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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."
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.
...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
I wholeheartedly agree that software piracy is like the legendary Hydra: Chop off one head and three new ones will pop up. Therefore I don't believe prosecution of these individuals is particularly effective. However - at least in the Netherlands - the people arrested were selling the pirated software at huge profits.
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?
Ah but are these 8 servers the 'hub' servers?
;)
I read somewhere that the warez community use a pyramid system to distribute software:
Level 1. Hub Servers - Where the software gets uploaded from the original CDs (less than 10 servers worldwide)
Level 2. Dump Servers - Where the software gets copied to for distribution (greater than 1000 servers worldwide)
Level 3. Usenet - Where the 'savvy' people download it from
Level 4. Peer2peer/BitTorrent - Where the ipod generation download it from.
So if they shut down the hub servers, yes they will be replaced by the pirates, but in the mean time the shockwave effect of losing these servers will slow down or even stall the illegal distribution (for a while anyways).
-Jar.
Together, We Can Make Slashdot Better. I Do NOT Mod ACs. - Check Me Out
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.
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!
That "someone" is benefitting from something that
a) does not belong to them,
Well, a copy belongs to them after it's given/bought.
b) they did not pay for,
It could have been paid for. There's nothing stopping that in this scheme.
c) they do not have permission to possess,
I'd gather they've got permission from their friend to possess it. Otherwise, why would they make the copy and give it to them?
and d) required the consumption of resources by the other party.
Yes, well, seeing as that's thermodynamics, no real surprise there.
The problem with your arguments are that most apply just as equally to another competitor coming in and producing a product that's virtually identical to the original something, then giving it away. But, I think there's a better analogy available: bottled water.
Imagine a company that's bottling water and selling it to everyone. They've built up this big plant to form the bottles, screw on the lids, and pump water from a nearby lake which no one can own. You've got a friend who happens to live near the lake, and they give you an empty bottle to use to take your own bottle of water from the lake. The water doesn't belong to you, nor do you have permission to possess it. Your friend gave you the empty bottle for free (you didn't pay for it) and the bottle came out of something (required the consumption of resources by the other party). Even assuming the lake will refill quickly enough that it was never run out through your actions, your getting bottled water from the source means a loss of potential sales to the bottling company.
If the government grants a company a monopoly on the lake, knowing it will never run out, would you consider it fair? The classic argument for dividing up resources is to prevent overexploitation of a limited resource. Instead, copyright and patents were created so that new "lakes", as it were, would be formed. Yet obviously giving anyone a monopoly over any "lake" for any extended period of time makes them less likely to expand to creating new "lakes", instead resting on claims of perpetual ownership like such a "lake" is indeed limited in resource.
So, I question the validity of your argument. And I question any of these "permissions" that you feel are necessary to compete, for whatever reason, against a government made monopoly.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h