Slashdot Mirror
'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.
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:
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.
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
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.
-- translates to --
The US Department of Justice is the U.S. law enforcement agency dedicated to serving the business and public affairs needs of the companies
'Nuff said.
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
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.
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.
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
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...
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?
You mean "Riddance" rather than "riddens"
Also, as far as criminalization of bootlegging... it's a lot like prohibition-era alcohol production. Once you decriminalize it, these people overnight convert to legitimate businesses.
Nice troll though.
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.
Those groups use very private ftp servers where only high-level courier groups have access. They get the warez and spread them to other places, like IRC. Then others get them from IRC and make torrents of them, spread those torrents on other IRC channels. Someone downloads a copy and creates a torrent for eg. the Pirate Bay and starts seeding.
What Joe Public sees on warez sites are the 4th/5th generation copies, or even later.
But this operation aimed to bring down the private FTP sites of the groups themselves, so probaly sites you or me would never have heard of and could never have gotten access to. But it does affect the availability of warez in general.
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.
Has this pirate been caught already?
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
"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
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.
I'm sorry you made the assumption that I was even referring to warez (applications or games). I think these punks deserve what they get. There's a big difference between giving thousands of nameless, faceless strangers access to mass quantities of copyright protected works and ripping your own CDs to mp3, or, dare I say, having a few of your real friends check out one of those mp3s. Gasp! That's right. I shared an mp3 with two of my very best friends! HELLFIRE AND DAMNATION AWAIT!
Grandparent was obviously making a blanket statement that essentially said "if you ever make a copy of anything, for any reason, you're a pirate". Sorry, but I don't fucking buy it. Does it directly relate to this particular story? No. It does, however, relate indirectly, for as these software companies push on Congress to protect their "intellectual property", fears of DMCA-esque laws abound - only this time, with mandatory useage of DRM - all the way to the soundcard and the speaker. I'm sorry, but if I want to make a mix CD, or, more likely, an mp3 CD for my car stereo, then I'm going to. I don't think I'm being completely unreasonable here. But, according to grandparent's trite generalization, I am.
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.
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
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.
e s/docs/consultoras/riaa/2002/riaa_CDValueStudy2002 .pdf That while there has been a modest price rise, relative to inflation, CD prices (as expected) have dropped. Now, lets take into the direct result of MP3 sharing, which is legal services such as itunes and emusic, and we see music now dropping dramatically in price. I can get a subscription to emusic and for $19.99 I get 90 MP3 downloads, all quite legal. (Not sure iTunes prices, they aint here in australia yet. I gather there a bit more expensive).
Ok. ra ra rara. Bunch of ad hominen. I did a a bit of it in my minor, I do infact have an idea what I'm on about.
So lets explain this a bit further. Music Companies *DO* infact compete with Software Bootleggers due to the fact a consumer (which classical economics presumes to be rational and therefore likely to optimise choices to maximise bang for buck) can chose between the "authorised" product or the "unauthorised" product. The two directly compete. Due to an increased supply of the product relative to a more stable demand (not *everyone* needs a cad program), the crossover point between the suply curve and the demand curve settles at a cheaper point and prices lower.
CD prices may not be a brilliant example , but lets even assume that, we see here http://banners.noticiasdot.com/termometro/boletin
The Price fixing and the like has little to do with economics and everything to do with industry corruption. Thats why price fixing is considered pernicious, because it *distorts* the market away from consumer interests. Yes Bootlegging distorts the market, but it does so by pushing prices down.
Adam Smiths invisible hand rarely fails.
And yes, I am aware that the lower price offerings are partly to stem open source adoption. But Microsoft has also been adamant that its also motivated by high levels of Bootlegging in developing countries, including in government and industry (areas fairly compliant in the first world).
Finally, I'll refer you to http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html.
Bootlegging is the more acurate term as oposed to piracy, because bootlegging refers to the manafacture of illicit goods (traditionally liquor) whereas Piracy tended to involve theft.
As have been pointed out by many , Bootlegging music and software can not be objectively called "Theft" because theft by its definition is an act of taking something that is yours and making it mine without your permission. If I take my CD of , say, Frank Zappa, or whatever, and copy it to my friend, nobody lost anything, but someone gained something. The music publisher still has precisely the same stock level and capital reserves. I still have my CD, but a friend now has a new copy of Hot rats to listen to.
The arguement that bootlegging is theft, *relies* on the arguement that unauthorised competition could be theft. And if you accept that arguement , then you have to accept that bootlegging is competition and thus under classical economics benificial to the consumer and I would suggest it could be also applied to Open Source. Infact that is precisely the scam the Software industry is trying to pull with patent laws where intellectual property (devised originally to protect small publishers from having books copied by large monopolists) is abstracted further into the idea of software itself.
I much prefer Stallmans idea of not calling it piracy , but rather "sharing with a friend".
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
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.
Yep, they're in their last "throes."
Discussion System prefs link: http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=editcomm
More warez sources popping up is a sure sign that the government is winning!
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
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.
It's not justification, and it's not theft.
feh. stuff.
Doesn't any one see the irony of this being posted by "taxevader"?
I think someone is just getting a little nervous.
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
I write video games for a living. You know how much piracy has affected me? Not at all. That's right, not one bit. I'm not arguing that what these guys didn't do was illegal, or shouldn't be punished, but I definitely don't think jail time fits the crime, nor are they going to come out as better people. Most of the people pirating all this software tend to be fairly young, and I would say its safe to say, they probably don't understand the consequences of what they are doing. I would say a more fitting punishment, one that might actually help, would be to put them to work at the video game companies they stole from as part of their punishment. Make them test a game, for free, for a period of 2 years or so. If they fail to honor the conditions of their "community service", then put them in jail. But I would guess that having the guys who pirate this software have to work on a game is much more effective than having bubba butt-rape them. In addition, it would provide a benefit to those of us who they "stole" from.