P2P use....which means sometimes I side on the side of the downloaders. Downloading WAREZ is wrong too. If you want software, for free, go download Linux or FreeBSD and you can do about 99.9999 percent of what you need to do with those OS's and the exceptions are getting fewer now adays. EASY video editing is not there yet....all Linux packages for this seem to try and make it look like Primere or some fancy editing program...I need something like iMovie...something easy, and simple. Kino and Cinelerra ain't easy. Kino looks to be easier then Cinelerra, but iMovie seems, to me, to be better over all and is dead easy to use. Exactly what I want for this. Once that has been fixed, I can switch to Linux and will possibly do this on my Powerbook.
Gorkman
And that puts an end to software piracy. I mean look at the War on Drugs, we won that years ago.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
Hmmm. Let's assume that companies lose some sales because some people would have bought the software but for free versions. So the company is out some sales -- unless they reduce their price, right?
But actually, their price is based on a profit margin calculated to give them only a reasonable return on their R&D. There is no 'rent', unless they have _no_ competitor. There is only a reasonable profit, comparable to other industries. They have to pay the coders' and managers' salaries. They are in competition with other software companies, and can't afford a larger profit margin than their competitors. So what happens?
R&D, or other costs, must be reduced along with any reduction in price. If not, the price would actually have to increase, to cover their costs with a smaller number of sales. If the price doesn't increase then, the company either gets smaller, gets more efficient, or goes away.
It would be nice if these "successful" operations reflected the reality that the copyright cartels want to make us believe. Allegedly, having these things available for free keeps the profit incentive down so nobody will sell them. So now that all the warez servers are being busted, all of the old products they provide that you can't get anywhere else should become financially attractive to market, right? So can I start actually buying some of these old things from some kind of nostalgia retailer?
Because personally, while I'm an extremist who would like all copyright law repealed, I'm also principled enough that the only reason I break copyright is to get old items that are no longer available on the market. There are pieces of personal history I want to get ahold of, like games I used to play growing up and music I used to hear. I can't get these things at all without breaking copyright. It would be nice to know that using our government in this heavy-handed manner to shut down the copyright violators would actually result in these products coming back to market rather than being thrown in a closet somewhere and locked away from all of us, to be lost in the interim while we wait for the copyright to expire, if it ever does.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
You can hide behind moderation and calling people trolls.
I'm no martyr.
Nor am I, except with respect to the knee-jerk slashdot censors.
I'd use linux if I could but my customers use software that only runs on windows.
And will continue to be Windows-only as long as you support it that way.
This is the way it is with many embedded systems tools.
And you are doing what to change the situation?
You can nail yourself to a tree for your principles if you wish but I'm gonna take a holiday at the end of the year with the money I've earned using *immoral* software.
As will, no doubt, Bill Gates and many others.
I prefer to earn my holidays making the world a better place.
I may be an unusual case, but take this example. I'd never even heard of 'Dungeon Lords' until I snagged it off of some bittorrent site. I liked it enough that a week later, I went out and bought a copy. In this case, it seems likely that the company would have lost that sale if it *hadn't* been pirated...
If a giant oil company wanted an abortion, would W's head explode?
Thats the biggest BS answer of them all. People get used to these because the either use them at work or use them in school. Then they want it at home and don't want to spend the buckaroos. I install NO pirated software at home...ever. Every piece of software I have has a valid license. Every single one.
For God sakes, stop wasting time and money on this bullshit and start doing something useful. How about catching a real criminal, there's enough child molesters and terrorist out there to keep you guys busy.
Let's coordinate this massive multi-national effort to... catch copyright enforcement. Are you f%#king kidding me! It's really sad that our governments efforts are dictated by the music, movie and gaming industry's money... err I mean lobbying.
Not that I personally give much of a hoot about corporate profits I don't. I don't subscribe to the piracy == lost sales argument either. In fact, like many others I believe piracy is great asset to many software companies, after all 100% free distribution plus you still get your 'honest' customers to pay for the stuff, sounds like having your cake and eating it to me.
However, and I know I may get flamed here, but if Open source equivalents were as slick and as easy to use as their propreitary counterparts not only may it held curb piracy (if that is an important aim, which I'm not convinced it is) but it would probably be a massive blow to these companies who are crying about piracy and endorsing these token arrests.
Opensource has already won on the server and development front. Good inroads on the graphics/desktop/workstation front with Gimp, Blender, Open Office etc. But come up with killer looking apps that are as a good or better than Photoshop, Maya etc. and the effects could be enormous.
This seems akin to RIAA thugs going around raping people who pirate a song. Would you stand for that if they came for your son or daughter? No, you'd call the cops, and pick up a weapon.
feh. stuff.
Yeah, but thats not how it tends to work. Granted profit margins do play a part of prices, the key factor is whether the product is going to sell at all. Now when the price comes down, assuming the market is functioning correctly, and it usually does, volume increases, and assuming the company has done its sums correctly, profit as a whole goes up and thus the scope for R&D.
Keep in mind also, that quality plays a part in it as well.
Say I'm a musician and I'm using a copy of Cakewalk (or whatever they use these days) to make my midi compositions on. Being poor as fuck, I cant afford the $300 , so I scan the "War3z broz" ftp site and find a nice cracked copy thats had the dongle busted off it. Its OK. It works, but its glitchy due to the fairly brutal nature of the hacks involved, but it works. Now I'm factoring a few issues in here; My need, The quality, and how much I think its worth. I'm also keeping in mind theres a low level risk to myself of the cops kicking in the door. So theres a pay off and a trade off. Now Cakewalk suddenly notices that theres a bunch of musicians who arent buying there software, but instead grabbing the cracked version. They have two options. (1) Lower the price and (2) Increase the quality to provide me an incentive to buy the product. Chances are they will take a combination of the two.
Now theres a $220 version of it that now features "wizzdangling" and "froogle looping" and it won't crash as long as the dongle is in. I evaluate my current buggy copy , go "oooh. It'd be nice to be able to wizzdangle, and I hate losing my work. Shit hey, it'd also be nice to be able to have a nice box and the safety of having a non warezed version. And I can now afford it." So I hand over my $220 to cakewalk , go home and install it and start froogle looping and wizzdangling away.
Cakewalk also just made a sale, and are now able to divert that money into R&D. Whereas without the piracy, I might still be stuck with a pen and paper and wishing I had enough money to buy Cakewalk which still can't wizzdangle, because theres no competition and thus no incentive to innovate.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
I'm actually surprised this isn't categorized as "Your Rights Online" -- seems like any time the awful federal government does anything to keep us from downloading anything we want any way we want, on behalf of the awful "rich," it's a constitutional rights violation, according to slashdot.
Nice to see something properly categorized.
In other news, "Operation Site Down"? They call THAT a code-name? Back in my day we had way better code-names. Like Desert Shield, which became Desert Storm once the bombs started falling. That wasn't bad. Then when we started fighting back after September 11th I knew there was only one code name for the job: "Operation Scorned Eagle" -- but they wimped out and called it "Enduring Freedom". Then the thing in Iraq took a page from the same playbook -- "Iraqi Freedom".
Man, they just took all the fun out of code names. I think they should have called this one "Lounging Caterpillar" or something. Not because it's descriptive (aren't they supposed to NOT be descriptive, since they're "code" names?), but because it's fun to come up with the names.
RP
You can't compare the real world with technology! If you did then you'd have to have a machine that is capable of duplicating the barber shop and then replicating the barber where you never pay the original barber and what I just said doesn't make much sense does it?
And if we were to agree that your analogy works for real life, we'd have to also consider that since you didn't pay the barber you would face some extreme punishment when caught say $200,000 fine or cruxification! For a $9 dollar hair cut!
Legally it's wrong, but morally... It's a gray area with software.
One should get credit and money for a job well done in software, but I think it's morally wrong to punish people with far greater force than you lost.
It's like shooting people who get caught for speeding. The punishment does not fit the crime!
Make the person when caught with the pirated software pay for the exact amount of what the software cost in the store. Not some $200,000 per copy.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Its sad when the local warez sites go down especially not the pRon stuck useful ones where I leech my ass off for 23/7...what I gotta sleep sometime.
I know some of you are like why didn't we put together this multinational effort to track down some terrorists. The fact is that we're scared of real bad guys. They tend to shoot real bullets and warez kiddies are easier to arrest.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. What planet did you come from? Price is based on what they can get enough customers to pay so that their profit is maximized. If MS based its price of Office on a "reasonable return on their R&D", it might be priced at $20, not $500 (or whatever it is). Their profit margin on it is obscene; R&D costs have long been absorbed. But if it weren't for competitors (and possibly even piracy) it might be priced at $50,000 (if they determined that was the price point that maximizes their profit).
Actually, in this case I'd say piracy has helped them more than hurt them by increasing market penetration and customer lock-in.
I bet the Warez traders are really furious that their "service to the public" is being shut down. After all, they're doing it as a matter of principle. The Warez world is a gift culture, just like open source, except in the Warez world all you need to be 1337 is the ability to operate both mIRC and a pirated copy of Norton Registry Tracker.
I hope you understand why I don't have the least bit of sympathy about this. I read the press release, and they don't get into BSA-speak or wax philosophical about the nature of copying bits from one computer to another. They throw out some figures which cannot either be proven or disproven, but everyone knows this. They (obviously) applaud the action that international law enforcement took on their behalf. Whether or not you think Warez should be a crime, you can't fault them for thanking people who are doing things that are good for them.
Everyone I've ever known who was heavily into Warez did one of three things:
1) Got a girlfriend and discovered more important things they could be doing.
2) Learned how to program, got into open source, and changed their IRC handle and will now deny to the death that they ever used the old one.
3) Became a drug addict and dropped out of school.
I do, however, oppose putting Warez traders in jail, as they will no longer have their mothers coming downstairs every afternoon nagging them to get a job. Many of them are in fact quite intelligent, and will become productive members of society once they get out of their parents' house, and get some education and/or therapy.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
It's not justification, and it's not theft.
feh. stuff.
That's why there's a free Maya educational version
This story is not really about how the government shut down a bunch of warez sites. This is about how the government is absolutely in the pocket of big corporations. They put a fancy spin on it, but intelligent people should be able to plainly see the truth. When will we ever reach a critical mass of people who have figured out what's really going on? I don't think it's too late to save this country from going into the crapper, but we're getting close...
Somehow I seriously doubt that; probably what would really happen is Adobe or some other company could earn more on training. Lower priced alternatives typically don't have all the features a professional graphic designer would use making it a lower priced but rather useless alternative.
Yaknow what? No one who has to download an illegal copy of Adobe Photoshop is going to buy a $999 license instead. NO ONE. Adobe's pricing model is, in a word, laughable, as evidenced by the pricing model used by Macromedia.
In truth if I'd had to pay for the software I would pick Fireworks or a Macromedia option over Photoshop in a HEARTBEAT. Does this mean that my ability to pirate Adobe Photoshop can, in fact, be claimed in the "piracy losses" of Macromedia? Hmmm....
Given I probably wont have that option since Adobe has gobbled up their only competition, but the point is that the software and music industry's "stated losses" from downloading and piracy are insultingly off base.
I actually think this is one reason that the public brushes off all these claims and tell both to go blow themselves; they no longer respect or believe any of the companies involved. People are naive, but they aren't by and large total morons, and even a naive simpletone can see through a company claiming "$10 billion" in losses from people downloading their program, if only in light of their own actions (i.e., Joe Schmo knows he wouldn't have bought the software).
-rt
Grandparent said for Linux. And there is proprietary software for Linux, such as Railroad Tycoon II and Oracle.
I would like to announce the start of "Operation Kiss My Ass."
http://xs4.xs.to/pics/04481/p556222.gif
I call bullshit!
8, eh? How underwhelming! There's at least 8 warez servers on my Roadrunner trunk thanks to unpatched Windows machines...
Which is the the greater crime?
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Do they take out sites that specialize in virus and worm creation tools, for the script kiddies?
No. Pirated games.
Right up there with the summer of 2001, when Ashcroft had FBI agents hunting down prostitutes in New Orleans (google for it: they *did*).
More of our tax dollars out of work.
mark
I know that there are a large number of people who pirate only so they don't blow money on crap games. Basically a ridiculously large demo.
/bad/ games. Once these guys get to preview the good games they've pirated, it's a bit harder for them to convince themselves to pay money for what they've already got on their harddrive.
Demos kinda died because people hated the 600mb+ demo. But we've got more bandwidth these days and I'd much prefer a 600mb demo to a 4gig pirated dvd game. Especially when I find out I hate the game.
More demos won't stop piracy, but it'll grease the transition for pirates who have money(i.e the only pirates who matter) to just buy the game if they decide they want it instead of having them download the full versions of a ton of really
Giving them the demo allows them to know they want it, before the full version is on their computer. This window of opportunity could be the deciding point for purchase or piracy.
I'd also like to make mention of a program that many here hate. Steam. I hate it as a game-matching system, it's gone through a horde of problems. However, as a content distribution method, it worked flawlessly for me. I bought HL2, downloaded it, and was merrily blasting the baddies with no hitches. However, Valve's main purpose in developing Steam wasn't simply to distribute HL2. That was just a step. What they really want is for other game developers to come to them. They've just pulled in their first taker, Ritual Entertainment will distribute the first episode of the sequel to SiN via Steam.
Note I said episode. Steam allows for games to arrive on your harddrive bit by bit. This works great for demos. This is especially useful to bring in the try-before-buy piraters. Again, nobody cares about the piraters who absolutely refuse to pay. Another bonus that comes in the Steam distribution system is that it the game developer doesn't forfeit massive amounts of money to the producing company. The developers will be seeing more of the profits so voting with your wallet swings a little heavier.
Well, I did say basically "unless they have monopoly power"... What I meant was that, sure, they'll set the price at the optimum point to maximize profits, but in most cases, if there is at least some competition, they can only get a comparable profit margin to their competitors.
Hmmm... follow the trail of corporate dollars on the floor! I have the feeling that these companies will be seeing less money from businesses due to less people being familiar with their products...
A wise person makes his own decisions, a weak one obeys public opinion. -- Chinese proverb
Yes, I think things do happen sometimes like the scenario you described.
But in general, don't you think that when warez put pressure on software pricing, they may have to eventually cut costs? Maybe not at U.S. piracy levels, but if piracy went up to 90% or so, as it is in China, I think it would be difficult for companies even to QA, let alone new development.
It's not a black and white problem, clearly. But I do think piracy has to be kept at a reasonably low level for U.S. companies to continue to hire U.S. coders, and offer a decent product.
Is Grand Inquisitor Gonzales going to torture these suspects personally? Or will he "render" them to one of our "allies"?
--
make install -not war
he same amount of developer time is taken up if 1 person dowloads it or 1 million people do
The reality of digital media is that entails incrementally less cost per copy as far as the developer is concerned, but the potential value derived from the media by each downloader remains constant. The question is, then, regardless of the cost to the developer, why should it cost any less if you're the first downloader, or the 1,000,000th downloader?
You mean Adobe Elements ?...
What was your point again ?
It looks dark blue to me.
Yea okay, so now they've arrested a few more of our so called "public enemies". Great. Why, again?
We hear how much money these huge corporations are losing every day, yet noone bothers to check the facts.
The very few facts that actually DO exist (companies don't feel like publishing their own investigations for some reason...) shows that the music industry are losing a small or no percentage of their yearly profits. Why? Well, you listen to cd more than once.
Movies, however, is a different story, and I can only speak for myself.
If I download a movie, I do that because I would never go see it in theatres anyways, so the movie industry aren't losing money they wouldn't "lose" anyways.
So, games, then? Again, I can only speak for myself, and I never play games that doesn't have multiplay online, and those always demand a cd-key, so I buy those.
Since I switched to linux a few years ago though, I have only played Quake III - which I bought, and haven't downlaoded or played another game since.
I guess we should arrest Linux Thorvalds for creating Linux in the first place, since I'm not using an OS that is supported by most games. Maybe we should arrest the developers behind Doom3 because they DIDN'T support linux?
No wait, I got it. Lets arrest me, because I dont use that pathetic excuse for an Operating System anymore.
Copyright holders are seeing more than this. Basicaly the assume that you are going to let others download a copy; increasing your penalty. ej. Joe Warez Rocket uploads HL2 and 100,000 guys download the pirated copy. So your punishment in theyr head should be 49.99$ x 100,000 = $4,999,000.00.
Problem in this analogy is: one should not be punished for others violation of copiright law.
BSD licensed software can't be stolen....
And not the bombers in London!
Seriously, they can devote this type of attention to a minor property crime when terrorists escape capture!
Hey DoJ - WHERE THE PHRAK IS OSAMA!?!
You incompetent boobs. Get the actual bad guys - you know the ones trying to blow shit up first!
American General: We're about to commence operation bomb the crap out of your house. The guy who thinks up the names is on vacation. FIRE!
A fast mexican? It could only be a cartoon character.
so...how about that Bin Laden guy? is he making appearances with Elvis now?
So, I would like to see when USA is going to bring "real" justice to its own most hated country in the world.
Microsoft has evaluated the value of a pirated Windows OS to be $1. Take the ratio out of it's normal cost, and that should give you the ratio of people who would buy the product otherwise. If you consider how many hundreds of people got to learn and experience windows due to to this, you would realize that it actually works as a very cost efficient marketing and advertisement to people who would not otherwise use it.
Microsoft's dominant market position is very largely due to piracy. If Windows wasn't available, all those people would be using Linux.
Now instead of sharing online, all of my friends use private ftp's and cd burners to distribute our music. The ones who were clever enough to get napster are still clever enough to avoid paying for their music now. At the end of the day, man, people do what they want as much as they can.
Napster WAS good for the music industry. The MPAA is making a similar mistake the music industry made, but not quite. Bootlegs SELL RECORDS. mp3s don't include the art work, the physical thing the consumer can hold and cherish (like the LP back in the day). And back then, at least, IMHO mp3s were not the quality of 16-bit CDs. IMO mp3s sound like a plate of @ss.
I really think the number of people who dled a mp3 back then, liked the artist and went out and bought the CD more than made up for the number that just horded as many mp3s as possible (more than they'd ever be able to actually listen to) just because of the excitement of doing something wrong. I considered mp3s to be about broadcast quality, not "digital quality," so why didn't the record industry go after radio stations when people used to make mix cassettes off radio back in the '80s? Because its absurd. Record sales slowed down slightly after the Napster fiasco... they lost sales... and the proof is the number of legal and free mp3's of singles available on the web... they are trying to get that "try before you buy" demographic back.
For the movie industry, its a little different. Their motivation is the principle (not the greed, as in the case of the record industry) They spend a lot of money trying to prevent piracy, and it doesn't work. Its wasted money (remember that MIT interview with the head of the MPAA, and the interviewer had written a little DVD decoder... and the MPAA just couldn't believe how easy it was to twart the hundreds of millions of dollars they spent trying to prevent such things). The problem is, their piracy prevention efforts only serve to stiffle the fair use rights of those that don't pirate in the first place.
for software, I think it is quite different. I have a friend who is a pirate (who just won't listen to reason). His crazy justification is that he can't afford the software, so he wouldn't be buying it anyway, so they are not loosing revenue. But I thought of another good point (at least in the case of professional applications, not games): if someone who can't afford pro software gets it and learns it and uses it, they might get a job somewhere that has bought the software. OR the pirate might recommend this software to a co. they work at and the developers get their money back in this form.
Personally, I have a lot of respect for developers. They are smart people, usually not complete @ssholes, and the work they do is not easy... and every year their salaries go down because of foreign labor. I miss the days when a 14 year old game developer could buy a Porche with cash... even though he couldn't drive, I think was still deserving of that sort of fast income.
The Admin and the Engineer
"Just business" is a lame excuse for supporting criminality, and I am sure you wouldn't tell the justice department to stop shutting down warez sites because "it is just software".
I happen to care deeply about software, and the criminality of the current marketplace makes the world a much worse place.
I oppose carmakers who would effectively weld the hood shut or drug companies whose research is primarily how to create a government-enforced health-care monopoly, all consistent with my principles with respect to software.
For a person who behaves like he never heard that free software is not principally about cost, or ignores it being personally a complete sellout, why would I expected him to be anything but the biggest part of the problem?
I pay for and support free (as in freedom) software all the time, just as surely as you support its enemies. Support of its enemies is not responsible behavior by software professionals, even if customers from the clueless masses will never know the difference.
See: John Wayne Bobbit.
Nuff sed.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
What a stupid name, it like operation scratch my bum. Or operation park my car..
If they can eventually bust or scare all the warez dealers, OS's like Linux will continue to grow in popularity. Thanks!
Meh.
I think I find this action questionable:
American can sleep better tonight, knowing that those lowest of all low lifes, (the downloader in super hero underweaz), is now being actively persued by Barbie's version of the law enforcement. Consider, a twenty-plus year vertern F.B.I. agent having to decide between arresting Bin Ladin, or a 14 year old that just downloaded "Raze of Nations, the Hackers Edition".
The corporations are forced to lower their prices to compete, not so much with the ones selling it at a huge profit, as with the ones giving it away for free. Who in his right mind would pay for warez that he is already taking a risk using? Not that it is never harmful to the company, but compared to those who give it away...
Doesn't any one see the irony of this being posted by "taxevader"?
I think someone is just getting a little nervous.
Make the person when caught with the pirated software pay for the exact amount of what the software cost in the store. Not some $200,000 per copy.
Then, where's the deterrent? Why bother actually paying for the game at all? Pirate it, if you get caught you'll only end up paying the $50 (or whatever) you would have paid for it to begin with. There's no real risk in making the illegal choice over the legal one.
By this logic, if I go into a computer store and get caught stealing a $2000 laptop, my only punishment should be to pay the $2000? That said, if I were going to buy a laptop anyway, why not try and steal it? Worst that happens is I end up paying for it anyway, but I just might get away with a free laptop! Zero deterrent.
What then would be the punishment for speeding? If you get caught driving 10 MPH over the speed limit, they make you drive 10 MPH under the speed limit for a day to balance it off? No, there needs to be sufficient enough punishment to make people think twice about breaking the law to begin with.
I agree that the punishment should fit the crime, and that $200,000 is extreme. But the punishment does need to be harsh enough to make it not worth the risk to make the illegal choice.
Software prices will be coming down now, right? RIGHT???
The problem with your solution is that the people in consideration didn't just own the copy, they gave it away freely. Therefore, if the fine was to fit the crime it would have to be proportional to the number of copies those people gave away. Since that number is not quantifiable in most cases, an arbitrary dollar value must be set. $200k is the equivalent of 4,000 copies or so. Is that too high? I think so. But value what isn't?
Have they lowered the prices, to make sure ppl buy their products easier? No.
/try/ to cure the symptoms. I think they are perfectly aware of why this is happening, but refuse to do something about it. This is simply an attempt to achieve control.
Do they make their products better? No.
Result:
- Buying a game is a major investment, so ppl are more likely to download a game to check it out first.
- Since buying a game is such an investment, ppl are supposed to recieve quality (not only beauty)... guess what, nine out of ten games aren't fun, a lot of games are buggy and most are resource hogs. So ppl are more likely to take a look at the full version first (demos aren't enough, most of the time), before they decide to buy... guess what, bad games don't get bought.
But instead of curing the desease they
That being said, I would agree that the blanket 200,000 for one copy seems extreme, but even this could vary by situation.
Clearly it is time for a bit of an overhaul of the legal code in this area.
We appologise to our viewers for the mistake in the opertation names, the people responsible for the operation names have been fired.
Just because something is created in 1's and 0's, doesn't make any difference. Someone constructed that program from 1's and 0's the same way a carpenter constructs a chair from wood and nails.
Welcome to the digital age, where not all creations are tangible objects.
Someone had to sit down and work with the 1's and 0's to create an end result product, the same way that a jeweler makes a ring from a bit of gold, or a writer makes a story from ink and paper. The question about whether or not these are real products should not factor at all.
i love their cryptic code name...
'operation site down'
i would have no idea what they were talking about if i overheard that on the phone...
-judging another only defines yourself
I, for one, commend our valiant Attorney General for this heroic action to make sure our proceless intellectionual property is safe from potential terrorist use - if only due to the fact that while he's involved with this he has less time to write memos justifying torture...
That is all.
even if customers from the clueless masses will never know the difference.
I can hear the diesel engines now and the belch of smoke as the cattle trucks move off taking the unwashed masses to the re-education camps. What a world we have to look forward too.
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
If you accept this argument (and I don't), then piracy still costs the customer money because it drives other developers out of the market -- nobody can afford to make a "Photoshop for the Rest of Us" because they have to compete against regular Photoshop priced at, uh, free. Take a look at pirated productivity applications and how little customer choice there is in those sectors -- how is anybody supposed to convince you to pay $40 for "just the word processor features you actually need without all the bloat of Office" when you can get office for nada? Its like giving Microsoft/Adobe a special-ops abusive business practices team which can't be trust-busted because it isn't legal to begin with.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Nope, it's true!
A free download!
Just, a bit of unabashed on-topic self-promotion....
http://www.brendamake.com/numbers/
Yeah...I'm an idiot. I misread that at first and realized what the poster was saying.
1. Warez are illegal. 2. Apparently some /.ers support warez.
3. There are several hundred thousand /.ers, and there is undoubtedly a large fraction who similarly support warez
4. Why isn't there an organization or entity lobbying to change the law? Why is nobody even trying?
5. Because this subset of /.ers who support warez are apathetic, politically impotent, and lacking in passion for their own principles. Rhetoric and bickering will not yield a victory here.
How would a letter to your local legislators in support of warez sound? If you can sell the idea of stealing expensive software to a 50-year-old Congressman, I wish you Godspeed with your revolution. If not, consider the remote possibility that warez are wrong.
I'm always amazed that the pirate's bay gets a pass. I thought I read that the swiss have passed a law banning giving away copyrighted materials, I check the website. There are two big American anti-warez operations I check the site they're still there. Those guys are godlike.
Maya PLE was released together with Unreal Tournament 2003. Most people have more than two years of experience and back then the low cost and free alternatives were awful in comparison to Maya or MAX. Never mind that working with that stupid watermark will turn you insane pretty quickly.
Another problem with those learning packages (GMAX, PLE) is that you can't get your stuff into any usable format from there, i.e. you can't learn stuff like ingame modeling from there if you'd like experience with games other than UT2003/04 or Quake 3, depending on your package. Sure you can learn modeling itself on a low-cost or free app but it's very unlikely that you'll seriously get used to the MAX or Maya workflow if you use them only for the occassional practise.
Do the learning versions even support normalmaps? That's a critical feature if you want to be prepared for a future job and heavily influences the way you work.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
If the fine is only for the amount of the theft, then there is no deterrent factor - the punishment just puts you back to the status quo ante.
/.ers would favor death for spammers, virus writers and GPL violators), but getting caught has to have some negative impact beyond paying the original price.
The death penalty is extreme (though most
Yes but how would the aspiring artist know about those features? How could he integrate them into his workflow?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I can't find any articles that talk about how useful Elements is for painting, they all talk about digital photography. Photoshop is currently the most widely used painting application.
Point or not, a majority of todays professionals learned their trade on warez versions of professional software. Maybe because back when they learned their trade those apps were still priced at a few thousand USD and all those "introductory versions" that have been popping up lately weren't available.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
This is one of the best ideas I've heard in a long time. Rather than put the (petty) criminals into time out where they will be exposed to a very unfavorable atmosphere, pump them back into the industry they were stealing from. They'll learn exactly what kind of effort goes into the games that they are stealing, and hopefully reeducate them in a new light. This is an idea that could be applied to many other forms of computer/white collar crimes.
We need more people with knowledge of the industry that they are passing laws on, making laws.
Respect to you Radius.
Most people aren't thought about after they're gone. "I wonder where Rob got the plutonium" is better than most get.
Under that scenario, how many people wouldn't try to see if they could get it for free, since at worse they'd simply have to pay for what they wanted anyway?
So in real life, try shoplifting and if you get caught, you get detained, arrested, booked, questioned, tried, convicted, and thrown in jail. End result? The potential gain (the $50 game) isn't worth the potential risk.
Now, if you want to track the site for a while and charge the warez site owner the exact amount for EACH copy he allowed to be downloaded....
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
What a world we live now, devoid of a basic understanding or appreciation of freedom. Some think it means slaughter and otherwise suppressing, one way or another, everyone who doesn't agree to bow and conform to the powers that be.
As to whether the individual clueless are unwashed or readily climb into cattle trucks, I doubt you can validly make such a generalization, whatever may be true of your own personal situation. Citizens often need something slightly flashier. Marketing by government-backed oligarchies has generally been more effective with the citizenry than explicit coercion reserved for the untermenschen chosen for vilification.
Entertainment Software Association plays "Whack-A-Mole".
Two words: Limewire, bitches.
The art gallery analogy is just slightly flawed, sneaking in is more like showing people how to hack Valve's Steam engine to get free Half-Life 2.
;)).
The "copyright infringement" approach would be someone paying to get in, taking pictures of everything (with "no pictures" signs hanging up on the wall), and renting a building or something where they blow up their pictures to the actual size and make an exact copy of the art gallery and charging nothing for people to come in, without the same people that are actually IN the art gallery, only some of your friends (no network play, only LAN games
The whole purpose of these laws are not merely to compensate the 'victim', but to dissuade people commiting the offense in the first place.
Okay, then $50 (and maybe say $30 extra) for the game goes to the company, and the other "deterrent fee" goes to the government. None of this "I deserve $200k" bullshit from the companies.
If you think this is unfair to the businesses, making them less likely to take people to court, well, that's the case with all civil cases. My dad owned a car lot and still has people that owe money on their cars. They aren't paying and the only thing he can do is take them to court and get a court order to get them to pay, and when they don't, they get thrown in jail for disobeying the court. He's not going to do that though considering the thousands of dollars the lawyer would cost him, and the zero gain he will get out of it.
They didn't mention Sweden. Thank god they didn't mention Sweden.
Direct away from face when opening.
Of course I can acquire a legal copy of a fully functional version of MICROSOFT's OFFICE software for around $20 that does everything I need it to do.
That is because there hasn't been a meaningful update to Office since 97.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Shouldn't it be Operation ADJECTIVE NOUN?
Operation Exploding Server maybe.
if you think about it, all the programs, songs, movies, blah blah blah, are just one gigantic number (in base 2). so really, all the people are doing are sharing numbers. and, i know this might sound a little bit stupid but, isn't suing someone for sharing numbers against freedom of speech?
Looks like I'm gonna have to stop downloading games now. First the MPAA, then RIAA, now ESA. I'm running out of content that's not protected by a consortium or group! What's left? software and ebooks?!
The double standard stems from the double threshold of abuse intolerance.
From what I've seen, women always get defensive at the slightest insult, while men usually have more important things to worry about and will respond only to actual threats.
In an absolute sense, rape may be pretty damned bad to either gender. But there are far worse things that can happen to a person, and most frequently to a man, just in his line of work. The male-dominated agricultural, military, and construction industries are fraught with safety hazards.
So in this relative sense, i.e. compared to getting your arms torn off by a hay-bailer, rape is a joke. Men actually do joke about men getting raped. Women complain about rape as if their world had come to an end, and subsequently we men pamper them and prosecute it as a very serious crime... as if the female victim's sole purpose in life had been derailed by the crime. But I'd rather get HIV-raped 1000 times than be paralyzed for life by falling off some scaffolding in the course of just trying to earn a living to support my wife and kids.
So I'd say, men have a larger perspective on things... hence the double standard.
Forgot to mention that sweden also passed a bill that makes a 24 cent tax on each blank cd. Here in USA I can find blank cds 100 for $5 or $10. And blank DVDR at $20 for 100. Now you swedes have to pass more than DVDR prices for cds lol. "for example, the levy on a recordable CD will be SEK 1.75 or US $0.24, thereby almost doubling its typical price. This is even higher than in Canada, a hotbed of blank media levies, where the uplift is CAD 0.21 (US $0.16), which is more like a 50% surcharge." http://www.drmwatch.com/legal/article.php/3508086
It's still not $200,000 dollars if you get caught stealing at the store.
A good lawyer wouldn't even cost a fraction of that to defend you for shop lifting theft and you'd probaly get about 48 hours in jail and 6 weeks community service, but not have to declare bankrupty and spend 5 years in jail.
Heck... If you plea bargin and the store doesn't press charges they might just drop the charges. I don't think you'd get the same treatment with IP violations.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Still a bad analogy. If enough people get in through the back door, the place will eventually fill up, and you won't be able to sell anymore tickets (barring using spare vertical space to put people in).
You can't compare something like software (stored digitally, copied digitally) to the tangible world.
This is the same argument I use for mp3's, I download mp3's and games for one of two reasons:
1)I will NEVER buy the album/game as it IMHO is not quite my cup of tea. For example, I may download a David Bowie album, I would never buy a David Bowie album, but I may _occasionaly_ want to listen to it.
2)This is the MAIN reason I download/pirate stuff, TO TRY IT OUT! If I like it I will buy it! Simple as that! I still buy games and music, and I am sure this is true of most people. We don't just stop going to the movies, buying games, CD's or whatever else there is to pirate!
Take last weekend for example; I had already pirated a copy of the new Prince of Persia game. I loved it, and so I went and bought it. I am still even using the warez copy on my PC, but using the authentic play disc! How can this possibly hurt anybody?
He who has the gold makes the rules.
Mind the frickin' laser...
put the servers in north korea and tell the money mongers to kiss your anonymous ass.
Wow!! I surprised tin foil timmy didn't categorize this as "You're rights onlined"
Just got the "a user has moderated your post". *15* mod points were burned on the parent to end up at a +1 Funny. - Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
...down to zero, so it looked blue to me. My mistake. And yes, it does suck.
Unfortunately, from past experience, I know too much about this part of the Internet.
What everyone fails to recognize when these raids occur, is that it's just not teenagers stealing software.
The entire system is the problem and many of the same groups running the servers have carders and hackers/crackers associated with them.
Everyone would be up in arms about identity theft and credit card fraud so why doesn't the same outrage exist when these warez groups are operating.
How do you think these top sites buy their hardware? How do you think some groups get applications not available on pre-release / 0-day-minus?
Carders buy all the equipment and software (although some groups do get software/hardware donations in exchange for top site access) and the crackers/hackers are setting up zombie machines to run F-Serves on IRC. Taking out these warez groups is much more than just curtailing software privacy, but protecting the Internet as a whole.
Hagrin.com
I don't know if anyone has thought of this, but what is the motivation anymore for buying a CD. I don't buy them anymore, because two months down the road the cd doesn't play properly anymore. And I don't mean huge gouges and scratches from being abused, I mean hundreds of tiny scratches from the cd player, or warping from excesive heat in a car cd player. Sure a cd may only cost $14.95, but if you have to replace the cd a couple of times that turns into something like $45.00 if you've had to buy the CD three times. Thats $45.00 for maybe five actually totally good songs, and seven or eight not-so-great-filler songs. Really i think the value in CDs has gone down the drain. Why spend the money on something that doesn't last when you can "not" spend the money on an mp3 that will last for a much MUCH longer time.
w00t