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."
So much for... (Score:3, Funny)
Not a good effort. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Not a good effort. (Score:2)
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.
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides, now the perps will know that they could be nailed at any time because the Law is watching for them.
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:3, Informative)
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:Not a good effort. (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope the articles figures at the end come to pass. Reduce piracy by 10%... Then we can see clear evidence that all these figures thrown around about losses from piracy are utter bullshit.
For over a decade now the software industry has always put out figures that say they lost X millions of dollars due to piracy, but they do that by counting every pirated copy as a lost sale, which is of course complete fiction.
It's funny. They say about taking Fairlight down, but back last year Fairlight said they were quitting the scene anyway.
This "war on piracy" is a storm in a teacup. Law enforcement rattles a few sabres, takes down the members on the fringe. Prune the branches a little, but the central tree is still there.
And to think, there's probably rapists, murderers etc... Who would maybe have been caught had the resources for this been diverted to real crimes instead of pissant cracking groups. So nice to see that the streets are now safe from some software pirates, while shits like Ken Lay and weasels from the likes of Enron and other completely corrupt boards who defraud tens of thousands of people continue to go free. Nice to see the priorities are right here...
And in the article it says someone was arrested for BUYING software from Fairlight... Since when is buying pirated software an arrestable offence?
Law Enforcement: Proudly Bought to you by the software companies of America...
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:5, Insightful)
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: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.)
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:5, Interesting)
Thoreau (from Civil Disobedience):
Gandhi (from the Nobel website):
Martin Luther King (in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail"):
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:4, Interesting)
Libraries have been around for hundreds of years, and a lot of people in the corporate world want them banned. (Seriously, do the research.)
So I was thinking, you can go and borrow books for free... Books have been around for hundreds of years... And then I thought of a more modern invention. The video tape. You have to PAY to borrow them from a video library.
Draw your own conclusions. You don't need to me to hammer home what the point is.
Sure, have maybe a couple of guys trying to infiltrate the software cracking groups to take them down, fair enough. But a massively global coordinated takedown like this? Gimme a break. That's like the police busting down your door for copying that Doors album back in High School.
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.
Re:Not a good effort. (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole thing looked like a front, and it might as well have organised crime painted all over it. That family was just selling the disks for someone else, in exchange for a small cut of the profits. Granted, this was quite a while ago, and it might well be that organised crime has taken a step back now that most stuff can be had for free on the Internet. For a fact, I see very few 'proper' (i.e. pressed rather than burned) warez CDs anymore, although from what I hear, organised software piracy is still rampant in places like the middle east, Asia and China.
"Traficking in stolen goods". Knowingly buying stolen goods is an offence in many countries. I'm not sure how this would apply to software, since it isn't really stolen, but illegaly copied. Who knows? It might be illegal as well (IANAL).
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: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:Not a good effort. (Score:3, Interesting)
but back last year Fairlight said they were quitting
the scene anyway.
fairlight did shut down. However enough members
decided to keep on going, begged the leaders to be
able to use the name. Leaders, graciously, let
the name go, but asked to notify people that old
leadership quit and that this is new fairlight.
This is also the reason why Fairlight for last
year has been dragging behind.
And in the article it says someone was
arrested for BUYING software from
Not BS, Just Misleading (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think they are BS, actually. I actually do think that unauthorized distribution of software is something which is surprisingly harmful to our ability to obtain quality software at low costs (or even free of charge). However, companies like Vivendi-Universal and Microsoft make it sound like they are the victims (when in fact they are the benefactors) of these crimes. Here is how it works:
Tim O'Reilly wrote an article describing "piracy" as progressive taxation. He observed, rightly, that the most commonly sold items were pirated at a disporportionate rate (i.e. MS Office is pirated many many times more often than Corel's equivalent, etc).
While this metaphore *may* hold water for the entertainment industry (where alternatives are only alternatives in so far as people have limited time and money), it is not adequate to describe piracy of Windows, Office, Photoshop, etc, because in these markets alternatives are alternatives based on other things (investment in proficiency, functionality, efficiency of accomplishing a task). Therefore, piracy of one Eminem CD does not imply the loss of a total sale in the entertainment industry, while a pirated copy of Microsoft Office does.
When someone pirates a copy of MS Office, they are willfully making the decision not to pay for a product, but they are also making the decision not to investigate other alternatives. Thus, in the absence of MS Office piracy, OpenOffice might find a larger audience. In the absense of Windows piracy, Linux would have a larger audience.
When I was in Indonesia, I witnessed the effect of a crackdown of unauthorized, unauthentic ("pirated") software. The result was, unsurprisingly, that many businesses chose to move to Linux rather than pay Microsoft for licenses.
Unlicensed distribution of software is damaging. We in the open source community are its primary victims because it denies us the opportunity to make a sale. Cracking down on piracy, therefore, is (I believe) beneficial to all of us.
I do, however sympathize with people who worry that this is part of an overall process which seeks to DRM-ize all content, but this is another question. My answer to it is simple, though it does require a life-style adjustment. Simply don't do business with bad companies, especially those presume that because you do business with them, that you are a criminal. If we do this, then the bad companies will go away, and we will be able to select which companies survive. But this takes spreading the word.
Hmm ... no Canada (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Price of games (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:Price of games (Score:4, 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: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: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
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 yo
Re:Price of games (Score:2, Funny)
Moral of the story: people will always steal things. Their justification is almost always pure comedic gold.
MOD UP. (Score:2)
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.
pirates are competition for the companies they pirate from, illegal, yes, but competition nonetheless.
and companies also would like something like this done to legal competitors as well, kinda sad. but still, the parent has a good point.
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?
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
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.
Re:MOD UP. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Price of games (Score:2)
Because it's too expensive is never a good reason to pirate, not that I'm accusing you. Just in general.
I wish... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I wish... (Score:2, Troll)
The "real terrorists" need to be getting their money somehow. Wherever there's an illegal way to make money quickly, you can be pretty sure supporters of the terrorists will use it to make money to fund their destructive operations.
Re:I wish... (Score:2)
Re:I wish... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I wish... (Score:2, Interesting)
A big problem with our justice system when it confronts these kinds of terrorists is that there was nothing left to prosecute on the 19 people most directly responsible on September 11th, 2001.
We need to be enforcing trivial violations because if we deported everyone who overstays their visa's expiration date, we would have deported enough hijack
Re:I wish... (Score:3, Insightful)
11 Countries? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:11 Countries? (Score:2)
people were laying across borders (Score:5, Funny)
One guy was on the Franco-Sweedish-Hungarian-Israeli border, another one was on the German-Belgium-Danish-Netherlands border, and the purpored ring leader (aka "Long Larry") was sprawled out along the US-UK-Singapore border.
Re:people were laying across borders (Score:3, Funny)
Brother, whatever you are smoking right now, hook me up!!!!
I swear this reminds me of the Animaniacs... (Score:3, Funny)
Raids were carried out in the UK, the U.S., Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Singapore and Sweden.
Add intelligence/investigative services of each country, we have a new song!
Ughhh... I need sleep.
Copying games is worse than rape (Score:2, Troll)
Average time for copying games without selling: 4 years
Does anyone else see something wrong here?
melissa
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.
Re:Copying games is worse than rape (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Copying games is worse than rape (Score:3, Interesting)
I just got a close-up, personal look at this when my wife decided to leave me. She broke into my house (with the aid of friends), and literally cleaned the whole place out. They used a U-Haul (paid for with money from one of my credit cards, via a cash-advance check), and did it while I was at work.
Of course, when I got home and found a broken window and doors wide open, I called the police. But as soon as they deter
Re:Copying games is worse than rape (Score:3, Insightful)
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, Informative)
The link [usdoj.gov]
The quote:
Re:Copying games is worse than rape (Score:3, Informative)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Copying games is worse than rape (Score:3, Interesting)
strange (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as I know, these releasing groups do not charge for their releases, they make them available free over FTP/IRC/USENET.
Re:strange (Score:5, Informative)
I guess they sold to the wrong person, and they got busted..
Re:strange (Score:2)
Re:strange (Score:5, Interesting)
By keeping the backbone network where the compromised versions were first being released closed to the public, and only letting a trusted few have access to it, it makes it harder for the law to figure out what is going on. When the cracks eventually get released to the public, they might be able to trace it back to the person who posted the first published copy, who would only be able to lead back to a "friend-of-a-friend" chain that's hard for the cops to figure out.
One program cracked cases often head over to the cold case bin, while the people who are cracking programs for a living are insulated several layers away from the investigation. For once the cops finally got close enough to find the hub it seems, but they likely were getting away with it for a pretty long time before being found.
Re:strange (Score:2, Redundant)
Prediction (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Prediction (Score:2)
CD copiers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:CD copiers (Score:5, Funny)
This is a joke or a major failure imho. (Score:4, Insightful)
I see some tax dollars getting wasted on ridiculous crusades.
Game Piracy Traffic (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Game Piracy Traffic (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not a losing battle, it's a lost battle. Data havens will only make things worse.
War on IP Terrorism (Score:4, Funny)
Pirating (Score:4, Interesting)
I believe the spirit of piracy, be it software or music or the high-seas, is a definite part of the human nature which cannot be removed. When someone is cooller or has something you want, you always find a way to get it. Lawn fertilizer, high-end cars, stylish clothing...you find a way if you are human and put those things on the top of your list of important bullshit.
Drake would copy DVDs if he were here today...and wasn't he knighted or some bullshit?
Francis Drake, Pirate and Knight (Score:2)
Indeed: Francis Drake was knighted on April 4, 1581 by Queen Elizabeth.
See wikipedia [wikipedia.org] for details.
-kgj
Freenet and MUTE? (Score:4, Interesting)
I am surprised that they didn't use Freenet [sourceforge.net] or MUTE [sourceforge.net] to organize their files. Freenet also has an open source anonymous email client called Freemail [freenet.org.nz] you can download, its still alpha though.
Also if you want to encrypt your hard drive try open source Truecrypt [truecrypt.tk], its the successor to Scramdisk.
Both good and bad. (Score:5, Interesting)
As much as I hate to admit it, software "piracy" is bad and no matter what excuses peiople come up with. There are many improvements to be made with the current system but that's not the main issue at the moment. Still though, copying and cracking software is wrong. I'm not justifying it for myself either, I know it's wrong.
Then again, the bad part is that the happened on request of the US customs. ( Over here in the Netherlands at least.. ) The idea that 'my'* goverment bends over to the US will without any investigation on it's own and just raids places the US goverment tells them to, scares me. What if I suddenly become a PITA to the US goverment? Will my place be raided too?
This is something very concerning. There are so many laws and regulations that nearly any normal living person is, unwillingly and unknowingly, violating some minor laws and regs. If people really wanted to fuck you up, they could just throw any laws they can find at you until they find SOMETHING you violate. Scarey thing is, what if the US goverment decides to fuck up someone's life abroad in the name of "fighting terrorism"? Will 'my' goverment roll over, bark thrice and give a paw at the US goverment then, as well?
* ... 'My' goverment as in... "I didn't vote that lying bastard PM of ours into power, thank you." goverment.
Re:Both good and bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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)
Fair light on Fairlight (Score:5, Interesting)
It's somewhat necessary to note that Fairlight is not just a warez group, but also is a famous demoscene participant, having produced leading demos/intros/graphics and music in c64 and pc sections.
Fairlight is more than just the scum everybody will certainly take them for. The present demoscene has it's early roots in hacker and cracker groups. As a result, Fairlight is probably the longest standing group in the scene, and it is no surprise they are linked to the warez scene.
Another thing to note is that the current entertainment industry (think games and movies) is filled with loads of people working their ass off, that got to know their tricks of the trade *because* there was/is a warez scene.
The system is a hypocrit.
More arrests (Score:5, Interesting)
Piracy isn't always bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Best Line in Article: (Score:4, Insightful)
Canuck Thought (Score:4, Funny)
Once again, Canada has been ignored. Bastards.
the usual fallacy. (Score:3, Interesting)
this might be true in some cases, but i'm certain that a majority of the time people just don't have the money to buy a certain program, because:
-they are poor (software companies wouldn't get their money either way)
-they are trying a program out of curiosity and not need (software companies wouldn't get their money either way)
-they want the software only for some small aspect of it which is not alone worth anything close to the cost of the full package (software companies wouldn't get their money either way)
sometimes of course professionals pirate software out of greed. but i would be very surprised if this were anything but a small minority of cases. billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.... don't make me laugh.
if the software companies want to eliminate the petty piracy i've outlined above they should devise ways to compete. ie, highly inexpensive "lite" versions, or demo versions that actually WORK a bit, or stripping off various modules from a given software package and selling them at very lo w prices.
just some ideas.
All these investigative resources . . . (Score:4, Funny)
Fairlight bad (Score:3, Interesting)
Abolish Copyright (Score:3)
Do we really want a society in which it is illegal to share and copy information, where people go to prison for giving software copies to their friends? Where it is illegal to learn from and understand the information we are exposed to, and share it with others?
Is the dubiously-required incentive worth all this?
I think it is clearly outragous - and the more arrests like this one, where obviously no life is at stake, nor is there a threat on the continuation of the creation of software will ultimately turn public oppinion against copyright.
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!
RIAA Math (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Piracy is Piracy, agreed... but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, if they are doing this to "save an industry that has serious money loss due to piracy", I don't like the comparison, but to put it in their perspective; when you bust a drug dealer, you just open a market for the others, when you bust a drug producer, you just clear the way for another to outsource his production. So this logic is a bit flawed. In my perspective, piracy in itself isn't the bad thing. In fact, a lot of people here probably got hold of a software because it was available cracked, and then they went in a company and made a license bought.
Going after those people won't change a thing, disrupt, maybe, change? probably not. What should be done seriously and ressources invested way more into is to hunt down and even close down (to name an example I am very familiar with) Multimedia companies producing video games/movies/web sites that run 95% off pirated software (and the 5% legit being the machines shipped with windows on it). Some of those companies are operating in over 8 digits revenues and CAN afford the license buying, even if it wouldn't be all in one shot, they could at least show sign of good faith and shell out on a regular basis on a budget.
Joe Pimple at home doesn't kill an industry, he learns a software/tool (thinking stuff like maya/xsi/autocad/etc) that he can't afford (well until recently, now most company got an educational discount or free version, i'll get to this). Those 7-8+ digits small and medium companies *ARE* the ones actually STEALING ACTUAL revenues from software manufacturer.
Yes there's the BSA... but a lot of you probably know a lot of companies that never got checked or heard about a friend working at a place that is running totally not legit. Why the heck does joe pimple gets his life fried while others are actually making way more money and are way more morally wrong than joe? Ressources like this should be helping organization like the BSA, and the BSA should be less picky on companies trying to balance their budget while trying to reach 100% legitimacy. Of course those 95% illegal companies are creating jobs, but again, that logic is wrong since they are "killing an industry" with high-tech jobs... (and most of those multimedia companies have crappy underpaid/overworked conditions where only the owners are getting filthy rich).
That's my rant. Next is the distribution channels and the fact that we're in 2004. For god's sake, why can't we just buy GTA Vice city for 20$ and leech it off a server instead of paying 40$ for a printed box, media, distribution channel, and retailer profit? Maybe *THAT* would help prevent piracy. I know for sure that I'd be jumping back in the gaming world if it wasn't so freakingly expensive to play a game. Last games I bought that were a good investment were quake 3+ team arena, and mech warrior 3. Next time I'll pay more than 40$ for a game it better grabs my attention and my addiction as bad as quake did, else it's just not worth more than 20$, period. Don't give me that "it costs to create and budget" thing, logic here is I didn't buy it because it's overpriced, I didn't pirate it, I tried a demo if it was available, found I had a bill to pay and didn't want to shell out that 40-60$. so they didn't "lose to piracy" they simply "lost because they can't adapt to what a lot of people have been asking for years and should be available in 2004". They lost a sale. Period. The price difference isn't profit loss, it's all that extra non-needed layers added to reach people that could go direct (you could have both, then you'd get the best of both world). Took too long for apple to come out with iTunes, so I guess we won't see a movie nor a game distribution channel based on this before quite some time and the dinosaurs running things will still hide behind the law to try and fix things, and unfortunately for them and also for us, it will damage more than help. People wi
Fairlight Farewell (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Quotable Quotes (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll bet this figure doesn't even come close to holding true. According to this logic the bust should show an immediate "burst" of revenue next quarter.
Re:Jeez (Score:2, Funny)
Real criminals fight back. I hope you're not suggesting that our brave officers of the law should put themselves at risk like that. If they all get killed chasing terrorists then who would that leave to protect us from the warez kiddies?
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.
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.