FBI offensive - Fairlight story continues

[dyn!o]

Let's see what the world's best agency is talking about:

1. Criminal Division and FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director Louis M. Reigel today announced another far-reaching and aggressive international enforcement action against criminal organizations involved in the illegal online distribution of copyrighted material.

Scene groups (FBI seems to be proud while mentioning so many known scene brands) are not criminal organizations in a legal sense. They violate DMCA and fall under computer crimes which is far different from criminal organizations. US Army continously rides other countries, violates foreign law, kills thousands of people and occupy teritories. Is it a criminal organization too or maybe they do not fall under any law?

2. More than 120 leading members of the organized online piracy underground were identified by the investigation to date.

Maybe they are talking about streets drugs dealers. Forecasted amount of real scene leaders (both PC and console) can be estimated around 10. FBI needs fame so they know how to multiply.

3. The theft of this property strikes at the heart of America's economy.

Summarize all US losses caused by piracy in 2004. Can you do it? How? By multiplying forecasted amount of existing pirated copies by real market price (movies, software)? That method is being used by most of the world's anti-piracy companies and the police but is it really reliable? How many of you would buy pirated games you actually own if there is no pirated copy at all? Assume each of us have 10 games or films or audio on average. How many would we bought if we are forced to? I suppose 1, maximum 2. Some of us would not have bought any title at all. So let's divide "estimated piracy" by 2 (feds always double it (at least) to make the piracy louder) and then substract ~90% of the "estimated losses" in US. Next let's summarize all the incomings of top 10 movies or top 10 games or top 10 songs in US. Compare the size. Does loss amount constitute "the heart of America's economy"? Compare the loss to NASA budget, Microsoft, Intel, Macrovision or Adobe annual income and answer yourself.

4. Once a warez release group prepares a stolen work for distribution, the material is distributed in minutes to secure, top-level warez servers throughout the world.

To steal anything you have to take (unauthorized) someone's else property. Some of scene groups buy the original copy in order to crack it. The one who steals is the first and next ones who receives it after the cracker (usually site-op). FBI experts did not notice the difference between violating DMCA and stealing.

5. Conservative estimates of the value of pirated works seized in yesterday's action exceed $50 million

Like in 3rd point. Virtual $50 million. Let's take a look how do they calculate similar amounts. Assume we have captured 30 pressed CDs with:

Catia V4 All Packs (single copy = $21.000) - 10 copies
ArcGIS complete (single copy = $50.000) - 10 copies
MatLab + SimuLink with extensions (single copy = $100.000) - 10 copies

We have captured illegal software worth $1.710.000 (in the way feds calculates). Is it really worth $1.710.00? Nope, we can assume that it is worth approx. $200 since you can buy all these titles (30 copies) for similar money in the "black market". Of course feds do not take the real market value but developer's price (who would be interested in their actions if they write $1.000 instead of $50.000.000).