Operation FastLink Yields Three Arrests

Doomrat writes "As promised (see previous story), Operation FastLink has led to the arrests of 3 key members of the Fairlight group. NHTCU officers and local police executed search warrants and arrested three men at separate locations in Sheffield, Manchester and Belfast. Over 200 computers have been seized, along with 100 CD copiers. Raids were carried out in the UK, the U.S., Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Singapore and Sweden."

Re:Not a good effort.

[bersl2]

The majority just use the goods and have nothing to do with the original illegal activities.

Re:strange

[kryptkpr]

A friend that's close to the scene tells me that for the past while FLT had been selling leech accounts on their private dumps. He quoted $800 usd for leech on a 7tb server with a 1gbit connection.

I guess they sold to the wrong person, and they got busted..

Re:I wish...

[JaredOfEuropa]

I wish... they put all that effort into hunting criminals that actually hurt people (as opposed to wallets).

Rest assured that they are: the police of various countries often work together to track down terrorists and murderers. You should also realise that a lawful society depends on all laws being enforced. Things would turn into a right mess if the police would stop going after petty crime, traffic violations and fraud cases, until they had solved all murder cases.

Re:Price of games

[Anonymous Coward]

the GPL is not free.

it puts a lot of undue burden on the developer and PR costs for the company using GPL code (becuase if the company makes a tiny mistake such as forgetting to update their source code download, they get treated like criminals on all the OSS news websites)

Re:Not a good effort.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope people like you land in jail for supporting the billions in theft that occurs each you. Its sad really.

If your principles forbid you from pirating a grammar tutorial then please, please, pay for one. Thanks.

Re:Copying games is worse than rape

[PD]

Goddamn, the article you get from that search says 65 MONTHS for rape.

The link [usdoj.gov]

The quote:

The average sentence for criminals convicted of rape in the United States (and released in 1992) is 117 months. The average time served is 65 months, which equates to 56 percent of the actual sentence served. For crimes of sexual assault, the average sentence is 72 months, and the average time served is 35 months, equating to 49 percent of time served. (Greenfeld, Lawrence A., 1995, "Prison Sentences and Time Served for Violence," page 1, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.)

Re:Copying games is worse than rape

[ray-auch]

Given average life expectancy is about 80 years, this would mean average age of conviction around 15yrs. Clearly bullshit.

Checking the document clearly shows it is 65 months.

And the average % of that sentence actually served is 50% or so - so that is about 3yrs. Funnily enough pretty close to post you criticise...

Re:Copying games is worse than rape

[bryanp]

And the average % of that sentence actually served is 50% or so - so that is about 3yrs. Funnily enough pretty close to post you criticise...

65 months is the average actually SERVED, 117 months being the average time sentenced. 65 months = 5 years, 5 months, not 3 years.

Three months or five, either is too short. Rapists need to serve a very short sentence - about as long as it takes to stand them up in front of a firing squad.

Re:Not a good effort.

[Slack3r78]

It depends. At the school I go to, there was a kid busted for running a warez server which had apparently been up for some time. From what I understand, the reason he was caught was because the school upgraded their connection - while in the past it was common for the bandwidth to be maxed out at all hours of the day, suddenly the extra bandwidth allowed them to notice suspicious spikes in activity that shouldn't have been there.

True, there are other things that an admin can watch for, but many schools simply don't have the budget to pay someone to constantly monitor all traffic in and out.

OS licenses

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there's is only one way I can think that stopping piracy can bring more profit for the software companies: stopping OS piracy. And, as someone alreayd said, it would be good for Linux / Open Source.

At least here in my country, Brazil, people often buy custom PC's. They go and shop for all the boards, disks and everything and assemble the computer. There are a lot of guys who make their living assembling computers for their customers. These guys often install pirated copies of Windows on these machines.

There's also a huge market for pirated software here. You can buy it on the streets of any big city. So, when we think about buying a computer, the OS cost is never an issue cause you can get it from a friend or pay 3-4 USD for a copy of Windows XP.

If the law was enforced, you'd have to buy a license for the OS or use a free alternative. These "independent computer dealers" would not pirate and the software companies would have some profit.

For other stuff like Photoshop or Office, it wouldn't bring any more profit for the software companies. You can always live without an app, but an OS is totally necessary.

But... Also already said, software piracy is unstoppable.

Re:Not a good effort.

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

They didn't just catch three people in this operation, but they took down several servers, some of which the operators might not have realized were even being used for warez distribution.

That's bullshit. I know some people who've been raided here in the Netherlands, and I can tell you that almost all of those confiscated servers were in student dorms and connected to university networks; most of them on 100mbit lines, some on 10mbit lines.

It's the fat lines those groups are after, you would need thousands of cable/dsl lines to "race" an ISO (these groups are in competition to get the cracked versions out as fast as possible). And they're not hacking those boxes, they're paying for them with status as a "courier" or with real money. I know students who've been offered 100 euro a month or more to put a 10TB server in their room.

Fairlight Farewell

[RotJ]

from flt-ff.nfo [nforce.nl]
It has been a good few years, but it is now time for Fairlight to close its doors for good. Many reasons have made us come to this judgement but we feel it is for the best. The scene is getting to be a dangerous place. Not only do we have to fear from the feds but also the unhonorable ones in the scene who lower themselves to narq the competition. Retiring on top seems to be the best decision for us. We want to thank all those throughout the years who have helped us in one way or another.

/Team FairLight

I guess they didn't follow their own advice. It seems Fairlight reactivated 2 months after that message, possibly under new management or because whatever FBI sweep was going on at the time was over.