AfterDawn: News

Operation Fastlink gets 50th conviction

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has revealed that its crackdown on online piracy has reached its 50th felony conviction. Operation FastLink is an on-going investigation that targets warez groups responsible for bringing pirated movies, music, software and games to the Internet often before their official release. Christopher E. Eaves, 31, of Iowa Park, Texas pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement for his involvement in "Apocalypse Crew" (aPC).

According to the DOJ, APC thrived to bring music to the Internet before it release date. Eaves is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 10. He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The conviction "represents a milestone never before achieved in any online piracy prosecution," Alice Fisher, assistant attorney general in the DOJ's criminal division, said in a statement.



Operation Fastlink has resulted in more than 120 search warrants executed across 12 countries, confiscation of hundreds of computers and other equipment and the removal of approximately $50 million worth of pirated games, software, music and movies from distribution channels.

Source:
Yahoo

Written by: James Delahunty @ 15 May 2007 18:56

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• 10 comments

• Jlhfit

  Why cant the f*ckn gov leave these "pirates" alone?? I guess the crack down on drugs and violence isnt as important as cracking down on people who "omg COPY movies,Music,software, and etc...." I guess the gov. has been such big losers on everything else in this country they find something easy to jump on try to be "Cowboys".....Feels good,huh!? lol

  15.5.2007 19:08 #1

• ZippyDSM

  the war on drugs is not as bad as the apparent loss on corporate money the chruch is the only drug pray to the chruch of man and the chruch of man must help its big business brethren!
  
  Violence keeps the common people in place for without it the chruch and big business would not rake in all that free money!

  15.5.2007 21:26 #2

• borhan9

  I wonder how many of these dept and organizations have been built up too do this kinda thing. Kinda impressive to see all the effort but its not going to stop anything.

  15.5.2007 23:50 #3

• thor999

  No, not impressive at all. I'm paying over $3.00 a gallon for gas to help fund these "agencies". I'm all for getting the pirates out, I think we should all wait a week or two after an initial release before we whore it online, you know, kinda give it a fair chance? But so long as these corporations churn out trash and charge excessive amounts for it (and can we all remember that this is ART, nothing more?) then people will NOT respect it or the source, at all, ever again. Anyone remember a movie called "Equilibrium?" That movie HAD to have been given directly to ShareReactor back in the day, because it circulated for about a month before it was even released at Blockbuster or Best Buy, and never had one second of advertising, even for weeks after its release! Why do you ask is this relevant? The trick is they didn't have to advertise. Must have been dl'ed around a million times. Those people know others, others that aren't smart enough to P2P. Because it was a good movie, it sold itself. I recommended buying it (as I did!!! even after dl'ing it.) to everyone I knew that enjoyed that genre of film, and ten that I know of bought it without even watching it first. I hope I am correct in saying that it is impossible to get full original quality in something you download. I mean absolute, as in ZERO COMPRESSION, as in what you buy. Imagine, if you will, a website where you can go watch premium new movies, before they are released, and then you place your vote as to whether that movie goes to the box office, or to DVD, or to the dumpster. There wouldn't be any misgivings, movies would be better, the original artform would be restored. Same with music. I can't think of ONE SINGLE SONG I have heard on the radio in the last ten years that I have actually liked, yet I own well over 2,000 cd's all bought in those last ten years. Why? Because I download everything I might like, test drive it and then buy it if its worth a damn. Simple enough. The perfect business model and noone can realize it.

  16.5.2007 00:17 #4

• ZippyDSM

  Originally posted by thor999:No, not impressive at all. I'm paying over $3.00 a gallon for gas to help fund these "agencies". I'm all for getting the pirates out, I think we should all wait a week or two after an initial release before we whore it online, you know, kinda give it a fair chance? But so long as these corporations churn out trash and charge excessive amounts for it (and can we all remember that this is ART, nothing more?) then people will NOT respect it or the source, at all, ever again. Anyone remember a movie called "Equilibrium?" That movie HAD to have been given directly to ShareReactor back in the day, because it circulated for about a month before it was even released at Blockbuster or Best Buy, and never had one second of advertising, even for weeks after its release! Why do you ask is this relevant? The trick is they didn't have to advertise. Must have been dl'ed around a million times. Those people know others, others that aren't smart enough to P2P. Because it was a good movie, it sold itself. I recommended buying it (as I did!!! even after dl'ing it.) to everyone I knew that enjoyed that genre of film, and ten that I know of bought it without even watching it first. I hope I am correct in saying that it is impossible to get full original quality in something you download. I mean absolute, as in ZERO COMPRESSION, as in what you buy. Imagine, if you will, a website where you can go watch premium new movies, before they are released, and then you place your vote as to whether that movie goes to the box office, or to DVD, or to the dumpster. There wouldn't be any misgivings, movies would be better, the original artform would be restored. Same with music. I can't think of ONE SINGLE SONG I have heard on the radio in the last ten years that I have actually liked, yet I own well over 2,000 cd's all bought in those last ten years. Why? Because I download everything I might like, test drive it and then buy it if its worth a damn. Simple enough. The perfect business model and noone can realize it.
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  No they have the perfect racket..er business model going charge 3-6X what you normally would sale for 1-2X.
  
  Give up buy used let someone else be the sheeple in the mans slauther fields :X

  16.5.2007 00:24 #5

• pigfister

  Originally posted by ZIppyDSM:the war on drugs is not as bad as the apparent loss on corporate money the chruch is the only drug pray to the chruch of man and the chruch of man must help its big business brethren!
  
  Violence keeps the common people in place for without it the chruch and big business would not rake in all that free money!
  
  the cia controls the drug business and helps to fund America which is why it has no where near the resources to fight crime as they don't want to stop it unlike the media industry or American government which is getting bypassed for all shady funding options for the cia as its distributed free but those communists i mean terrorists/PIRATES will get it in the end. lol 50 ppl out of millions that's a great achievement!
  
  You know opium production in Afghanistan has increased over 600% since American occupation?

  16.5.2007 00:59 #6

• nintenut

  Great. F-ing great. 50 convictions. Way to go, how much money did they spend finding 50 pirates? How much could have been spent finding drug growers and dealers? How much could have been spent on killers and other criminals? They're wasting time and resources on this, 50 pirates go down, 50,000 spring up the next day, way to go DOJ, another successful internet piracy crackdown, I liked apocalypse crew, to...

  16.5.2007 12:09 #7

• Jlhfit

  I wonder if they checked their own computer software lately....I beat its windows vista cracked version..
  

  PS2v7,Flip Top ,160G HDD,HD Loader & Advance,Swap Magic 3.3/Breaker Pro, 260 Ps2 Backups,DVD ELFboot w/all Atari,Nes,Snes,Sega Roms & Emulators...
  PS3-Linux Yellow Dog,60G Internal HDD,320G Ext.HDD
  PSP 2.71>1.50>3.03OE-C>3.10OE-A>3.30E-A>3.40OE-A
  PS3 ID: Jlhflex
  "its not how you play the game, its whether you win or lose"
  
  

  16.5.2007 19:36 #8

• Unfocused

  At the end of the day, this is getting leaked from the studio somehow. 50 convictions and nobody knows where it is coming from? Something isn't right with this picture.
  
  Oh wait! If they stop the source, then there will be no more $3000 law suits to get rich off of.
  
  Silly me for thinking this was a legitimate agency formed to prevent crime / copyright infringement. What was I thinking?

  19.5.2007 07:16 #9

• pmshah

  Originally posted by thor999:No, not impressive at all. I'm paying over $3.00 a gallon for gas to help fund these "agencies". I'm all for getting the pirates out, I think we should all wait a week or two after an initial release before we whore it online, you know, kinda give it a fair chance? But so long as these corporations churn out trash and charge excessive amounts for it (and can we all remember that this is ART, nothing more?) then people will NOT respect it or the source, at all, ever again. Anyone remember a movie called "Equilibrium?" That movie HAD to have been given directly to ShareReactor back in the day, because it circulated for about a month before it was even released at Blockbuster or Best Buy, and never had one second of advertising, even for weeks after its release! Why do you ask is this relevant? The trick is they didn't have to advertise. Must have been dl'ed around a million times. Those people know others, others that aren't smart enough to P2P. Because it was a good movie, it sold itself. I recommended buying it (as I did!!! even after dl'ing it.) to everyone I knew that enjoyed that genre of film, and ten that I know of bought it without even watching it first. I hope I am correct in saying that it is impossible to get full original quality in something you download. I mean absolute, as in ZERO COMPRESSION, as in what you buy. Imagine, if you will, a website where you can go watch premium new movies, before they are released, and then you place your vote as to whether that movie goes to the box office, or to DVD, or to the dumpster. There wouldn't be any misgivings, movies would be better, the original artform would be restored. Same with music. I can't think of ONE SINGLE SONG I have heard on the radio in the last ten years that I have actually liked, yet I own well over 2,000 cd's all bought in those last ten years. Why? Because I download everything I might like, test drive it and then buy it if its worth a damn. Simple enough. The perfect business model and noone can realize it.I recollect at one point in time Bill Gates himself had announced that M$ software would never be "copy protected". It was perfect business model for him. Earn enough revenues from OEMs & Corporates. Let the rest pirate & become slaves in turn killing all competition.
  
  They now think they have the world by the "short & curlies" to charge exhorbitant price & go after everyone else.

  20.5.2007 18:41 #10