Operation Fastlink Nets 1000s in Pirate Sting

womanfiend writes "The Iowa City (Iowa) Press Citizen has been reporting the last two days about "'Operation Fastlink,' a multi-national investigation launched in April." Apparently, the investigation has netted a local college student hosting 13,000 titles worth a bundle of money both in simple value and liability for as many times as logs show the titles were downloaded. According to the P-C: "...'Operation Fastlink,' which targeted the underground community's hierarchy with [FBI] agents conducting more than 120 searches within 24 hours in 27 states and 11 foreign countries. At the time, authorities identified nearly 100 people as leaders or high-ranking members of international piracy groups." Sounds like somebody's in deep doo doo."

FBI Presence Outside US

[handy_vandal]

Why the bloody fuck are FBI agents able to conduct searches in forgein [sic] countries? They have nothing to say outside of the US!

The FBI has a considerable presence outside the United States:

"The Federal Bureau of Investigation is working every day not only in the United States, but in 52 countries outside our borders. The FBI has a Legal Attache Program which was created to help foster good will and gain greater cooperation with international police partners in support of the FBI's domestic mission. The goal is to link law enforcement resources and other officials outside the U.S. with law enforcement in this country to better ensure the safety of the American public here and abroad.

"Presently, there are 45 Legal Attache (Legat) offices and four Legat sub-offices. The FBI's Special Agent representatives abroad carry the titles of Legal Attache, Deputy Legal Attache, or Assistant Legal Attache. The FBI believes it is essential to station highly skilled Special Agents in other countries to help prevent terrorism and crime from reaching across borders and harming Americans in their homes and workplaces.

"Legats not only help international police agencies with training activities, they facilitate resolution of the FBI's domestic investigations which have international leads. The Legat program focuses on deterring crime that threatens America such as drug trafficking, international terrorism, and economic espionage."

Source: FBI [fbi.gov]

And:

"No one should scandalize the presence of FBI agents at the Mexico City International Airport, as the presence of intelligence agents at airports is common. Yes there are agents from the FBI (at airports), like our agents are in the U.S., like the Spanish police as well as carabineers (military or state police) from Chile and Italy are here. They are information agents, conduits for the intelligence systems of their countries to obtain confidential and verifiable information."

Source: Armando Salinas Torre [mexidata.info], Interior Ministry Undersecretary of Migration

-kgj

Re:yeah the American people

[cavemanf16]

Well, you're crossing genre's of "crimes" there, but I think you're on the right track. Who the FBI, CIA, NSA, DoD, and the Pentagon ought to be going after is China, Korea, Thailand, and all the other Southeast Asian countries that are costing American companies millions, if not billions, in 'lost revenues' on computer software sales. Sadly, that would require an act of war, and since our government leaders know that this is not a viable solution for saving a select few American companies millions of dollars every year, they stand by and let the piss-ant agents go after all of the American citizens who aren't really making any money off of these thefts of computer programs to give the rest of the country's bumbling idiots a sense that all is well in our great nation.

It's pathetic, and sad, but such are the times we live in. If this were medieval times we'd probably just go try to kick some Southeast Asia ass, but then we'd also only live to be about 40 and could get burned at the stake for not kissing the royal scepter and worshipping the Pope.

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Re:I'd reply to this

[dougmc]

Luckily, I know just

the program [amazingmagnets.com].

Your link points to a company that sells magnets. A better word than `program' would probably be `product'.

But no matter. It takes very strong magnets to erase today's high density media. Yes, you can erase (or at least seriously distort the data) a floppy or cassette tape with your average magnet, but to erase a DLT tape requires something much more powerful. As for a hard drive, I'd expect the required strength to be similar to that of a DLT.

Why do I know this? Because we upgraded our DLT drive to a model that puts more data (20 gb native vs. 10 gb native) on the same tapes. But the tapes needed to be erased before it would use the higher density (and the drive couldn't do it itself.) A standard bulk tape eraser would NOT do it -- it didn't affect the tapes at all, no matter how much we tried. Neither would a monitor degauser. After some investigation, I found that this wasn't expected to work, and a company that could erase the tapes for us for about $1/each. Worked nicely ...

Re:Poor college students easy targets

[I8TheWorm]

while not going after companies that use pirated software

You're kidding, right? The BSA actively [bsa.org] goes [bsa.org] after companies that use pirated software. Canada has CAAST [caast.org] who is also [caast.org] actively [caast.org] pursuing companies that use pirates software.

So where did you dig up the fact that the software industry is only going after college students and not companies again?

Re:Repost

[Richard_at_work]

Residual effect deals with the alignment of the heads on the disks. For each write, they arent perfectly in alignment with the last one, so older tracks get left as portions. The reason you dont see random r/w errors on a regular basis is that the disk itself masks them from you, they happen, but the disk wrote the data in several seperate places for just this purpose. A 40GB disk can actually hold a LOT more than 40GB, if you discount error correct and just wrote everything once to the disk.

Re:Wrong Department

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

Interesting, the concept of ownership is a construct to begin with. Most of these things 100 years ago were in the public domain. Lately the copyright, which was originally designed to protect the creator of the work and for some limited time his/her family, has comodotized the I.P. so it can be bought and sold by an "owner" not the creator, which makes a marked that wants to protect its assets, but for the most part, assests it did not create. Fairly recent legislation extended that period to much longer than the lifetime and family lifetime of anyone (priciply to protect Disney and the Steamboat Willy image).

If you were the creator of the work, I can see your beef. If you bought the work, or though a contract agreement with say a band or a scientist working for you, were able to "own" the work then it is a pervesion of the original intent of the law or if you will a much used "side effect" of the law.

If someone copies your song, have you lost it. No. If someone copies your image, have you lost it. No. If someone copies your program, have you lost it, No. What you have lost is the posibility of making money off that song, image, program... And it is property that you only own for a period of time that the law allows you to make an exclusive profit off it. A personal monopoly if you will. But that passes into the public domain as it should.

I think we need to go back to the 35 years it used to be, and get back protecting peoples life and safety not corporate profits.

Really, busting young kids by the FBI (not in this case) as mega criminals. Our businesses are Scrooging is up a little too much this holiday season.

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its simple

[Anonymous Coward]

to GET access to other people massive shares so you can find some rare, hard to find file, you have to SHARE a massive ammount.

Re:Can somebody tell me...

[Genom]

Actually copying without paying (theft) is not a right. It says so right there in the US Code and does not mention anything about copying in the Constitution.

Um...no.

Theft is when I take something from you, in such a way as to incur loss. For example, if I take your wallet, you no longer have it. You have experienced loss, thus taking your wallet is theft.

Copyright Infringement is very different. If I download a copy of a song, album, movie, or piece of software, the original is still there, and still in the hands of the person who "owns" it. They have experienced no loss. They still have everything they had before I downloaded anything. Therefore it's not theft. The person making the download available has, however, infringed the author's copyright, if this was done without permission.

Re:Amen to that!

[swv3752]

Ahh, but stealing is a criminal offense. Copyright Violation is (except in recent select circumstances) a civil violation.

A used car salesman sells you a lemon, you cannot have him arrested, rather you have to sue him. Civil violations are considered less of a legal probelm than criminal ones.

Re:Can somebody tell me...

[jonbryce]

They release a particular film. Nobody else can distribute this film without their permission. Therefore they have a monopoly over this distribution.

This monopoly is state controlled becase the state enforces this monopoly with copyright laws.

You may think this is a good thing. I may not, in certain circumstances, disagree with you. Nevertheless you do have to recognise that this is a state controlled monopoly.