Operation FastLink Yields Three Arrests 555
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."
Not a good effort. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a pity... (Score:1, Insightful)
Price of games (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Price of games (Score:5, Insightful)
People will even pirate data worth 99 cents... so long as there's a price tag, there's people who try to get around it.
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
In the perpetual cat-and-mouse game, the cat has just scored a few points.
Re:I wish... (Score:5, Insightful)
Try tell that to the Enron employees that lost their pensions. I'm quite sure they would like to see white collar criminals spend some time in jail.
This is a joke or a major failure imho. (Score:4, Insightful)
I see some tax dollars getting wasted on ridiculous crusades.
Re:Copying games is worse than rape (Score:5, Insightful)
Since everyone in this country is becoming a criminal, my advice to all of you is don't drop the soap.
Another war is needed (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I wish... (Score:3, Insightful)
On a more positive note, at least the FBI hasn't decided to raid random homes on the assumption that there may be something illegal going on inside. Or the neighbors made a single report about them doing something illegal along the lines of file sharing. When that happens, we know we're fucked. Please, no one link to an article showing that being done. Please.
Re:Copying games is worse than rape (Score:1, Insightful)
Stupid (Score:-1, Insightful)
FLT : members under arrest
Nazi groups : still available on the web
Kiddie porn : still available on the web
Bin Laden : still laughing
Re:Copying games is worse than rape (Score:5, Insightful)
Average time for copying games without selling: 4 years Does anyone else see something wrong here?
If it's true, yes. Where did you get the statistic?
Re:Copying games is worse than rape (Score:3, Insightful)
100 cd copiers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember the funny games they play in these kind of reports like the RIAA counting every 40x copier as 4 copiers or something ridiculous like that...
Or did out of all 120(!) searches find 1 cd burner at each location! Oh wow what pc doesnt have a cd burner standard...
FLT doesn't distribute anything on CD it just goes up on the top sites and then trickles down to the average "d00d" from there. It's a "non-profit" operation.
Also the crap at the bottom about increasing Englands GDP and created 40,000 jobs! Get real! It's not creating any wealth in fact its reducing wealth because now people have to waste money on this software that would have been spent on something else. To improve the GDP production has to go up. In a way all this did was decrease over all production because now there will be less copies of this software. (true now the money will get funneled into the corporations that own the IP to these products but it's just swapping the money around not creating any new value)
Re:Freenet and MUTE? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if you're smart enough to be looking at bandwidth stats. You'd be amazed at how many small businesses and even local branches of government have nobody bothering to monitor that.
The law is just? (Score:1, Insightful)
Piracy isn't always bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Price of games (Score:1, Insightful)
Those who will always steal no-matter what are beyond help. But guys like me WILL eventually pay for it...but only once we can afford to. Or Firefox and Thunderbird will mature and then it'll be a moot point...
Re:MOD UP. (Score:2, Insightful)
It takes time and effort to make a decent program/game/util/etc. 40$ for a multimedia rich game [like UT2k4] is certainly not asking too much.
And quite frankly, if you can't afford a game or don't agree with the price don't buy it. Where the "it costs money so it's ok to steal" logic comes from I'll never fully understand...
Tom
Re:Both good and bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Price of games (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:5, Insightful)
When you know for sure that's what you're doing. Most consumers on a New York City street corner have a "plausible deniablity" where they can claim that it might have looked a little funny, but how could be sure that it was really a pirate DVD until they took it home? However, when you know you're funding a pirate... then you're part of the operation by supplying the money.
Best Line in Article: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:MOD UP. (Score:5, Insightful)
he has a decent point.
No he doesn't, you just need some basic economics and legal knowledge (common sense wouldn't hurt too, but let's not ask too much).
the fact things are overpriced will lead to pirating, because the pirates will either be able to offer it for free, or for a lower cost.
There is no correlation between pricing and piracy, and I challenge you to find any evidence to the contrary. And thanks for your insight that thieves can offer things they steal for cheaper than a companies that invests a large amount of money into a game--brilliant!
pirates are competition for the companies they pirate from, illegal, yes, but competition nonetheless.
Wow, another amazing insight. Being stolen from is not competition, that's a complete perversion of economics.
and companies also would like something like this done to legal competitors as well, kinda sad. but still, the parent has a good point.
Is this anything other than typical anti-corporate babbling?
I call... (Score:5, Insightful)
Scenario 1 -- I have a few kids that run loose in my house. (I'm not some SOB who puts them on those leashes, wtf is that all about.) They seem to manage to get into my computer room sometimes and play frisbee with my CD's. If I didn't have a *legal thanks to fair use* copy of my software that I *paid for* I would be SOL.
Moral: Copying software is *NOT* always wrong.
Scenario 2 -- I have a killer cool gaming rig that I then go out and buy all sorts of games. I bring home a copy of latest game X and lo and behold the copy protection that the feckless losers at the publishing co installed (Note, I said publishers not developers. Most times the developers realize that protection is a waste of time and it's the damn suits who insist on the protection.) does not seem to work right with my CD-ROM drive. Now I can't play the game that I just *paid for* and when I go to try and do anything about it all the morons at BestBuy can do is sit there with their thumbs in their asses and if I'm lucky give me store credit so I can go maybe use it on some overpriced RIAA crap that will proably install deathware on my PC when I go to play it there anyway. But luckily instead of having to deal with all that I can download a crack and play the game I paid for!
Moral: Cracking software is *NOT* always wrong.
Rant mode off.
Fight the Corporate machine (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Freenet and MUTE? (Score:1, Insightful)
There is a post talking about how ONE of fairlights distro sites was a 7TB site with a 1 Gig connection!
These guys aren't fucking around with some little p2p bullshit man!
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what he was suggesting is that other crims, such as rape, murder, and corporate corruption, should be concentrated on much more than people pirating video games. Also, piracy is different. Murder, most people will agree is bad. However with piracy it depends on if you agree with the law or not. I for one pirate tons of movies. Sorry, I do. I download movies first ALWAYS. If they are good I THEN go see them in the theatre. Same with CDs. I have a huge collection of DVDs and CDs. If I actually like what I download, I go out and buy it. If its crap, I delete it and move on. I see nothing wrong with that. I am not taking money away from creative artist. I am just making sure that those people who make crap don't get my money and the people who actually make GOOD movies/cds/games do.
... that and I have to find SOME justification for my ungodly expensive home theatre setup that I blew like 1/2 a years pay on
Re:Piracy is plain wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
I got my career started using pirate software. Let me immidiately say that in no way to I think what I was doing was good, right, or moral, but it was necessary.
I needed to become certified for the purposes of expanding my business, consulting. This was a number of years ago. So I used pirated Microsoft products to train on and become familiar with.
As soon as my initial lack-of-investment came back to make me money, I promptly purchased legitimate licenses for all the software I was using. It's important for my business to operate legitimately, and it's the morally and legally right thing to do, so I did it.
Again, I don't condone what I did, but I made it right, and I wouldn't be where I am now without it. There's just no way a small business with almost no initial capital could purchase some of this software without going into debt--which wasn't an option at the time.
Re:Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Kiddie porn rings are busted everyday, but it's not Slashdot worthy because it doesn't in some way involve software that costs money.
Nazi groups have a right to say what they want, and you have a right to not read it.
This shit is about as insightful as suddenly realizing that the sky is blue on your 30th birthday.
Re:Fair light on Fairlight (Score:2, Insightful)
We can speak of law, IP, and morality all we wish, but at the end of the day there are many people with drive and talent who, for whatever reason, opted to do something illegal to get what they felt they needed.
I really don't see that changing.
Re:Both good and bad. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:strange (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, it does make a difference.
Since you are not part of the so called scene I
will explain it to you. These people do it for
the adrealine rush of
1. cracking great protection
Ha, this company payed $5,000 for newest
protection (usb dongles, securom, safedisk,
cdzilla) and it was a 5 minute to crack
2. library archivers
Ha, I have 5000 cds of games archived since
begging of the scene in the very early 1980s
note: MP3 pirates trade more new songs a day
than there is minutes to listen
them all. ( http://mp3hq.net/ [mp3hq.net] )
3. racing thrill
Ha, . When did you download Doom5? I
had it 5 hours ago ( so called 0seconds warez )
Now, you will say that majority does this to
get things for free, majority? maybe, but they
are not part of the scene, they dont know the
scene, they dont feel it.
Majority of downloaders sit on p2p, be it
bittorrent or ed2k network or dc++.
You see, the people in the scene make no profit,
generally they rarely even use the things they
pirate (they dont have time to play games, or
watch movies, as the next thing is coming out
within next hour as listed by http://nforce.nl/ [nforce.nl] )
p2p users make no profit, but they avoid costs
to play newest game, they avoid paying but get
the benefits.
and then you have got the BAD BAD type of a
whore to sells warez, the type that actually
makes a profit.
Lets do now a karma evaluation:
1. scene member
does not sell -> makes no profit
does not use -> no loss of sale
2. p2p / leecher
does not sell -> makes no profit
but does use -> potential loss of sale
3. warez seller
sells, makes profit, by DIRECTLY taking money
away from the developer
And you have a face to say that it is not better
neither morally nor legally if one does not use
and does not make a profit? I fail to see your
logic.
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:5, Insightful)
So next time you're in a car accident, or your home is burglarized, or someone swipes your wallet, you'd have no problem if the cops didn't show up because they're all trying to solve rapes and murders? Hell, why on earth are we paying cops to enforce speed limits and arrest shoplifters when the manpower could obviously be put to better use catching murderers.
According to your plan, our only rights are the right not to be raped or murdered. Rather than trying to fabricate ill thought out justifications for your blatant criminal activity why don't you just admit to yourself that "yes I steal and I have no remorse". Maybe you'd retain at least a tiny bit of respect for not insulting my, or anyone elses intelligence with your lame excuses.
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, we should go about enforcing every law, no matter how trivial, stupid, or potentially abusable it is. Otherwise, how would people realize how trivial, stupid, and abusable that particular law is? As it stands right now, the real cost of all the stupid brain-dead laws on the books is hidden, because they're selectively enforced. They lie there, on the books, like landmines, until they're needed to selectively target a specific group (ie, gangs), or until some hapless joe trips over some rarely enforced regulation, and loses life, limb, or property over it.
The other part of it is that passing laws that aren't enforced (or that are just plain stupid) does nothing to promote respect for laws in general. If you pass a law, you'd better be serious about enforcing it, along with all the enforcement and social costs of doing so. Otherwise, don't even waste taxpayer time and money by proposing ANOTHER LAW just to give some bozo politician a chance to spout out sound bites.
If we don't enforce all of our laws, why even bother writing them if all we really care about are rapists, murderers, and corrupt board members?
Because politicians need to justify the salaries they draw that they keep raising, and because they need to "be against" something, in order to distinguish themselves from their challengers. Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposal for a part-time legislature is sounding better all the time - give them too much idle time, and they just end up proposing stupid laws (like the Calif. State Senator who is proposing a law to make GMail illegal... and which would also incidentally make services like virus scanners, spam filters, etc. illegal as well.)
It's the spam, stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
If so, I don't feel quite so sorry for them.
Ripping off poor corporations is one thing. Insulting me like this is quite another.
Re:Hmm ... no Canada (Score:3, Insightful)
On another note, when you attack make sure you hit the CRTC headquarters. To canadians that would be like the berlin wall coming down. OK, over the top i know but PLEASE bomb that building first.
Re:Price of games (Score:5, Insightful)
>> As long as it costs $40 for a game or $100 for software there will always be people pirating.
> People will even pirate data worth 99 cents...
Furthermore, people will pirate if it is priced at $0.00, see for example some GPL violations.
(Testing the maximum nesting depth of the "+5 Insightful for naming any price" phenomenon)
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:History says no (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Price of games (Score:5, Insightful)
This is patently untrue. By that rationale, people would never buy:
- bottled water
- packaged software
- 99c tracks off itunes.
After all, all those things are available for free, right? And why would anybody buy an armani suit, when they can get one that looks virtually identical for a tenth of the price?
People will buy when:
- the price is within their means
- they consider the price fair for the good
- they want the good
- the inconvenience of buying the good from the vendor is not too high (i.e. DRM. Personally, any DRM is too high for me, but I recognise that's not universally true)
Case in point. I used to buy a lot of major label music CD's. Now the price is 50% greater than it used to be (~16 retail), now that the style of music I listen to is not to be found very often, now they put DRM on CD's to restrict my use of said CD's (won't play in my car, for example) - combine that with my ethical distaste at said labels current actions, and I have a bonafide reason not to buy their music.
However, I did recently order from CDBaby half a dozen new CD's. The first music I've bought for myself this year. Even though it was inconvenient (getting through customs), even though I had half of them already from legal free samples. Because having a physical CD I could do a high quality rip from was worth the price. Especially given they were half the price of a major label CD. That, and I felt the artists deserved the money.
Acts of skilled creation are scarce, and thus valuable. Making digital copies of said creation is not a scarce act, and no amount of legislation, enforcement or legal tactics will make it otherwise.
As long as people want what scarce (in a technical sense) decent material that's available, then a way will be found to finance those who create. It just may not involve copyright in its current form.
And if you think I'm talking complete crap - well, the guys at the baen free library [baen.com] have demonstrated that giving stuff away increases sales - even of the material they're giving away!
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:2, Insightful)
how about something else, some wanker hacks into your computer and sets you up as the relay to spam porn all day through your university connection
-----
The local police view that sort of thing as a joke. More than likely they'd cart off the student. "Oh, you were _hacked_, we get it... riiiiiggggghhhttt."
-----
How about something more minor. Say, a credit card thief gets your details
-----
It goes more like this,"We're sorry, sir. We'll be more than happy to remove those charges once we have a police report of the incident."
So you call the local police. "Let me get this straight. You have no idea who stole your credit card info, or how they got it, but you want us to file a stolen identity report for these extra charges on your credit card? I'm sorry, sir, first the city is going to have to ask you to talk with a city appointed psychologist at your own expense 'cuz we just don't believe you."
-----
thats what they are, Criminals
-----
The real criminals are the salesman, lobbyists, and marketers that convinced world governments to spend billions of taxpayer hard-earned money to put Microsoft produts and the x86 architecture in schoosl, businesses, and offices worldwide. Conveniently there's no law against flat out bald faced lies when it comes to businesses and sales. "Absolutely, Mr. Senator, sir. This really is the best quality product for the taxpayers money. Now, if you'll just sign the bottom line here, we'll promptly take a 10-year advance contract, regnegotiable at our discretion, so that we can have the money it's going to take to saddle OS/2 and Motorola with lawsuits or buy out their distributors so they won't be able to compete."
Re:Price of games (Score:4, Insightful)
Even though the GPL'd code is free ("as in beer"), the reason it's "pirated" is to save a company their own R&D costs, or licensing fees (or something else), which are not free.
So, that GPL'd code could be priced at/worth thousands of dollars (to that company).
-- Joe
Re:MOD UP. (Score:1, Insightful)
It's not a perversion of economics, how can economics be perveted? That's like saying the black market is a perversion of economics. Its also like saying a humming bird is a perversion of physics.
If the cost of stealing something is less than the cost of buying then it is economical to steal it. The cost of stealing is of course chance of being caught and penalty of being caught. Also of course amount of effort. If it takes 8 hours to pull off the theft of something worth $50 then you might as well just work for a day and buy it.
However, when things are so expensive you can't possibly buy it economics says your only option is to steal it. It's like drugs. Sure they are illegal but if you can make enough money doing it someone will do it.
Also you slyly equate conomics with "competition". But isn't monopoly capitalism a natural end point of free market economics? Yes. So really if anything is a "perversion" of economics it would be anti-trust laws...
Re:Abolish Copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
Get to work, I need that software, my way of life depends on it!
but I sure love that you absolutely will have that software ready for me no matter how many months of 24/7 labour it requires of you, just to satisfy my needs. I have no doubt that your love of free programming for my profit, at your expense will ensure that I will get a superior, better made product!
Now stop reading this and get to work!
Apples and oranges (Score:3, Insightful)
> People will even pirate data worth 99 cents...
Furthermore, people will pirate if it is priced at $0.00, see for example some GPL violations.
The first two refer to the cost of acquiring a copy as opposed to pirating one. It's impossible to break the GPL by acquiring copies.Your example refers to pirating the copyright, but there is no offer in the GPL to acquire the copyright at any cost.
Imagine you went to a GPL project and offered to buy the copyright wholesale (which may theoretically be possible with some projects like Qt or MySQL). That is the real price they're pirating. Did you think the value of the leaked Windows source code is the price tag of one retail copy? Because that's what you just suggested.
Kjella
unofficial Try before you Buy lives on (Score:3, Insightful)
I warez games because sometimes the warez'd full game is available before the demo and I wanna know what its like.
If I like the game I buy it - after all, I have a job, and the cost of 2 or 3 (or more) games a month hardly registers on my statements.
I DON'T buy the games when they are shite, however, which is the main reason I continue to warez. Put simply, publishers such as Electronic Arts do not deserve my money. I have numerous problems with games I've purchased from them in the past and these bugs and glitches still aren't fixed at present. The only real reason I would buy something like Battlefield Vietnam, with all its bugs and issues, is if it was just about fun enough to justify playing it with a group of friends. Fuck playing on public servers where 85% of people are assholes.
Anyway, this operation gets the 'good guys' a bit of publicity, they get to spout off about how piracy benefits organised crime and terrorism, while at the same time nothing is done about a root cause - piss poor quality control and customer support.
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah not ignore the law, change it. Let us reduce copyright and enshrine fair use in law.
Let us stop the corporation before they outlaw libraries and we need their permission to borrow or read any type of copyright, including books, videos... anything.
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:4, Insightful)
Please. Just try and get a cop to come out and take a report on a stolen wallet or a residential burglary in a big city. And car accidents? Unless someone has to leave the scene in an ambulance, they won't even stop. They already selectively apply manpower to the areas they have determined are imnportant.
Re:MOD UP. (Score:5, Insightful)
What art software do you want to use? Adobe Photoshop, for a few hundred dollars? Or maybe Paint Shop Pro, for less? Or maybe HandyPaint (fictitious) for even less money?
I mean, those extra features in Photoshop you probably aren't going to *use*, are you? So we may as well buy a cheaper one? PSP, then? Well, maybe. Or maybe that's too much...
Oh, right. You're a pirate. So you aren't going to pay for any of the software. So, might as well pirate Photoshop 'cos you don't care. And JASC and HandySoft get hosed, because their attempts to offer reasonable budget alternatives only leads to them being passed over by people who aren't paying for the software anyway.
Worse yet, if you get busted, the settlement money goes to Adobe. Even if, if it wasn't for piracy, they would have bought Jasc's product.
Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
But I guess copyrights are supposed to be enforced only when it comes to something Slashdot tells you is Good(tm). Not when something is Bad(tm), like actually PAYING for shit.
What are you talking about? (Score:3, Insightful)
So piracy really is competition to the real product. Let's say I decide that pirating Photoshop has a "cost" of $200 due to the relatively low probability of being caught (of course, there are big fines, etc. if I do get caught, so $200 might not be unreasonable). Now let's say Photoshop retail costs $700. If I am rational, I will download Photoshop rather than buy. So if Adobe wants me to stop pirating, they should lower the cost for Photoshop or attempt to raise the cost of piracy by increasing fines and cracking down on copyright infringement.
Of course, if I'm in Adobe's target market, the cost for piracy is much greater; my business could tank, I have employees that might snitch, etc. So maybe it would "cost" me $2000 per copy. Clearly I am better off with Photoshop retail.
Interestingly enough, with this analysis we might come to the conclusion that piracy actually helps consumers. We end up with lower prices since software makers no longer have monopoly power over their individual products. If Adobe suddenly raised the price for Photoshop to $3000 and piracy was not an option, many people would be forced to pay the new price. But Adobe knows that even businesses would begin to pirate if they raised the price high enough.
Re:MOD UP. (Score:4, Insightful)
filthy criminals (Score:1, Insightful)
As stated before, people will just rise up to replace these leaders. Quit trying to scare these people and go after the huge public which gets cracks and serials off of websites and p2p. Scare the public and it goes internal to where there is damage control. Obviously Operation Bucaneer achieved nothing and the same will come from these busts.
Re:Copying games is worse than rape (Score:3, Insightful)