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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."
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.
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.
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.
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?!
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?
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.
"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.
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 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.
Ha Ha. Why is rape always considered funny when talking about criminals? Are they not people with rights like everyone else NOT to get raped? It seems to me like an anti-male thing. Its funny when men are raped. Its funny when they get kicked in the nuts in some mindless US sitcom. Actually, no. Its not funny. Try cracking a joke about women being raped. Or a woman being kicked in her genitals (which most would see as sexual assault). You'll be lynched, and righly so. So why the double standard?
-Copyright law #69:Whenever Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain,copyrights get extended by 25 years.
Doesn't any one see the irony of this being posted by "taxevader"?
I think someone is just getting a little nervous.
You show a fundamental lack of understanding of how a modern society and modern justice works. In addition to that, your somewhat weird idea that revenge equals justice is harmful to a society as a whole.
I won't go into the first argument about rights which humans inherently have, and about how the state, who has a monopoly on force, needs to be very careful about how he uses said force. However, I will quickly say something about the second argument, namely that revenge is bad for society as a whole.
We can probably all agree that not all crimes should be punished with the death penalty. We can probably also agree that keeping people in prison indefinitely is neither desirable nor practicable due to the costs it creates. This leads to one conclusion: People who go to prison will sooner or later come out of it again.
I think we can also agree that the goal should be a society where as little crime as possible should be committed.
People who went to prison committed a crime. Since we want to have as little crime as possible, it seems a good idea to make as sure as possible that they won't commit another crime. How do you achieve that? There are several options, depending on why they committed the crime in the first place. Maybe they had no job and ended up dealing drugs to make money. Maybe they have mental issues and are just violent. If you want them to not repeat their mistakes, help them find a job. Give them an eductaion. Help them get over their mental problems. Force them to see a shrink. Maybe you disagree with this ideas, but I'm sure you can think of others.
One thing is for sure: If you put them into a violent prison with gangs and rape, they'll come out worse than they went in, and that can't be good for society.
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.