Busted

hxxp://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2004/April/04_crm_263.htm

[sf42]

Thats why the newsgroups were pretty slow, starting from yesterday. Feels already like the busts in 2001.

[sirius]

Foreign searches were conducted in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden as well as Great Britain and Northern Ireland

they don't die, they multiply

Looks hardcore.

Saying this may make me unpopular around here, but...

<RANT>
Honestly, I don't typically feel all that sympathetic towards someone who whines when they get caught. Are some of the copy protection laws overbearing? Yes, some are. But in the end -- it's illegal, you knew it was illegal when you did it, and hell, some people only do it because it's illegal. So if you get busted, complaining about it is kind of a "doctor, it hurts when I do this!" situation. It's like that poke-the-penguin flash game. You know that something bad is going to happen if you keep poking it. Even if the reaction was extreme, you knew that was a risk the whole time you were poking it. It's not exactly "unfair". I can understand the thrill of getting away with something, and I can understand the thrill of feeling in-control of somethig. But if that's your game -- seeing how much and how often you can get away with something -- don't act so surprised when one day you don't.

I don't know, maybe "old age" (24 ) has jaded me or made more cynical or something. Ten years ago I was one of those pathetic warez-kiddie-wannabe types. I'm not proud of it, but at least I can blame it on being a kid . And then one day I reached a point of sobriety about the whole thing, where I realized that most of the rhetoric about overthrowing evil empires, "raging against the machine", and fighting injustice was mostly a lot of bullshit, frankly. When you're totally honest with yourself, warezing (at least in the sense of distributing/downloading) programs usually boils down to two motives: Elitism and the base human desire to get stuff for free. That's it. It's not about egalitarianism. It's not about justice. It's not about changing the world. There's lots of ways to go about that that have greater impact and don't involve "K-rAD O-|)4y Wa|2Ez". You don't want to be equal, you want to be 'leet! And as much as you want to gripe about capitalist greed, the fact is that your prime motive for doing what you do is to get something for nothing. And that's the most basic capitalist idea of all.
</RANT>

Ok, that's what I get for drinking too much coffee and reading through old IBFT archives.

So now that that's out of the way:

The ongoing investigations were assisted by various intellectual property trade associations, including the Business Software Alliance, the Entertainment Software Association, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America.

Now why doesn't that surprise me? I've come to grips with the fact that these guys have a lot of lobbying power - they have a lot of money, and because of their line of business they have a very large forum to shout in. But actually including them in law-enforcement operations is a serious breach of ethics. Reporters, for example, have very strict rules about their participation in law enforcment activities. They can come along for the ride and report on what they see, but they can't actively participate or assist in any way or it's a conflict of interest. Letting such obviously biased organizations assist in enforcement is a really bad idea to begin with, but even worse, it's a total conflict of interest when you consider that most of those organizations are likely to be the plaintiffs in any resulting civil suits.

just capitilism flexing its grip, little to tight it appears.

Huh :?: i don't get it

hxxp://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0421dvraid-ON.html

They are doing it to schools as well. Now this I think is a bit tough handed, considering that most students would not be a major dealer in warez.

I hope this form of behaviour doesn't spread to other countries as well.

They busted alot of NL Uni Sites, so yes they are going after students. In EU they'll get off with a fine hopefully, for some of the Americans busted in this raid god help them....

Up until the last couple of years software piracy in the UK was a civil offence but it was reclassified as a criminal offence. The logic behind this was that many, alledgedlty, of the major suppliers for profit were actually organised crime gangs. Selling pirated software was a means of raising funds to purchase and sell hard drugs. Based on this train of thought it was reclassified as a criminal offence. The establishment in the UK are calling for prison sentences for the more extreme cases.

America calls the tunes and it is only a matter of time till the rest of the world follows suit. This isn't meant as a cheap jibe jab at America or Americans, just a comment based on the fact that the American market is the biggest and most powerful in the world and when it sneezes everyone else catches the cold.

Wow, haven't seen anything like this before... it surprised me a bit. I will try and keep track of what happens. This seems to be an interesting topic.

Its happened many times and will happen again, read up on Operation Bucaneer back in '01. On December 11 2001 Drinkordie was busted and Razor was shutdown for a while.