“The Federation” Targets BitTorrent Pirates at the Workplace
Written by enigmax on February 03, 2008The UK’s Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) has launched the third phase of ‘Operation Tracker’, an initiative to monitor people using BitTorrent to share computer software from their homes and also from their workplaces.
FAST - The Federation Against Software Theft is a UK organization setup in 1984 with the stated aim of ‘promoting the legal use of software by enforcement, lobbying and education’
‘The Federation’, as they like to be called, are currently entering Phase 3 of ‘Operation Tracker’ which aims to trace a “large number of computer users who are breaking copyright law by sharing software on the internet.” They do this using what they call ‘undercover investigators’ - people monitoring P2P networks and gathering data. FAST targets residential addresses but much prefers to catch business connections engaged in file-sharing activities as these are easiest to get a big settlement from. Very often, FAST tries to shift the blame for the file-sharing directly to the company directors, an effective way of increasing the pressure.
Now, FAST says it is monitoring certain sites for the purposes of tracking ‘illegal software downloads’, particularly those that employ ’swarming technology’ (BitTorrent) in the 3rd phase of Operation Tracker. FAST is using a tracking tool it calls ‘The CCTV of the Internet’ but which is likely just an open source BitTorrent client, with some more advanced logging features tagged on.
Chief Executive of The Federation John Lovelock, said of the system: “The march of technology assists both the law breaker and the investigator.” Indicating a longer-term initiative rather than a blitz he continued: “Operation Tracker Three is not designed to achieve overnight results. Rather it is a long-term surveillance operation aimed at successfully tracing and bringing to book anyone found to be blatantly flouting the law.”
According to FAST, it recently carried out some research with YouGov and was very disappointed to learn that just 2% of the workforce in the UK thought that they could get caught ’stealing software’. With that in mind, this ‘new phase’ is probably more of a publicity drive for instilling fear into UK businesses who allow their staff to share files than anything else.
As mentioned before, FAST likes to concentrate its efforts on targeting businesses, and those directors that run them, very often claiming that management allow their employees to break the law and therefore must be held ultimately responsible.
“Corporate liability is something that management cannot afford to gloss over - misuse of software is something Directors cannot plead ignorance to” said Lovelock. “If employees are using the corporate network for illegal activity those in charge may be liable. Theft is theft and will be treated accordingly.”
As is customary, Lovelock goes on to confuse physical theft, with copyright infringement: “Our message hasn’t changed,” he said. “Installing software unlawfully is wrong. After all you would not let your employees steal a company car so why are corporates allowing this to continue?”
‘The Federation’ is interesting in that it has mixed non-profit and for-profit operations under the same banner, leaving some people wondering about the direction of the organization. The Federation was a share holder in the for-profit business ‘FAST Limited’ with both sharing offices, staff and a common logo, creating a huge amount of confusion, as indicated by this post, and others like them:
“We had a visit from an officer of Fast who, in a 10-minute Q&A, identified ‘16 areas of concern’ with our IT practices. Nearly all were bullshit, with some very minor exceptions. She then suggested that we should join FAST as a corporate member to complete the training, just in case (hint, hint) Trading Standards ever came around to do an audit. What this tells me is that she is obviously a salesperson, working on commission, signing up as many members as possible. This strikes me as a highly unethical way of doing business for what is essentially a regulatory body.”
Unethical? Surely not…..
Previously: Sweden Warns Kids Against The Pirate Bay
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> “Sounds like the same tactics as Scientology!”
I thought the exact same thing!
Like this is gonna get them anywheres. Good luck, FASTFaggots. We’ll stay one step ahead of you.
Fuck FAST
http://www.moola.com:80/moopubs/b2b/exc/join.jsp?sid=4d6a59744d544d784f54633d-2
“The Federation Against Software Theft is a UK organization setup in 1984″
founded in 1984 - nuff said
I hope they’re hacked the way MediaDefender was
Are this folks from the same school of scammers from Nigeria?
@UK Resident
bloody winging Pom
[quote comment="280706"]@UK Resident
bloody winging Pom[/quote]
lol too true
We’re not going to liberate the world if we keep calling our brothers “faggots.” Find your compassionate heart and liberate yourselves from these ugly, harmful ideologies.
FACT have no technical skill what so ever! I know this first hand as I’ve spoken with there so called “experts” They have no legal power as they are a private company! Just mis-managed help from the Police. If they wanted to take file sharers to court it’ll cost FACT money, as I doubt the police would be interested. My guess is FACT are having money problems, so they need to make it look like they’re doing some good! Fact use scare tactics to pressure company Directors into paying or sacking staff. Its all about publicity with FACT! final thought “useless Wan**rs”
Whoop wrong company! :) Oh well they’re both as useless as the other :)
[quote comment="280643"]Fuck FAST[/quote]
I hate fucking FAST.
FAST are stupid, you never see anything about them, unlike FACT… hmmmm, i doubt they will ever do anything to most people as they probably were just meant to make people aware, but now some people are aware it is illegal to download copyrighted pay for applications for free, but still do it anyway… :P
so they now have to work out how to stop the people who do this, as these are usually the people who get higher up in the chain so to speak…
Anyone noticed the FAST site is down this morning? I wonder how that happened…?
And i was so looking forward to joining them! Such a shame, i guess i will have to join Pirate Bay instead!
From the FAST site:
“A 10% drop in piracy would create 40,000 new jobs and add £6 billion to UK GDP.
BSA/IDC piracy report 2004″
=-=-=-=-=
I pirate stuff that I wouldn’t purchase in the first place. Stuff that I buy, I don’t pirate.
How come they can’t understand this shit? They must be retarded or something.
When the law is clearly unjust, are you still bound by it? Copyright was original meant to protect the original creator by giving him a temporarily monopoly. He/She had invested time and money to create something new. Before copyright someone else could reap all the benefits by making money of the hard work of someone else.
This is a viewpoint that I can agree with and why I am not against fighting commercial pirates. The main problem however lies in the way that corporations, who are most often not even the original creators but only licensees, have lobbied (bribed) politicians and subverted the original idea behind copyright law.
A point in case is Mickey Mouse (TM) (C) who’s copyright was about to end. Disney lobbied the political whores in Congress with as final result ‘The Copyright Term Extension Act’ (CTEA) of 1998 – alternatively known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Sonny Bono Act, or pejoratively as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. It extended copyright terms in the United States by 20 years. Before the Act (under the Copyright Act of 1976), copyright would last for the life of the author plus 50 years, or 75 years for a work of corporate authorship; the Act extended these terms to life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier.
This is clearly ridiculous and surely not a temporarily monopoly. When the law is obviously unjust, made for and by the rich, should people obey it then? The corporate criminals are the ones who fit the profile of a thief and pirates because of their legalized crime of robbing society of fair use and public domain.
More accurately, it should be called “The Shakedown”.
[quote comment="280643"]Fuck FAST[/quote]
It feels better that way.
From their page:
“Corporate Piracy
Installation of software onto numerous computers, for example using the same CD-ROM.
Software installed onto a server being accessed by more than the licenced end-users.
Installation of employees own copy of software on corporate devices.
Software is not in the name of the orgainsation using it.”
A) Nice typos. Buy some bloatware spellcheck, already.
B) Oh, snap! Your product (Software “A”) is in the wild and someone brought their copy of it to work so they could get their job done w/o banging heads against a corporate wall. Terror!
[quote comment="280339"]@ andyness
Fuck you and whatever shithole you come from[/quote]
This, from the country that brought us stinky judges in fancy wigs.
And then there is the BS that organizations like FAST, RIAA, MPAA and IFPI say they do it for the benefit of the artists. The same artists who are treated like feudal serfs by the industry.
An interesting read is on the website of Janis Ian (who doesn’t remember the beautiful song ‘At Seventeen’):
“The premise of all this ballyhoo is that the industry (and its artists) are being harmed by free downloading. Nonsense.
Let’s take it from my personal experience. My site http://www.janisian.com ) gets an average of 75,000 hits a year. Not bad for someone whose last hit record was in 1975. When Napster was running full-tilt, we received about 100 hits a month from people who’d downloaded Society’s Child or At Seventeen for free, then decided they wanted more information. Of those 100 people (and these are only the ones who let us know how they’d found the site), 15 bought CDs. Not huge sales, right? No record company is interested in 180 extra sales a year. But… that translates into $2700, which is a lot of money in my book. And that doesn’t include the ones who bought the CDs in stores, or who came to my shows.”
You can read the rest of the article at: http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html
fuck the federation, klingon cock is where it’s at!
klingons have starship enterprise shaped penis heads, now isn’t that ironic?
don’t ya think?
@ aussie
youre only pissed off that your grandad was fucked off out of the uk for stealing some womens knickers.
I noticed the spelling mistakes were fixed around 16:40 GMT!
AND THEN MY FIREWALL LOGGED AN ATTACK!
ZOMG!!!!!
Here’s a wonderful quote from the FAST website:
In a recent software audit of 2,500 PCs at a UK financial institution FAST discovered over 5,800 illegal digital music files.
Most of these files were illegally downloaded by people in the IT department - those normally tasked with combating the problem.
Bit of an uphill struggle then?
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